Clarissa's Blog

8 responses to “Speaking Out”

1. 

   JaneB

   January 25, 2015

   So why did they do it? I’m curious now…

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      January 25, 2015

      The explanation is that the administrators said there would cancel the courses if they didn’t agree to teach them for free. And that would make it impossible for students to graduate.

      A completely ridiculous excuse that people only buy if they feel like it. Why the profs really did it is an absolute mystery.

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      1. 

         JaneB

         January 25, 2015

         Not a mystery, I can see that happening – I am myself the sort of naive idiot who could be made to feel like I am responsible for stopping students from graduating if I said no, so I can understand why people would do this. I am lucky that I am learning to see these sorts of feelings as being imposed on me by manipulative others rather than being completely mine, but it is hard work – balancing trust and generosity of spirit against self-protection, resisting cynicism, is difficult.

         I would also infer elements of low self-esteem – they believe they will only be valued if they do this extra thing, that only doing the job they are contracted to do is not enough – and also a sort of avoidance of other work – “look at me, I am SO BUSY with this EXTRA TEACHING that I am too busy to do all this self-indulgent research other people do” – of course as you have said before research is actually public spirited and very hard work, and having a ‘legitimate’ reason to not do hard work by doing easy work instead AND claiming martyr status can be very tempting! Especially as there is more scope to ‘fail’ at research…

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         1. 

            Clarissa

            January 25, 2015

            “I am lucky that I am learning to see these sorts of feelings as being imposed on me by manipulative others rather than being completely mine”

            • YES. That’s what it is, blatant manipulation.

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2. 

   musteryou

   January 25, 2015

   Making themselves feel they are indispensable to the organisation in their own eyes.

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      January 25, 2015

      “Making themselves feel they are indispensable to the organisation in their own eyes.”

      • Yes, exactly. This is some sort of a weird game where people pretend to hate the extra work, yet they seek it and then complain about it. Then seek it some more and complain about it some more. And so on.

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      1. 

         musteryou

         January 25, 2015

         The complaints are also useful, to heighten one’s sense of virtue.

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3. 

   cliff arroyo

   January 26, 2015

   One of my favorite books ever is Power! by Michael Korda, to paraphrase some of his thoughts on people who want to be indispensable. They don’t all necessarily apply that well to a university but I’ll use any excuse to get these ideas out there

   “Many people spend their working lives attempting to make themselves indispensable, a search for absolute security which seldom pays dividends.”

   “the management point of view is basically correct, nobody is indispensable. No matter how important you are, replacing you is at worse of question of inconvenience, expense and time.”

   “In every corporation, the people who think themselves indispensable and are generally regarded as such by their colleagues eventually get fired. The reason for this is simple, but seldom accepted – no corporation can afford to believe that is existence is dependent on the health, sanity and good will of a relatively small number of people – especially if it’s true”

   “the more you try to prove how much you’re needed, the more you are likely to attract the attention of people who wonder whether your job is necessary at all.”

   “Those who try to make themselves indispensable is like a swimmer clinging to a piece of flotsam in a raging storm when it might be safer to let go and swim.”

   and my favorite

   “The world is full of people who will work a fourteen-hour day to hold a job that could easily be done in seven hours, exhausting themselves and irritating everyone around them in a useless struggle to prove that life cannot go on without them.”

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