Nothing will ever help me better to understand people. I don’t get them. Their way of thinking is strange.
Next week is the first week of class. This is a crazy time for department chairs. It’s almost as bad as the last week of class. There is a ton of work. There’s one crisis after another.
Suddenly, people hear a rumor that there might be a reallocation of secretaries. The department chairs decide to have a two-hour meeting on Tuesday to discuss our proposal to the administration regarding this.
By absolute accident, I happen to know that the reallocation already happened. Paperwork was signed. Contracts were redrawn. It’s a done deal.
Like the eternal innocent that I am, I tell the other chairs about this. A meeting will be a waste of time, I tell them. Unfortunately, it’s too late. It was all decided while we were off campus for the holidays. We can save ourselves the trouble of taking out time on an unusually busy day. We can concentrate on our many daily tasks instead.
Of course, as anybody with a bit less going on in the naivetƩ department could predict, exactly zero people agree with me. No, we should still have a meeting, they argue.
But why? For what purpose? The secretaries are gone anyways. Reallocated. Removed.
Because, the other chairs respond, it’s going to be a good experience to come together in solidarity and mutual care even if nothing practical comes out of it.
Everybody looks at me like I’m weird for not understanding this. There’s a collective agreement that coming together in solidarity and mutual care for a 2-hour unnecessary meeting is a great idea. These are people who are perpetually overworked to the point of public crying jags versus the very well-rested me who spends part of each working day reading, snoozing, or doing German exercises in the department lounge.
Definitely, somebody is weird in this situation.