… and into the fire! A cliché, I know, but completely descriptive of what’s going to happen to me next week! As you may remember (from my extensive whining on this blog), I have had the October from hell. It was one thing after another: first, the program review; second, the first research presentation; and finally, the conference presentation. Now that I’m beginning to feel back to normal, the psycho work load is gearing up again. I have a (virtual) pile of midterms, a stack of undergrad homework assignments to sort through, and an entire list of piddling little tasks (little things, but time-consuming) to take care of. Now, I could handle that except that I must have the department’s schedule submitted before Thanksgiving, our honors’ days awards submitted by December 1, and then there’s that ongoing thing called a search committee. Even this I could handle, but …
… next week is the start of student pre-registration.
We have about 140 majors plus another 30 graduate students. We have four faculty members. Given these numbers, each individual should have 42.5 advisees. I checked my list and I’m sitting at 41. Not too bad, right? The problem is, I seem to have attracted quite a few “unofficial” advisees. You know what I’m talking about — the students who just can’t seem to (1) get it together enough to look up who their advisor actually is or (2) the students who like me better than all the other advisors in the department. Sigh.
Even though I have tried to combat this problem of advisee creep, my personal efforts seem to have failed. Usually, I will advise the person, look up their ACTUAL advisor, and tell them that they have to sign up with that person for their next appointment. This worked for a while — but derailed itself this semester.
Ideas? Suggestions?
For the record: I don’t mind advising, but I have so much other work to do as the department head that extra advisees mean long, long hours in the office. Seeing how I’ve been clocking ~60 hour weeks … well, you can see why I’m slightly tired/bitter/annoyed.
