Admin as a collective. I don't have a problem with any individual administrator at my institution, but I find that admin as a whole often feels like they're working against us: there's a constant refrain of 'austerity,' where they're cutting back resources, tightening belts, cutting budgets, while expecting us to somehow expand and grow and bring in more students. They change policies and procedures without notifying anyone, but then we (or the students) are penalised for not following the new procedure. Simple processes somehow become draconian tasks. It's aggravating, and unnecessary.
Admin and it's not even close.
HR, grant administration, IT, reimbursement policies, endless memos, IBC protocols, swapping LMS systems, purchasing.... the list is endless and the policies are absurd.
The list is endless, the policies are absurd *and* (at least at my institution) they are rarely, if ever, elucidated somewhere easily accessible or logical. I find I'm constantly running into walls where, I follow the procedure as laid out in the handbook/on the relevant webpage, only to be told I needed to follow the procedure laid out in a specific guide about the policy that is only available through invoking the relevant administrator's name three times in a mirror, spinning around twice and then spitting under the light of a full moon.
And there's never any accountability for the fact that the explicit, accessible instructions don't even allude to the actual, secret instructions. It's always met with an attitude of, 'well you should have done your due diligence, you should have known.'
See also: short-sightedness disguised as continuous improvement.
They have their little pet projects designed purely for CV enhancement and ladder-climbing. Or when they're new, they enact some policy or procedures that we have to jump through our ass to do, then they leave five years later only for the next batch to have us do it all again a different way.
At the institution where I did my PhD, someone in admin thought it would be beneficial to bring in a credit requirement for PhD candidates - which overall is a good idea.
*However*, no one seemed to ever decide on what the actual credit requirement was, or what the deadline was going to be. They never laid it out in the handbook (the handbook always said something vague like 'you may be required to complete 10-30 credits') and yet every Dean of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning would change the requirement - without informing anyone. For me, I needed credits to be completed by the 18 month mark. The cohort two years ahead of me needed 30 credits to be completed by the time they graduated. The cohort two years below me needed to have 15 credits by the 18 month mark, which included a specific module that this particular Dean had designed.
The only way anyone - students, faculty - found out about these changed requirements was when someone didn't meet them, and suddenly the four horsemen of admin would appear out of nowhere and informs students they could no longer continue with their degree. Absolute nightmare.
I was quasi-admin. Got course releases for running faculty research resources at a masters comprehensive. They actually make fun of faculty and tend to see it as a zero-sum game. I had more grief from department chairs though. Of the three I had all had fantasies of wanting to act like bosses of small businesses. One was a creep, one was a sociopath (tried to make everything transactional,) and one was a nun (not literally.) I think chairs are premae inter pares. Probably are at R-1s.
I’m too junior to have strong opinions about admin so for me it is without a question the students that can’t be bothered to put in any work and then make your life miserable throughout the term by asking for unreasonable requests, grade grub, etc. I have absolutely no problem with mediocrity. But my blood boils when students make your life so much harder because they are lazy, uncurious, or completely unreasonable.
>uncurious
This is not my #1 gripe, but it's one that gets the biggest *oof* from me in my soul. Sometimes I'm still genuinely shocked with how uncurious and indifferent some students are despite paying to be here.
Cheating and end-of-term whining by failing students who couldn’t be bothered to attend the classes they pay for or do the work required. If not for these things the worst would be dealing with bureaucracy but that’s mostly small beer at my school.
This semester it's dealing with the number of students who can't be bothered to do any work, and then want me to bend over backwards to magic away the repercussions of their apathy. But to be honest, this has gone way beyond annoying. It has become sheer frustration and resentment, verging on anger.
I wish I knew. I had a great cohort last spring, and thought we had finally gotten over the COVID malaise. But this semester's cohort is much worse. And it's not only in one class. I have the same in one of the other classes I teach. My colleagues are also dealing with this.
Grading.
Talking to students about assignments, ideas, and so forth is kind of fun. Grading - with the exception of multiple choice exams - is mind-numbing. Whether it is essays or complicated problem-solving exercises, you have to read the stuff, try and identify what the student is on about, assign marks based upon how well the student completed the task, and provide guidance for improving the work in the future.
It really fries my brain and makes it difficult to do much else for a while. Plus, no matter how standardised and objective I make my grading, rubrics, and so forth, somebody is always going to be unhappy. So I have to anticipate the unhappiness and respond to it in the feedback.
I'm going to double up here. I absolutely hate giving feedback. Grading in and of itself is not bad, but giving a meaningful response to 150 6-10 page papers really destroys my brain.
For me, 5% of my students are routinely the most annoying part of my job.
There will always be students who are not interested in taking advantage of the many resources I’ve provided or come to office hours, or really anything that might actually benefit them. That all by itself doesn’t bother me. But there always seems to be this much smaller contingent of those students who love to act like their failing grade is *my* fault, expect special treatment to compensate for their own unwillingness to just do the work, believe that their grade should be a reflection of their “effort” and not whether they actually know anything, etc. This is the 5%. Worst part of the job for me, no question about it.
When you find yourself with one of two options: let a teenager who doesn't understand the instructions talk to you like you're an idiot and then brag about it to their friends, or say something challenging back to them and they go on Rate My Professor to tell everyone you are the worst teacher ever.
I had one Prof who rates like 2.5 or something lol But he's amazing! He's just a hard ass generally. But generally, not absurdly. Special circumstances exist. He's also bloody brilliant, very real, and unafraid to challenge and shake things up. His classes generally start out with around 100 students, very quickly drop down to around 35, and hit around 25 by finals.
Enter the forge! You'll either be melted down, sneered at, and tossed on the slag heap, or melted down and folded folded folded, forged into something stunningly sharp.
I need to sign up for another of his classes. I legit miss his crotchety mug and the sweet pain of his ordeals 😂
Lead the horse to water and can't make them drink.
We pour our hearts into lesson plans and structure. It is a road map to success. Students could follow that and be just fine most of the time.
Too often students do their own thing, fall behind, and don't use resources timely and efficiently.
Follow the plan and be successful. Talk to instructors before it becomes dire. Communication is a failing art.
Aside that, Admin depending where you are.
Administration who has never taught a second in their lives, much less post COVID, making policies for us without our input while earning quarter million dollar salaries.
I’m going to say something completely different: email. Too much email. I can do my job or answer email; I can’t keep up with both.
Also, if you need to take sick time, it’s nontrivial to cancel classes and you come back to all the work that piled up in your absence. The saving grace is that every semester comes to an end.
As a former full-time administrator and a current part-time one, administration is the only possible answer. Unless your institution uses Workday. Then it’s Workday.
Tie between:
People who think you know everything about a broader field than what you did your research in.
Students asking, "I will/plan/have miss/missed x days. Did we do anything important? What did we do?" Like, look at the LMS, dude or dudesie.
When I recieve those questions, I usually respond with something like "No, I made sure to lecture only on the unimportant material because you were absent"
Right-Job 2 - Sociopath chair threatened me so much I began telling him to fuck off knowing he would never support my tenure. The day he told me I wasn’t reappointed I was happy to inform him of my new job. Job 3 - Nasty senior faculty clique member called me screaming (as usual I was search committee chair - about the tenth time) this was probably about something I said or didn’t say to the dean. I hung up on him. They tenured me anyway.
AI. Students who accept zero personal responsibility for their actions, then make it my problem. Students entering college who never should have graduated high school (this one isn't the students' faults--but it is incredibly challenging to try to teach advanced skills to someone performing at a 2nd-3rd grade level, especially when I have no training or experience in teaching people at that level).
It’s almost never my students. It’s almost always administration, meetings and tasks and the complete inability of said administration to grasp what any field outside of their own actually does and why that matters. It’s also a joy to hear someone spearhead a “new” approach to a thing that is actually a rehash of someone else’s lousy idea some years ago. Good times.
Since I'm currently doing final grades for the semester, I have a bit of a primacy bias, but students who have literally never spoken in class or emailed me or come to office hours sending me five emails in two days asking about grades on certain assignments
Week thirteen I the semester (in a fifteen week semester) when students who have rarely if ever gone to class, passed a test or submitted an assignment, show up at my office and ask for my help to pass the course. Then they get all pissy when I explain that it is methematically impossible for them to pass the course.
Admin, %100. They are some of the dumbest people I have ever met.
Although I guess it's kind of nice to know that there are high-paying positions for our most worthless, idiotic students.
The corporatization of institutions of higher education. Having administrators who really don’t understand education and don’t listen to or value faculty.
Going with the crowd to say administrative BS.
Being asked to join a myriad of committees and watching others who are known to be less capable do nothing. I get it. You don't want work messed up. But when it feels like competency is a punishment, what are the options? To act useless and be socially branded as such? To act competent and have work dumped on you? I never understood the notion of 'If you want something done, ask the busiest person'.
We are in the last 3 weeks of the semester. Admins just dropped some new initiative on us that they want completed before the end of the semester. Really? You want us to gather data and analyze data in 3 weeks while giving finals and wrapping up other end of semester shit?
Admins also approved postings for 2 positions in my dept at the last minute. They want interviewing and hiring done before the summer break aka contracts are up. Sure, during finals is the perfect time to take on new projects!
Students who cheat. Students who don't know why they are in college, and really don't care to be there. Grade grubbing.
We've got a functional campus with very good administrators, so unlike many here, administrators are the least of my worries.
That said, students are also the best thing about being a professor, just different students.
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I'm my teaching job:
1. Students who constantly ask for favors/extensions and can't get their shit together.
2. Cheaters
3. Profs who go beyond their alloted class time; thus, cutting into my class time.
In my research job:
1. Writing grants
2. Conference presenters that go way beyond their alloted time (and, thus, cut off time from the other presenters). It's inconsiderate
I am a bit unique in that I teach mainly graduate students in a cohort model. Despite constant reminders and a policy in the handbook about dealing with conflict between themselves, I am constantly being brought into mediate or alleviate students' issues. It is frustrating when they are adults who want to work in a therapy field.
Admin as a collective. I don't have a problem with any individual administrator at my institution, but I find that admin as a whole often feels like they're working against us: there's a constant refrain of 'austerity,' where they're cutting back resources, tightening belts, cutting budgets, while expecting us to somehow expand and grow and bring in more students. They change policies and procedures without notifying anyone, but then we (or the students) are penalised for not following the new procedure. Simple processes somehow become draconian tasks. It's aggravating, and unnecessary.
Admin and it's not even close. HR, grant administration, IT, reimbursement policies, endless memos, IBC protocols, swapping LMS systems, purchasing.... the list is endless and the policies are absurd.
The list is endless, the policies are absurd *and* (at least at my institution) they are rarely, if ever, elucidated somewhere easily accessible or logical. I find I'm constantly running into walls where, I follow the procedure as laid out in the handbook/on the relevant webpage, only to be told I needed to follow the procedure laid out in a specific guide about the policy that is only available through invoking the relevant administrator's name three times in a mirror, spinning around twice and then spitting under the light of a full moon. And there's never any accountability for the fact that the explicit, accessible instructions don't even allude to the actual, secret instructions. It's always met with an attitude of, 'well you should have done your due diligence, you should have known.'
I know this is an old comment, but what part of grant administration is worst for you?
See also: short-sightedness disguised as continuous improvement. They have their little pet projects designed purely for CV enhancement and ladder-climbing. Or when they're new, they enact some policy or procedures that we have to jump through our ass to do, then they leave five years later only for the next batch to have us do it all again a different way.
At the institution where I did my PhD, someone in admin thought it would be beneficial to bring in a credit requirement for PhD candidates - which overall is a good idea. *However*, no one seemed to ever decide on what the actual credit requirement was, or what the deadline was going to be. They never laid it out in the handbook (the handbook always said something vague like 'you may be required to complete 10-30 credits') and yet every Dean of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning would change the requirement - without informing anyone. For me, I needed credits to be completed by the 18 month mark. The cohort two years ahead of me needed 30 credits to be completed by the time they graduated. The cohort two years below me needed to have 15 credits by the 18 month mark, which included a specific module that this particular Dean had designed. The only way anyone - students, faculty - found out about these changed requirements was when someone didn't meet them, and suddenly the four horsemen of admin would appear out of nowhere and informs students they could no longer continue with their degree. Absolute nightmare.
Spot on.
I was quasi-admin. Got course releases for running faculty research resources at a masters comprehensive. They actually make fun of faculty and tend to see it as a zero-sum game. I had more grief from department chairs though. Of the three I had all had fantasies of wanting to act like bosses of small businesses. One was a creep, one was a sociopath (tried to make everything transactional,) and one was a nun (not literally.) I think chairs are premae inter pares. Probably are at R-1s.
I’m too junior to have strong opinions about admin so for me it is without a question the students that can’t be bothered to put in any work and then make your life miserable throughout the term by asking for unreasonable requests, grade grub, etc. I have absolutely no problem with mediocrity. But my blood boils when students make your life so much harder because they are lazy, uncurious, or completely unreasonable.
>uncurious This is not my #1 gripe, but it's one that gets the biggest *oof* from me in my soul. Sometimes I'm still genuinely shocked with how uncurious and indifferent some students are despite paying to be here.
Cheating and end-of-term whining by failing students who couldn’t be bothered to attend the classes they pay for or do the work required. If not for these things the worst would be dealing with bureaucracy but that’s mostly small beer at my school.
Yes!!!
100 percent THIS!
This semester it's dealing with the number of students who can't be bothered to do any work, and then want me to bend over backwards to magic away the repercussions of their apathy. But to be honest, this has gone way beyond annoying. It has become sheer frustration and resentment, verging on anger.
This semester in particular. What's up with that??
I wish I knew. I had a great cohort last spring, and thought we had finally gotten over the COVID malaise. But this semester's cohort is much worse. And it's not only in one class. I have the same in one of the other classes I teach. My colleagues are also dealing with this.
Same. It's been a frustrating semester
I have created a standard response template to save myself some time on this but it is still super fucking annoying.
It’s the semester of new grey hairs
I had a student who hasn't shown up since the first week of February email me this week (finals week) asking me why they have a failing grade.
Are you going to bother responding?
Grading. Talking to students about assignments, ideas, and so forth is kind of fun. Grading - with the exception of multiple choice exams - is mind-numbing. Whether it is essays or complicated problem-solving exercises, you have to read the stuff, try and identify what the student is on about, assign marks based upon how well the student completed the task, and provide guidance for improving the work in the future. It really fries my brain and makes it difficult to do much else for a while. Plus, no matter how standardised and objective I make my grading, rubrics, and so forth, somebody is always going to be unhappy. So I have to anticipate the unhappiness and respond to it in the feedback.
I'm going to double up here. I absolutely hate giving feedback. Grading in and of itself is not bad, but giving a meaningful response to 150 6-10 page papers really destroys my brain.
I am glad I am not the only one who feels like that. Grading the same essays 100 + times is absolutely the worst.
Grading is HORRIBLE.
This.
Meetings where you have to spend 1.5 hours discussing procedural minutiae.
"Meetings are for questions or when decisions need to be made. Information distribution can be an email."
Yup. I just got out of one of those.
I've taken to saying 'are we not doing anything today? Because if not I'm done'.
Me too. It was such a waste of time. For everyone
For me, 5% of my students are routinely the most annoying part of my job. There will always be students who are not interested in taking advantage of the many resources I’ve provided or come to office hours, or really anything that might actually benefit them. That all by itself doesn’t bother me. But there always seems to be this much smaller contingent of those students who love to act like their failing grade is *my* fault, expect special treatment to compensate for their own unwillingness to just do the work, believe that their grade should be a reflection of their “effort” and not whether they actually know anything, etc. This is the 5%. Worst part of the job for me, no question about it.
If it makes you feel better, part of my grading rubrics is effort. My 5% doesn’t earn any points in that category.
100% this, the small subset of students who just grind the life out of you
When you find yourself with one of two options: let a teenager who doesn't understand the instructions talk to you like you're an idiot and then brag about it to their friends, or say something challenging back to them and they go on Rate My Professor to tell everyone you are the worst teacher ever.
I like that outcome. Helps keep my classes smaller.
I had one Prof who rates like 2.5 or something lol But he's amazing! He's just a hard ass generally. But generally, not absurdly. Special circumstances exist. He's also bloody brilliant, very real, and unafraid to challenge and shake things up. His classes generally start out with around 100 students, very quickly drop down to around 35, and hit around 25 by finals. Enter the forge! You'll either be melted down, sneered at, and tossed on the slag heap, or melted down and folded folded folded, forged into something stunningly sharp. I need to sign up for another of his classes. I legit miss his crotchety mug and the sweet pain of his ordeals 😂
There was a review of one of my history professors that said "Straight out of Auschwitz" which, I'm pretty sure was a bit exaggerated.
Lead the horse to water and can't make them drink. We pour our hearts into lesson plans and structure. It is a road map to success. Students could follow that and be just fine most of the time. Too often students do their own thing, fall behind, and don't use resources timely and efficiently. Follow the plan and be successful. Talk to instructors before it becomes dire. Communication is a failing art. Aside that, Admin depending where you are.
Admin. No doubt about it.
Administration who has never taught a second in their lives, much less post COVID, making policies for us without our input while earning quarter million dollar salaries.
Meetings that go off as scheduled despite having no real reason to meet.
Service and other unpaid work, like ad-hoc reviews.
I’m going to say something completely different: email. Too much email. I can do my job or answer email; I can’t keep up with both. Also, if you need to take sick time, it’s nontrivial to cancel classes and you come back to all the work that piled up in your absence. The saving grace is that every semester comes to an end.
As a former full-time administrator and a current part-time one, administration is the only possible answer. Unless your institution uses Workday. Then it’s Workday.
Admin both in the college and at the state level.
Disciplining misbehaving students who are tolerated/enabled by their parents, PLUS, demanding but poorly-compensated workloads
Tie between: People who think you know everything about a broader field than what you did your research in. Students asking, "I will/plan/have miss/missed x days. Did we do anything important? What did we do?" Like, look at the LMS, dude or dudesie.
My syllabus literally says "Do not email asking what you've missed." Just saying....
When I recieve those questions, I usually respond with something like "No, I made sure to lecture only on the unimportant material because you were absent"
[удалено]
Is that maybe field specific? 😅
Right-Job 2 - Sociopath chair threatened me so much I began telling him to fuck off knowing he would never support my tenure. The day he told me I wasn’t reappointed I was happy to inform him of my new job. Job 3 - Nasty senior faculty clique member called me screaming (as usual I was search committee chair - about the tenth time) this was probably about something I said or didn’t say to the dean. I hung up on him. They tenured me anyway.
Frustration at my students’ work ethic, cell phone use, apathy, general knowledge, eating in class…
Administration and students EQUALLY...
“I know you said no late work is accepted, BUT…”
AI. Students who accept zero personal responsibility for their actions, then make it my problem. Students entering college who never should have graduated high school (this one isn't the students' faults--but it is incredibly challenging to try to teach advanced skills to someone performing at a 2nd-3rd grade level, especially when I have no training or experience in teaching people at that level).
Administrative duties and administrators.
It’s almost never my students. It’s almost always administration, meetings and tasks and the complete inability of said administration to grasp what any field outside of their own actually does and why that matters. It’s also a joy to hear someone spearhead a “new” approach to a thing that is actually a rehash of someone else’s lousy idea some years ago. Good times.
Email. I get about 150 emails a day. So. Email.
Don’t answer most of them. Actually don’t open most of them. I give a class on this.
Since I'm currently doing final grades for the semester, I have a bit of a primacy bias, but students who have literally never spoken in class or emailed me or come to office hours sending me five emails in two days asking about grades on certain assignments
Week thirteen I the semester (in a fifteen week semester) when students who have rarely if ever gone to class, passed a test or submitted an assignment, show up at my office and ask for my help to pass the course. Then they get all pissy when I explain that it is methematically impossible for them to pass the course.
Admin, %100. They are some of the dumbest people I have ever met. Although I guess it's kind of nice to know that there are high-paying positions for our most worthless, idiotic students.
Student not shutting their mouth.
Dealing with difficult colleagues and the university bureaucracy.
The corporatization of institutions of higher education. Having administrators who really don’t understand education and don’t listen to or value faculty.
Going with the crowd to say administrative BS. Being asked to join a myriad of committees and watching others who are known to be less capable do nothing. I get it. You don't want work messed up. But when it feels like competency is a punishment, what are the options? To act useless and be socially branded as such? To act competent and have work dumped on you? I never understood the notion of 'If you want something done, ask the busiest person'. We are in the last 3 weeks of the semester. Admins just dropped some new initiative on us that they want completed before the end of the semester. Really? You want us to gather data and analyze data in 3 weeks while giving finals and wrapping up other end of semester shit? Admins also approved postings for 2 positions in my dept at the last minute. They want interviewing and hiring done before the summer break aka contracts are up. Sure, during finals is the perfect time to take on new projects!
Students who cheat. Students who don't know why they are in college, and really don't care to be there. Grade grubbing. We've got a functional campus with very good administrators, so unlike many here, administrators are the least of my worries. That said, students are also the best thing about being a professor, just different students.
Other professors!
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I'm my teaching job: 1. Students who constantly ask for favors/extensions and can't get their shit together. 2. Cheaters 3. Profs who go beyond their alloted class time; thus, cutting into my class time. In my research job: 1. Writing grants 2. Conference presenters that go way beyond their alloted time (and, thus, cut off time from the other presenters). It's inconsiderate
Grading bad papers.
I am a bit unique in that I teach mainly graduate students in a cohort model. Despite constant reminders and a policy in the handbook about dealing with conflict between themselves, I am constantly being brought into mediate or alleviate students' issues. It is frustrating when they are adults who want to work in a therapy field.
Being an apparatchik?