When Shelby was teaching 1-0, what was he doing in his spare time?

Accountabilty 101 wrote:

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Most Mississippians work many more hours in more strenuous and demanding jobs than college professors.

2-2, it's a hard sell. I suggest you go underground with this one.

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Accountability 101,

If you equate work with toil, then you may have a point. My job demands very little in the way lifting heavy objects. But then again, machines have in large part taken the place of heavy manual labor, and I'm not sure that the physical demands of my job are substantially less than that of many non-professionals.

However, the intellectual demands of my job are far beyond what the vast majority of Mississippians could muster. I hate to be so blunt, but I have an IQ in the (low) genius range and I've worked hard to develop my skills in my profession. I have no doubt that many of my colleagues could make the same claims and more.

Most Mississippians could no more do my job than they could Brett Farve's, and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about public perceptions of how much I work.

Mississippi Person wrote:

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When Shelby was teaching 1-0, what was he doing in his spare time?

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What do you think?

9-10 Making a list for revenge
10-11 Grooming toadies
11-12 Plotting and plodding
12-2 Greasing skids
2-3 Working on Dana's list
3-4 Working with Lawyers
4-5 Hobknobbing with IHL members

What's odd is that so many posts assume a 9-5 workday for professors, Monday through Friday, for a total of only 40 hours on some kind of a clock that gives them nights, weekends, and holidays. I know almost none who work that little.

Mr. Wizard wrote:

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Accountabilty 101 wrote:

Most Mississippians work many more hours in more strenuous and demanding jobs than college professors.

2-2, it's a hard sell. I suggest you go underground with this one.



Accountability 101,

If you equate work with toil, then you may have a point. My job demands very little in the way lifting heavy objects. But then again, machines have in large part taken the place of heavy manual labor, and I'm not sure that the physical demands of my job are substantially less than that of many non-professionals.

However, the intellectual demands of my job are far beyond what the vast majority of Mississippians could muster. I hate to be so blunt, but I have an IQ in the (low) genius range and I've worked hard to develop my skills in my profession. I have no doubt that many of my colleagues could make the same claims and more.

Most Mississippians could no more do my job than they could Brett Farve's, and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about public perceptions of how much I work.

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Forget about the "vast majority of Mississippians." Concentrate on your colleagues on campus. Look them in the eye and tell them you're overworked. See how they react.

anon wrote:

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Departments with professional programs often maintain full-service clinics or service centers as an essential part of their training function. The supervising faculty must often be available 24/7 for serious emergencies, meeting with graduate students on a one-on-one supervisory basis when something extraordinary occurs, participating in staffings, etc., etc. The 3 APA-accredited doctoral programs at USM (clinical psychology, counseling psychology, school psychology) require an enormous amount of superisory time. Thus, what might be viewed by the administration and others to be only 3 hours can rapidly double or triple. This is an matter very closely examined by APA site visit teams. That type of work ends when the work is completed. It does not end at the end when a bell rings at the end of a class period.

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Nor does any mentor's work end when the bell rings, regardless of his program or academic standing.

In my initial post I suggested that y'all should go underground with this issue. I still highly recommend it.

Your position is indefensible with the general public. They view you as slackers and someone who is on easy street.

Don't try to justify what you do in the way you have been doing it. Go underground with this issue.

You can't agree among yourselves whether you should be 2-2, 2-3, or 2-4. The public views 2-4 as working less than 20 hours a week. Most citizens, professional and nonprofessional, would see that as a great deal if they had it for themselves.

Accountability 101 wrote:

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The public views 2-4 as working less than 20 hours a week. Most citizens, professional and nonprofessional, would see that as a great deal if they had it for themselves.

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And this is according to what source?

Accountability 101 wrote:

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In my initial post I suggested that y'all should go underground with this issue. I still highly recommend it.

Your position is indefensible with the general public. They view you as slackers and someone who is on easy street.

Don't try to justify what you do in the way you have been doing it. Go underground with this issue.

You can't agree among yourselves whether you should be 2-2, 2-3, or 2-4. The public views 2-4 as working less than 20 hours a week. Most citizens, professional and nonprofessional, would see that as a great deal if they had it for themselves.

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Most Mississippians will see college professors and educated people, generally, as threatening no matter what we faculty say or how hard we work. Much of this state's population is semi-literate. That's just a fact. The public doesn't support universities because they haven't the slightest idea what happens at one. All they know is what their preachers tell them on Sunday: that there are Godless communists and homosexuals running around corrupting their children while on the state payroll. That's how people think down here. And that's why, as a scholar-teacher in Mississippi I often feel like a missionary preaching the Gospel in a distant, heathen land.

I know a few of you will get all worked up by what you will perceive as an insult, but its just the plain truth. Lets look at the KIA situation. Mississippi was offering one billion (yes, that's with a "B") in incentives, plus the additional tax breaks that the recently enacted Gulf Opportunity Zone offered. The company chose Georgia--a state that offered inducements valued at 1/3 what Mississippi put on the table.

Why? because the labor force is so poorly educated in Mississippi that they wouldn't be able to staff the place. Nissan's well-known troubles in finding suitable labor have scared them off.

Perry Mason wrote:

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Anon, you may be surprised by how little time corporate litigators spend in the courtroom. Many have less than one trial a year! For all the talk of a litigation crisis, the number of trials have been falling over the last fifteen years. Some of the big firms are loaning out their associates to public interest groups just so they will see the inside of a courtroom and argue before a judge.

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This is apples and oranges. USM profs are paid by the State, while these lawyers are employed by private clients. Quit trying to derail the discussion.

The issue isn't 9 to 5. It's one unit trying to grab resources at the expense of others and then expecting the rest of us to cheer them on.

DMB, With all due respect, Bull.  It's not about resource grabbing, and you already know that. It's about 14 lines being funded for one dept. and 0 being funded for another dept. in the same college ,with very similar numbers in many ways. Psychology doesn't have to be happy about it, and if other depts. in other Colleges at USM want to view this in an unfounded way -- well, who is contributing to some really screwy perceptions?

Accountabilty 101 wrote:

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 2-2, it's a hard sell.

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So why not put it to a public referrendum. Let them vote on it. Do you really think many are informed enough about academics to cast an informed vote? And while we're at it, let's also put on the ballot which type of scalpel is to be used for brain surgery at Wesley and Forrest General.

Before heading for the groves of academe I spent a good number of years working in steel mill and road construction and, once, in a misguided attempt at class mobililty, in a white collar environment as well. The folks I worked alongside of back then understood "work" to mean, "the time I spend locked up in the workplace." In reality, what happened in that workplace was often not what you could honestly call work; it was what you call "screwing off." 

"Screwing off" was not simply synonymous with sloth or laziness, however. Most of the places I worked the work regimen was engineered so that you had maybe four, maybe five hours of genuine work to do in an eight hour shift. The rest of the time you were often either coasting or sitting around shooting the breeze with your fellow internees. You were still, however, forced to stay right there at your work station, and if white collar folks, managment or corporate, happened to be wandering through the plant, you were forced to "look busy" or risk some sort of reprimand. The screwing off we did, then, was an expression of hostility towards the white collars who locked us up in offices and factories like so many convicts, clocked us in and out on pee breaks, and compelled us to do work that was always monotonous and demeaning, and often dangerous in the bargain.

The hostility that I and my buds at USX felt towards management extended as well towards anyone who wore a white collar and didn't have to be locked up eight-twelve hours a day at work. College profs were part of the target of our resentment; they weren't locked up in physically unpleasant circumstances 40-50 hours a week and forced to perform like trained seals everytime some schmuck in a white collar strolled past.

Today, I suspect that the unwillingness of my fellow Missi'pians to think well of us, or even to credit the possibility that we "work hard" is grounded in this same sort of resentment: in large part it's the unpleasant loss of their physical freedom and dignity that renders their work "hard." Therefore, since profs are not locked up, and don't (usually) have to be deprived of their dignity daily, profs are not considered to be "hard working."

 

Mr. Wizard wrote:

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Maybe I shouldn't have boasted about having a high IQ.

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That's the most intelligent comment you've made.  Whatever raw intellect resulted in your superior IQ score is a genetic gift.  I've scored above 160 on a succession of IQ tests since the first one was administered in the third grade and I've never felt it necessary or appropriate to crow about it,  or use those scores as justification for special treatment.  Neither should you.