Discombobulated...

Work has me all in a dither right now.  It's not busy, but everything is so up in the air that I have no idea which direction to go.

The dean asked me to take over assessment for the College.  I can do that but there has been no clarity on what "that" is.  I know we have to reorganize my job duties...he seems disinclined to make any decision on how that will go forward.  He did say he thinks he will be taking away all my supervision and office management responsibilities...which makes me very sad and a little mad.  It also makes me feel like there is no reason for them to keep me as faculty if I'm not supervising. (That may not be entirely logical but supervision is the one thing that classified personnel cannot do.)  Besides, I lose touch with all the staff if I am suddenly not interacting with them.  And if that is the case, then why am I even in the admin office?  Are they going to move me now to some stuffy inner office with no windows or air circulation because I'm not longer administrative and I'm not tenure-track faculty?  I can't ask these questions because it 1) gives ideas and 2) makes me sounds like an insecure whiny woman (which I am).  Sadly, I am the only person in administration that knows how our office/filing system/policies work in totality.  But the new Associate Dean wants to be responsible for all of that-the one that has been here since July and hasn't paid any attention to how things are done here rather than where he came from.  I'm feeling disrespected and displaced.  I have to admit that I have no rapport with and little respect for him- he's a practical joker that acts like an idiot at inappropriate times. I'm sure he must have some sort of skills under the fools cap but I haven't really seen them.

I'm sure that Paula's constant complains about the functioning of the office- the noise level and non-work related conversations (which policy she's apparently exempt from), have "informed" this decision.  Also, I believe, if a copier is out of paper, anyone is capable of putting paper in it.  She assumes if a copier is out of paper, some student worker isn't doing their job and should be reprimanded.  Fundamental differences in personal policy!  I don't baby the faculty.  They have PhD's so I assume they are capable of handling some basic tasks when the situation warrants it.

Yesterday when I tried to further clarify with the dean what he thought those assessment responsibilities would be and mentioned that when we first purchase the new database, it's going to take almost all my time and energy to get data transferred from the existing system and the system set up to do what we want it to do  for probably a year to 18 months.  His response was that we'd have to hire someone to help...um..I thought that's why I was doing it- because I have all the knowledge in my head that is not purchasable from an outside source for love nor money.  Maybe he meant with my other responsibilities. I'm not sure how an outsider will do HR and Finance either.  So I'm thinking that perhaps, I'm just going to figure out how to reassign my duties as I go.  I'm currently training Karla to do the initial workload document, which has always been in her position description but we hadn't gotten around to it yet (she's only been here since January).  Of course, if I'm not supervising, I don't have authority to reassign duties.  *sigh*

So yes, discombobulated.

However, I'm going to the condo at Seaside with my folks for the weekend and getting away from everything.  Hopefully, I'll return refreshed and not stressed (family bbq is at my place the following weekend and trying to be ready for it does stress me out).