Man Entering End of the Semester With Everything He Has Left Hoping He Makes It

It's not over yet. I can do it. I got this, but Workday about did me in yesterday. The University went to a new accounting system and, well, it doesn't quite understand the financing of the Connecticut Writing Project nor our primary work with K-12 schools and teachers, resulting in the impossibility of getting goods and payments back to classroom teachers. When the University chose the system, I believe they had limited perspective with how research, collaboration, service, and scholarship in action takes place. The University wants everything to be numerical and commodified internally.

Well, that's not the nature of good work.

So, I spent the last couple of days attempting to get teachers reimbursed for their hard work and travel, only to learn that employees who were once hired to help out in such situations have left or been let go because the new system of online reporting is saving money and making it easier to get things done.

Welcome to customer service, University style. I told my mother that after two trips this semester, the airlines has become a simulacra of the Walmart experience. That is now becoming higher education. The limited employees (here, read faculty, left in each department) will be expected to do more and more with less and less. This is the corporate way.

I just shake my head, forever wondering why the road to good intentions must pave the way to hell.
Workday has been hell, but I'll be back at it tomorrow. Why? Because I respect and value the teachers I work with too much.

What an embarrassment for the university, though.

I hate bureaucracies.