Three Things I Wish I Knew Before I Got ____
… hired
… fired
… tired
… wired
All are roles, identities, or statuses we might claim at one time or another. They have to do with how we see ourselves: what role we play, what responsibilities or obligations we have to ourselves and others.
We are the “hired” one (employee), the “fired” one (former employee), the “tired” one (a mom?), a “wired” one (I don’t even know what this means. It’s got something to do with computers, I think.).
And each role deserves its own post over the next few Fridays. Going in chronological order, we’ll start with being HIRED.
What are the three things you wish you’d known before you got hired?
Merril Smith
I’m not good at lists, but in my one and only full-time professor position (a one-year position), I wish I had somehow known how to have been more prepared while enjoying the teaching and students. (The job came up very suddenly, and I wasn’t really prepared, plus my younger daughter was only 6 months old.) I also wish I had known how dysfunctional that history department was before I had walked into it. I was so naive and so unprepared for office politics.
Janet Givens
I noticed both you and Marian mentioned working in a dysfunctional environment. One of my MOST dysfunctional environments was serving on the board of the Mental Health Association. How’s that for irony!
Marian Beaman
Here’s another “professor” comment following Merril’s
Three things I wish I knew before I got hired at the college:
1. How much I would enjoy interaction with students and colleagues
2. How much I dreaded the un-ending piles of essays to grade
3. How involved I became with other projects, mostly innovative, so they were fun, invigorating actually
4. How morally bankrupt one of our college presidents was
5. How sad I was to leave the position after 21 years
That’s five – but who’s counting, Janet!
Janet Givens
Well, I am, of course, Marian.
Which means, next week, when we talk about getting fired, you’ll only have to give us one thing you wish you knew. 🙂
Clemency? Oh, OK.
Janet Givens
Thanks, Merril and Marian.
I think I’ll fill this one in now. I’ll use the job I had one summer as a Good Humor ice cream vendor (yup, truck and all).
Three things I wish I knew before I was hired as a Good Humor ice cream truck driver:
1. how much of my product (and therefore my profit) I’d consume
2. how awful it was to drive the truck on the highway — it had a governor on it that limited the speed to 45 mph.
3. how dirty I’d be by the time I got home at 10 pm.
Merril Smith
I think you could write a separate post on that job, Janet!
(And somehow I’m not surprised that one of your most dysfunctional working environments was a mental health association.)