Number of weeks in new job: 5
Number of tasks volunteered for: lots!
Now I have been in my new job for about a month or so, I am really starting to notice the differences between being a permanent member of staff and on a short term contract or hourly paid. Of course good institutions like the ones I’ve worked for encourage their part-timers to play as full a part in the life of the department as possible, but naturally there are areas that they are not included in. As a permanent member of staff I can become more involved in strategic decision-making and in hiring of other staff, as well as being much more autonomous when it comes to my own teaching.
But I’ve found the biggest difference is that as a full time staff member I have ended up doing all sorts of admin and teaching tasks that I hadn’t anticipated! As a contracted staff member we stuck pretty rigorously to the hours we were paid and this stayed fixed throughout the year. But now I realise this is because all the extra jobs get ‘mopped up’ by the full time staff. Because we are salaried and our hours are at the discretion of our ‘line managers’ it is entirely up to us to manage our time…and say ‘no’ to a job if everything is becoming too much!
I didn’t realise quite how vital time management skills are. In some ways life is easier now than when I was a PhD student and did three jobs simply to pay the bills. But time management at work and maintaining a work-life balance is now important, only in a different way. And, anecdotally, I have been advised that learning to say ‘no’ is a good skill to acquire for another reason. Just like in the rather sexist joke where the husband doesn’t want to seem too good at cooking or he’ll be asked to do it again, junior academics ought not appear to be too good at administration, or else they’ll be landed with more and more of it!
