Thursday, February 01, 2007

Professor vs. Mom

The students in my department have organized an Event this weekend, and they are hoping that at least some faculty will attend. They organized an Event last semester, but they chose a weekend that coincided with a time when most faculty were away at a conference. The faculty member who is the student advisor in our department is not an active researcher, so it didn't occur to him that the selected weekend was a time when most of us would be away. Even so, we were all made to feel guilty about letting our students down.

The pressure is now on to attend this new Event. I would actually like to attend -- I like the students and think it's great that they are trying to find ways to get all of us together -- but their Event coincides with my daughter's school play .. and my husband it out of town. I already gave my regrets to the student organizers of the Event and explained why I can't come, and they totally understood.

The faculty have been under pressure to attend. We get daily reminders of the Event from the Chair and the student advisor, by email and in person. We get daily reminders also that no faculty attended the Event last fall.

Maybe I can get a note from my daughter to give to the Chair and the student advisor so I can be excused.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We have been pretty successful in making sure our department social events are family events. It helps that both male and female faculty are active involved parents.