Deskbound

Several times in the past year or so I have had to combat the suggestion that faculty, postdocs, and grad students "of today", not to mention "of the future", don't want or need their own desks. Of course we all need a "space" to sit down now and then, and maybe we even need a place to put our laptop (or mobile device) for a while. However, we apparently don't want or need our own assigned space. Walls and doors are isolating (and cost money). Cubicles are depressing (no argument from me about that), so let's have open-plan spaces with unassigned desks, "soft seating", and collaborative spaces (a.k.a. tables). I say: Let's not.

Studies apparently show that people are not in their offices 100% of the time, so maybe not everyone needs a designated space to call their own. If the people-to-desk ratio is calculated correctly, most people should be able to find a place to sit (assuming they even want to do that) when they need to. Anyone who happens to have stuff they don't want to carry around can have a locker.

I asked one of the planners for the project in question how I would find my students and others if no one has an assigned space (finding people is not actually my main concern, but I was curious). The answer: when someone temporarily alights in a space, they log in and their location will be registered on a website or monitor that I can check. Or maybe I could just put locator-devices on everyone and keep track that way? I have long wanted to do that for my most adventurous cat (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Cat without an assigned office.

Need to have a private conversation with a student/advisor/anyone? Go to a "huddle room". Need to work with a group without disturbing others? That probably won't be possible, but at least there will be lots of "collaborative space". Anyone nearby can just put on headphones. Or leave. In fact, maybe everyone will just stay home (because it might be quieter there). It seems to me that an increase in collaborative space might just drive people into isolation because they can't get any work done when at "work".

And yet I am told that this type of office space works well in "the corporate world" because it is "creative" and "flexible". I am told that academics associate the size and location of their offices with status and that is why I am clinging to the antiquated idea of everyone having an assigned office.

I think I shall continue to cling to this idea and argue that everyone -- faculty, staff, researchers, grad students, adjunct/contingent faculty, technicians, lab managers -- needs their own, assigned space, even if it is shared space (and ideally not a cubicle farm).

I think there should also be collaborative, flexible space that people can go to as needed. This can be scattered about: shared within or among research groups and in other spaces generally available to students and visitors etc. I like that idea. I just don't like the idea of not having any other place to go to when someone wants to be (semi)alone and quiet, or have a private conversation without having to check if a huddle room is available.

I am quite sure that eventually this unassigned-space idea will disappear from the project in question, although it has persisted longer than I expected.

Am I being a dinosaur about space?

Now Stand in the Place Where You Work

When I used to blog 5 days/week, it was easy to come up with topics. No topic was too trivial, it seemed. Since I haven't been blogging every weekday, suddenly each potential post comes with extra baggage: is this topic important enough for a rare post? I ask myself. How can I write about mundane issues when I haven't even commented on the fact that some female Olympic athletes from certain countries (Japan, Australia) flew to London in coach class while the male athletes were in business class? Also, there has recently been an amazing outpouring of letters on behalf of FSP-as-mentor (thank you everyone for this); shouldn't I write something mentor-y? etc.

Maybe I should, but today I am not. Because it's summer? My blog muscles are flaccid? All this is to warn you that the infrequency of my blogging does not correlate with the importance of my blog-topics when a rare post appears.

What I was obsessing about recently (and not for the first time) is how we arrange our faculty offices so that people (students, colleagues) can visit us and have an obvious and convenient place to sit. I think about this particular topic:

- when I visit some other faculty offices*; and
- when people visit my office;

(* but not in my own department!; my colleagues mostly have the visitor-chair situation figured out very well. I cannot, however, say that I have this figured out for my own office.)

Despite the fact that many of us have visitors in our offices multiple times every day, it is amazing to me how many times I go to someone else's faculty office for an extended chat and it is not clear where I should sit. In some cases, there is no available chair, or no chair in an obvious place for conversing with the person whose office it is, and so on. Oh sure, there may be one or many chairs scattered about the office, but some or none of them seem safe/convenient/possible for sitting and conversing. It doesn't matter what type of institution it is -- giant university, small college: many of us are furniture-challenged when it comes to receiving visitors in our academic offices.

This is amazing to me, but in a hypocritical kind of way, as my office seems to confuse many people who stop by to chat. They seem perplexed: should they sit in the more comfortable place further from my desk or the less comfortable place closer to my desk? I contribute to the confusion when I occupy the more comfortable seating option rather than sitting at my desk (I do this because I no longer have a desktop computer so why not sit wherever I want? And also I find that sitting in a comfy seat rather than in my desk chair reduces this effect.) Many people choose to stand.

As it turns out, I actually have two offices, and I recently started reorganizing one to be more visitor-friendly. I don't really want to talk to people across a big wooden desk (well, sometimes I do, but most of the time I don't), and I don't want people to stand because they aren't sure where to sit. I also don't want to get up and walk across the room to sit in some other chairs every time someone stops by for a brief chat, etc.

So, how is your office arranged? (Fig. 1).  Do you talk to visitors across your desk? (That is, you are seated behind your desk, visitors are sitting or standing on the other side.) Or do your visitors typically sit in a chair at or near the end of your desk (or desk-like thing)? When you have visitors, do you move to a seating area away from your desk? Or something else?

Figure 1. Some possible office configurations.

And: Is your office arranged in a particular way for visitors because you have thought about how you want to interact with visitors, or because you don't really have a choice given size/furniture constraints?

And most important question: Do you have always/commonly/sometimes/never have to move piles of papers and other stuff off a chair so that a visitor can have a seat?

No, actually this is the most important question: Do you think it matters how your office is arranged with respect to where visitors sit? For example, does it affect how you interact with students and others? Can a well-arranged office make you a better mentor? Or not?

An Office of One's Own

In a comment last week, someone stated that grad students are "4 to an office", as if this is a general fact. Is it? Maybe it is common, even if you count cubicle farms with low partitions, but many departments seem to have at least some (or many) private(ish) office for grad students, with doors and maybe even a window (!).

I know I have written about offices before.. apparently, I have devoted at least 15 posts to the topic of "faculty office", and I recall a few mentions of grad offices before as well (such as the fascinating topic of whether professors ever venture into the grad office zone). And yet, I don't think I have ever probed the question of grad office-sharing. The topic came up indirectly in a recent post on background noise and distractions when a student is on the phone trying to have a professional conversation, such as in a phone interview; hence the comment about "4 to an office".

When I was in grad school, I had a different grad office every year, each one better than the one before. I graduated from a make-shift cubicle (some bookcases arranged around a desk) to shared offices to a private office (no window, occasional dead rodents behind the walls, but I loved my little office-cave). Even when I shared an office, I never had more than one office-mate in my immediate vicinity (i.e., two desks in a small room with a door), although in the overall "office space" there were maybe 15 of us (and we all shared one phone). I was quite content with these offices, and always felt that I had a good place to work, even if none of these offices could be described as aesthetically pleasing spaces. 

Despite years of private offices as a postdoc and professor, I occasionally get to relive the shared-office experience during sabbaticals and other extended visits to other universities. For my first sabbatical, for example, I shared an office with a very polite and mostly quiet person who, I eventually realized, was being slowly driven mad by the fact that I had different ideas about office lighting, door position, and various situations involving the windows. In my view, when I was alone in the office, I could have the lights, door, windows arranged in whatever way I wanted, and then when my office-mate appeared, we could find a compromise, but this person wanted everything to be a certain way even when they were not there, and certainly everything had to be back the way it should be when they showed up at the office in the morning or after some time away during the day. This became kind of stressful.

These had not been issues when I had a shared office as a grad student, and only partly because we had no windows; I was lucky to share an office with compatible people, all of whom are still good friends of mine. An incompatible office-mate can really affect your ability to work in 'your' office, including how you feel about going to the office and spending time there. If you have more than one office-mate, the chances increase (exponentially?) that one (or more) will be annoying, or worse.

And yet, I think it is a good thing to have an office plan that facilitates interaction, so that grad students aren't just toiling away in isolation in private offices, at least not for the first few years of grad school. The informal discussions that I had with my office-mates in my general office area were some of the most interesting and significant intellectual experiences I had in grad school, leading in one case to a paper that I wrote with another grad student.

So, '4 to an office' certainly doesn't sound pleasant, but it might not be entirely dire. Many research labs have grad students desks scattered around in and near them, so no one has their own office with walls and window, but everyone has their own space to work. It might be difficult to work at times, but there are also lots of good interactions as well. Another possible arrangement to foster interactions is to have private or semi-private offices arranged around a central area where people can gather (quietly).

Questions of the day: How many grads to an office (range or typical) at your department? Is this scheme (whatever it is) seen as good/bad/indifferent?

Professor's Choice

Which would you find emotionally easier:

having someone occupy your home while you are away for an extended period of time or having someone occupy your office?

This question assumes that you have an office that has been 'yours' for long enough for you to have settled in (quite) a bit. And it is more of a real choice if you don't hate your office (or home).

My answer is: home.

I love my house, but I don't mind having house-sitters, even ones I don't know. Preparing our house to be occupied by others is the only time we really clean it, and it's good to do that every once in a while. The prospect of making my office habitable for another human being is, however, more than I can imagine, so I'd rather not think about it (much less do it).

Phantom of the Office

Today I listened to a podcast about "phantom vibrations" -- sensory hallucinations that people experience when they think their cell phone is vibrating, but it is not. If the limited data are to be believed, 70% of cell phone users experience these (but only 2% are bothered by them).

Apparently, we feel these phantom vibrations because our brains are processing so much information all the time and can't deal with it all and because many of us are always on the alert for incoming calls, so we anticipate them all the time.

I commonly feel phantom phone vibrations, but I always thought they were related to the fact that my office is located near some very big machines that have a very big cooling system that generates continuous vibrations that make my entire office vibrate and, because I am constantly exposed to this when in my office, I imagine vibrations even when I am out of my office.

When visitors come to my office and comment on the fact that the room seems to be moving, some ask if I will suffer any long-term neurological effects of having a vibrating office. I don't know, but maybe I will eventually find out. Or maybe the phantom phone vibrations are an early sign? Imagine my relief to find that 70% of cell phone users, most of whom presumably do not have vibrating offices, also feel these sensory hallucinations.

I still wonder, though, if my office is a cause of at least some of the phantom vibrations. I have phantom phone experiences even when I definitely don't have my phone with me (e.g., in the shower), and I do not have them when I have been out of my office for more than a day or so (even if I have my phone with me). I have always thought that the phantom was of my office.

Now I'm not so sure.

Over the years, I have made efforts to improve the working environment of my office. I requested that the peeling lead-based paint be covered with new paint. I tried a series of chairs until I found one that I could comfortably spend a lot of time in. I adjusted various things about desk-chair-keyboard positioning. I have assorted wrist-rests. I have even worked with the research scientist who oversees the big machines and cooling systems that make my office vibrate to see if we could lessen the vibrations, both in the lab and in my office, although these efforts have thus far had only minor results. So, unless I move my office, I think I am stuck with the vibrations, which are very real, and possible other vibrations, which are not. Or maybe I'd sense the latter anyway.

At least now I have some doubt as to whether my office is the culprit.

ProfSpace: The Poll

There were some interesting comments on a recent post about professorial office space, and it seems that professors who commented are pretty evenly divided between like/love and dislike/hate of their offices. That conclusion is based on the small dataset of those who were moved to write a comment, but is it representative? Reviewers who have read the post are skeptical of these results and have asked me to do more experiments and acquire more data.

Anyone can answer the poll of course, but my intention is to gauge the feeling of professors about their offices, as this population has at least a decent chance of having an office with real walls, doors, and/or windows, unlike office space commonly assigned to students, postdocs, adjuncts etc. (with important exceptions, of course).

I have provided only yes/no as possible answers to the question "Do you like/love your office?", so if you like some things about your office and don't like other things, I'm asking you to weigh these likes/dislikes and choose which one tends to dominate your feelings about your office. You can provide the nuances in the comments if you wish, and elaborate on the depth of your affection or hatred for your office.

The profspace poll:

Do you like/love your office?
	Yes
	No
pollcode.com free polls

ProfSpace

Whenever I visit another university or another department at my university and spend some time in faculty offices, I always look around at the physical space of the office. Ignoring ancillary features such as neatness and the presence of disturbing pictures of large snakes, I consider whether it seems like a nice place to work or whether it is a grim little cement cell.

I am sorry to ignore grads, postdocs, and others in my query, but offices for these colleagues and students tend to be smaller and more crowded/modular, on the assumption that the occupants won't occupy them for long and/or can be ignored if they complain. There are exceptions, of course -- I had a nice office as a postdoc -- but my focus today is on the offices of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

My fellow professors: How do you feel about your office?

Of course there are lots of things that factor into our feelings about our offices, not just details of the physical space. For example, if you hate all your colleagues and most particularly the person with the office next door or across the hall, or if your institution schedules chainsaw woodcarving classes in the room next to your office (true story), you may hate your office no matter how beautiful the wainscoting and/or the view.

I am not sure if the opposite is true: Can one love a windowless basement hole with decaying rodent corpses in the ducts (true story) no matter how much you adore your colleagues and students and research? Maybe some people can, but probably many could not.

Another factor in office-affection-level might be whether there are better office prospects when you gain some seniority. For example, if you hate your office, do you hate it more or less if you know that other people have better offices and/or if you know that you can move to a better office at some point in your academic career?

I am not asking you to separate out the intangibles entirely, but to the extent that you can focus on the size, shape, ceiling height, windows/lighting, flooring, office furniture, door features, wall color and texture (± peeling paint that exposes a layer of lead paint below), and anything else you can think of, what is your overall feeling about your office?

Ergo/nomics

When I moved into my office in my current department, I was not provided with office furniture, so I rummaged around in campus and department storerooms and acquired the basic items from whatever was available. Over the years, my office furniture has not changed a lot -- some new (old) bookcases have been added, the filing cabinets have departed, and I have gone through a succession of (free!) office chairs as they have become available.

Note: My department is not typically so cheap. Everyone hired after me has nice new office furniture. I was hired as part of a 2-body deal and fell into the trap of just being 'grateful' to have gotten the second offer etc. so I was very undemanding about details like office furniture.

Because I did not set up my office furniture with much care or thought, I eventually had a few physical problems that inevitably result from spending a lot of time in one place (a chair) doing one thing (working at a computer), especially when these furniture items are not well configured.

I am of average height for a female person, but I have long had trouble (not just here) getting the desk-chair spatial relations right. With many desks, if I raise the chair enough so that my arms are in a good position for the keyboard, my feet do not reach the floor. This is not a good situation because eventually my feet go numb and later hurt. Ergo, I've come up with some partial solutions (footrests; not sitting still for so long etc.), but I have never done anything major, like getting new office furniture (which I would have to pay for myself).

But I'm thinking about it now. Do I really want to spend the next 20 years with my ergonomically not-so-great office furniture? I'm considering chucking the big old desks and just getting a slab of something to rest on something else of adjustable height. It will probably look weird, as do most ergonomically correct furniture items, but at least my feet will touch the floor and my arms will descend gracefully at the appropriate angle to the keyboard.

Either that or I should just proclaim that my office is now in the cafe down the street and just spend all my time there, typing on my laptop in various sorts of comfortable chairs.

Dining el desco Data

The results of Friday's poll about how often people eat lunch at their desk are very surprising to me. Who knew that so many people ate lunch at their desk every day or, if not every day, very often (1-2 times/week)? I certainly did not know there were so many.

I showed the results of the poll to a European colleague, and he said "That must be an American thing."

I suppose that the decision about where and how to dine is in part related to priorities about how work vs. personal time is spent. I would rather spend some time working in the evening or on a weekend than eat lunch at my desk, but I can see how others might prefer to be efficient with lunch time on weekdays and use this time to get caught up, talk to students, and so on.

During the week, I spend so much time talking to scheduled and unscheduled visitors to my office, I like having a bit of time away from that. When not attending a lunchtime seminar or meeting or teaching a class over that time period, I use lunch time to eat and chat with my husband or a friend or colleague about various topics of the day/week. For me, lunchtime, however brief, is a needed break in a busy day.

This topic reminds me of an incident in days of yore when I taught at a small liberal arts college, when I used to eat lunch every day with a particular colleague. We sat in a somewhat secluded common area of the department building and chatted about work and life and so on. Once some of our students realized that it was our habit to eat lunch in that particular place each day, they started stopping by to chat. I didn't mind this at all when the students wanted to stop by and have a conversation about something.

One particular student, however, liked to come by and use the time as an extra office hour and/our counseling session, and no amount of saying "Could we talk about this during office hours" could convince her that we weren't thrilled to share our lunch time with her and her problems. One day, this student told us in great detail about her complex relationship with her boyfriend. My colleague had just taken a large bite of his sandwich (he was hurrying through lunch so he could retreat to the relative safety of his office), when the student said "It must be so special for you to have students talk to you about these things". When she said that, my colleague spit out his sandwich in shock, so great was his surprise at the difference between his view and the student's view of the specialness of these lunchtime interactions. He did not stay long in the small liberal arts college world. I wonder where he eats lunch at his current institution; probably in a locked room or a faculty center.

In any case, I learned something from the poll, and I am still contemplating getting a large sign that signals my unavailability for visitors when I am eating lunch at my desk.

[note: comment moderation might be a little more sporadic than usual for a few days]

Eating al desco

As happens from time to time, even in summer, I was recently eating lunch 'al desco'. While I was eating-working, a student walked in my office to ask me a question, saw I was eating lunch at my desk, and said "Oh, I'm so sorry for interrupting your lunch. I'll come back later."

I was stunned. This has never happened to me before. In my experience, no student has ever before acknowledged that eating lunch @ one's desk means one is busy and therefore perhaps non-urgent questions can wait until another time.

I already had a very high opinion of this student, but he shot up even higher in my estimation after this incident.

Alas, his polite response to seeing me eating @ my desk makes him a rare beast indeed.

Memo to visitors: If you walk into someone's office and see them eating lunch at their desk, this probably means they are busy. If you aren't sure and ask "Are you busy?", this is more polite than not asking, but this question, however well intentioned, might elicit a glare, an incredulous laugh, sarcasm, or insincerity (just so you know).

I certainly can't speak for all professors -- perhaps there are some who so love their desks and offices (and office chairs!) that eating@desk is a pleasurable activity that is done by choice and that has the added benefit of attracting cute little rodents (and insects!) -- but I typically eat at my desk if I am so busy that my only other option is to skip lunch.

Lunch-skipping occurs now and then too, but it is not a good idea if I am teaching an afternoon class, and dangerous if I have an afternoon faculty meeting.

Yes, I know that I could close my door. I have tried that, but then people knock and I either have to get up and go to the door to tell the visitor(s) that I am busy, pretend that I am not there even though it might be obvious that I am (causing emotional trauma to some, as I have learned from experience), or yell Go Away I Am Busy.

I once tried a Do Not Disturb sign, but some people didn't see it and knocked anyway, some saw it but wanted to know why I didn't want to be disturbed, and others told me later they thought I was probably taking a nap in my office. So maybe I need a Do Not Disturb Because I Am Really Really Busy Right Now and No I Am Not Sleeping sign.

I find all of these options less appealing and more time-consuming than having someone step into my office, ascertain that I am busy, and go on their way until another time when I am not in simultaneous mid-chew and mid-something-else.

None of this is a big deal, of course, and it doesn't punch a hole in my day if I encounter someone who starts talking to me without even asking if this is a good time to interrupt, but when I encountered a real live polite person this week, I realized how nice it was to have such an experience for a change.

That said, it's time for a poll:

How often do you eat lunch at your desk?
	Never
	Sometimes (1-2 times per term or year)
	Somewhat often (1-2 times per month)
	Often (1-2 times per week)
	Every day
pollcode.com free polls

No Soliciting

My preferred method for acquiring information and making decisions about textbooks is to browse the offerings at conference exhibits, talk to colleagues, and/or look through copies of books that I acquire or borrow through various means. I prefer to adopt a textbook and stay with it for many years, but sometimes a change is necessary because the textbook gets too out of date relative to a changing field or because I decide that a new textbook is better (e.g. has better explanations, is less boring, is a better fit with a course).

** This post is not about whether textbooks are worth the cost, whether publishers/bookstores/authors are gouging students by charging inflated prices for something that is, after all, just a book, and so on. I dealt with some of that last year (here and here). Feel free to leave scathing comments about your loser professor who made you buy an expensive book and then you didn't even read it but realize that you are somewhat off-topic.**

I have never made a decision about a textbook based on anything that a textbook sales representative has told me during a visit to my office. Perhaps this is because, in my experience, it is extraordinarily rare for a publishing representative to be well informed about their products. I suspect that the causes of this include:

(1) Sales reps cover a wide range of topics and can't be expert in them all;

(2) There is high turnover in the field (not sure why) so faculty are constantly encountering reps who are new to their job; and

(3) The reps trying to sell Science Books may not have a background in science. I have yet to meet one, anyway.

I am sure it is not an easy job. Sales reps show up unannounced at faculty offices and interrupt the day of someone who probably has no time to spare and who may not have a lot of respect for sales representatives in general, perhaps in part based on past experiences.

Also, for some reason the sales reps who visited me this year (e.g., last week) came at a time that was nowhere near when I have to turn in my textbook choices for the next term. I am sure they did not have a very satisfying experience trying to talk to my colleagues (or me). I could not do their job.

I have heard rumors of experienced and knowledgeable sales representatives who establish good, long-term working relationships with faculty, but unless my experience has for some reason been unusual, I'm guessing this is uncommon.

When a textbook sales representative darkens my door, I typically say "I am currently very happy with all the textbooks I am using, I am not interested in changing at this time, and I don't have time to talk now, but if you want to leave a brochure or a card with a website address, I will look at that later." I see no need to waste their time or mine.

Last week, a person unknown to me knocked tentatively on my door, and, without explaining who he was or what he wanted, asked me "Do you have a few minutes?". The answer to that is always no. I said "No". He ignored this, my first clue that he was a salesperson, told me his name and publishing company, and then told me that he has only had this job for 6 months and doesn't know much about textbooks and even less about science but he hoped that I would spend at least a few minutes telling him about my textbook needs.

I know nothing of sales, but I wonder how effective the "pity me I'm ignorant" approach works. It was not effective with me, but it's possible that his upfront statement of ignorance was a defensive response to unpleasant experiences he had had in the past with faculty who felt he was wasting their time.

Alas, I did not have time to spend with someone who wanted to sell me things I didn't want, so I directed him instead to another colleague. Evil hint o' the day: When sales representatives ignore your emphatic statement that you have no time or interest in talking with them, an excellent way to end the conversation is to direct them to another colleague, preferably one who is not a friend.

Custodial Professor

A friend of mine who has been a provost and dean has entertained me for years with stories about amazing things faculty and students (at other universities) do. Stories of the you-couldn't-make-this-stuff-up (and be believed) sort. One of my favorites involved a senior professor who became completely unhinged when a new custodian moved the professor's wastebasket to a different location from the one it had been in for 36 years.

I realize that mentioning that incident is not helpful to my ongoing effort to convince people that (most) professors aren't (too) eccentric, but clearly some of us are deeply weird.

That professor's response -- i.e., writing/calling the provost repeatedly to complain, threatening to sue -- was a bit extreme, but it reminds me of how much we all depend on reliable custodial services in our academic buildings.

In the course of my academic career, I've worked in some buildings that had the same friendly and reliable custodian for many years. Because I have also experienced situations in which there was rapid overturn of the custodial staff, including a few who were a bit alarming and some whose work did not seem to include actually cleaning the building (and one who let thieves into my office to steal things), I do not take it for granted when the custodian who cleans my office is someone I like and trust.

During a recent disruption in custodial services in a building in which I spend a lot of time, the rate at which the building became filthy was remarkable: hallways, classrooms, and restrooms became noticeably grimy and littered in a week. The building also became less safe because there weren't reliable people looking after it, making sure the doors were locked in the evening, and making sure there weren't random people wandering around. After a few weeks, the university had to bring in a special cleaning team to get the building back to a decent level of cleanliness.

That can't possibly have been cost effective, but one of the ways in which some universities are economizing is to cut down on custodial services. I can deal with having my wastebasket emptied less often as long as it is put back in the right place, but I hate to think about the people who are losing their jobs as a result.

I am also dismayed that some universities are making it more difficult for staff members to take courses at reduced tuition rates. Many of the staff members I know (custodial, clerical, administrative, technical) have taken courses, either to work towards a degree and perhaps a better job and/or higher pay, or out of curiosity. For example, some staff members in my department, including some custodians, have taken our intro-level Science class because they were curious about what it is we are all doing here in our offices and labs.

I think the effect of taking away staff tuition benefits will be that staff will take many fewer classes. This will not save the university any money, and will have major negative consequences for many staff members.

I know that the budget has to be cut, it has to be cut severely, and there are only so many ways to do that. Even so, firing custodial staff, who are among the lowest paid regular employees at the university, and taking away one of the most excellent benefits of working at a university will have significant consequences for the safety, health, and intellectual environment of the campus.

Interruptions Love a Vacuum

This week my two most frequent sources of intra-office distraction are away. One might suppose that a consequence of my being left to my own devices more than usual would be that I would have more uninterrupted time in the office. I hasten to add that I enjoy these distractions, and in fact distraction isn't the right word, as much of the time we are working on something or at least talking about it.

But no. While working in my office this week, I have noticed that I have had even more interruptions than usual, and, instead of spending my time talking with an interesting colleague, these interruptions have been quite random.

Examples from one typical day this week:

- Random students (not from my class) stopped by to ask directions to another building (three separate incidents);

- Random students stopped to ask directions to the restrooms (two separate incidents);

- Publishing rep stopped by to ask if I can convince more of my colleagues to use my textbook (short answer: no);

- Student known to me but not in my class stopped by for advice about his Future; I am not the undergrad advisor and the student is not interested in my field of research, but he said he saw my door open and just thought he'd see what I thought about some possibilities;

- Three different staff members on separate occasions saw my door open and stopped by to say hi or ask a non-urgent question; I am happy to talk to them (I even like 2 of them), but ..

I am just glad that everyone has a cell phone now and I don't get the "Can I use your phone?" questions from random unknown people anymore.

Yes, I could close my door. I do close my door if I absolutely do not want to be interrupted, but in general I don't like sitting in my office with the door closed during the day. In addition to the random interruptions, there have of course been visits from students and colleagues with whom I want and need to talk, and for them I leave my door open.

My hypothesis about the increase in interruptions this week is that many of them would not have occurred had my colleagues not been out of town. Every once in a while a random person will interrupt a conversation I am having in my office and ask directions to the restroom or another building, but I think it is more typical for people to be dissuaded from a random visit if they sense that someone is in the midst of another conversation in their office.

My other hypothesis, which I tested as I typed this, is that if I bring my laptop to a cafe, no one will interrupt me to ask me for anything, unless I happen to sit near a coveted power outlet.

The Most Bizarre Thing So Far This Week

Does a week ever go by without some random, bizarre occurrence? Would life be boring if these things didn't happen, even if some of them are annoying?

This week's example:

I was sitting at my desk, and my office door was open, as it almost always is when I am in my office. A young man walked into my office and started talking to me, without any introduction. My first thought was that perhaps I am losing my mind faster than I think I might be -- perhaps I have met this person and just don't remember? Perhaps I am supposed to know this person? But no, it became apparent during the conversation that we have not met before.

Random Young Man (RYM): An International Scientist [names person I have never heard of] will be visiting in July for a few days and would like to start a collaboration with Scientists here. Are you interested in working with him?

FSP: That's hard to say without more information. What is his specific field of research?

RYM: I'm not exactly sure, but he has done some work on X [names research field that is not even remotely related to my research].

FSP: In that case, no, but there is another department at the university that does research in that field. Perhaps you can find someone there who would be interested in meeting this scientist.

RYM: So you're not interested in working with International Scientist? He is coming a long way and he really wants to collaborate with scientists here.

FSP: No, I am not interested in working with him. From your description, there is no overlap whatsoever in our research interests.

RYM: So you never work on anything outside your narrow field of research?

FSP: No, never.

But I apparently do sit at my desk just waiting for random people to stop by and ask me to do random things, and then insult me when I refuse.

Museum of Me

Being efficient doesn't necessarily correlate with being neat; at least, not in my case. My office is piled high with lots of stuff, old and new. I was thinking about this recently because I am contemplating a major cleaning and tossing-out of old stuff. I did some office cleaning during the Thanksgiving break, but nothing dramatic: there are still piles on my desk, but these piles now consist only of the 57 most urgent things I have to do in the new few weeks. The dramatic cleaning, if it occurs, will have to be after the term ends.

I was also thinking about my office-as-archive in the context of last Friday's post. Specifically, I was musing about why I have a proclivity for deleting emails and having a neat electronic inbox when my physical office is a mess. I briefly considered the possible lingering psychological effects of a job I had in graduate school: organizing the office of a deceased professor to see if any of his papers or letters should be saved for a university archive. [This blog seems to have a bit of a death theme this month: Editing the Dead, 11/7; Friends, 11/23).. sorry about that].

In that case, my office-organizing job was not a sorrowful task -- the deceased professor had been exceedingly mean (in fact, the word vicious readily comes to mind) and a sociopathic harasser of women. Organizing his office was, however, a sobering task in that he had saved everything. He had saved every letter he had ever received in a 50+ year long career, and he had also saved carbon copies of letters he sent. It was not surprising to find that many of the letters he sent were hate letters. My personal favorite began: "Dear X, You are a parasite..". I made sure those went to the archivist for review, as they nicely captured his personality and approach to professional relationships.

I have never sent a you-are-a-parasite letter to anyone, but I still don't like to save a lot of my correspondence. I do save some messages -- mostly ones that amuse or interest me -- but I delete more than I save.

After a bit of pondering about the discrepancy between my email neatness and my overall lack of neatness, I decided that my tendency to delete email isn't because I am constantly contemplating my own death and not wanting to leave a personal record. More likely, the explanation is the obvious one: that it is easier to delete email than to organize the flood of papers and other stuff that is constantly flowing into my office. Perhaps if paper could be vaporized as easily as pushing a delete button on a keyboard, I wouldn't have such a messy office.

The big question for me now is whether I am ready to toss out some of the older items in the Museum of Me -- e.g., notebooks from college and grad school, ancient textbooks, paper copies of articles I can now get as pdf's, and maybe even .. giant floppy disks filled with beautiful data from obsolete machines.

Dead Time

How to fill those gaps in time when students come to your office for help, but they are not organized about it? They arrive, rummage in their backpack for a while, pull out a folder, rummage in that, flip pages around and so on. Every once in a while there is a question to answer. I am not complaining about the students' lack of organization. I always wonder, though, if I could do something else while they are rummaging, or whether that would make it seem like I have more important things to do than give them my full attention. I am always tempted to go back to working on whatever I was doing when they arrived, returning my attention to the student when they are ready to ask me their questions, but I usually just sit and wait patiently, making conversation about the course or asking them questions about their semester/day/life. I kept track of the dead time (DT) : active question/answer time (AQT) for two students who came to my office this week, and in both cases there was more dead time than question/answer. I think a typical ratio of DT to QAT is about 60 : 40.

Science Lady Asked For It

A few months ago I wrote about a strange man who had been wandering into my office and acting in a disturbing way. He continued to appear at random times throughout the summer, in my department and in other science departments, and was seen stealing books. He pretended that he was my student or was working for me, and frequently asked people where I was and how to contact me. On numerous occasions when he made an appearance, I or others called the campus police, but he was never caught.. until today.

Today he showed up in my office and I sent off a quick 'call the police' email to a department colleague who checks his email every 8 seconds. The strange man left my office, and I wasn't sure if my colleague had called the police, so I called the police myself and they came quickly and apprehended the man. Because I had made the call to the police, I had to identify the man as the 'person of interest', and he started shouting at me that he hadn't done anything wrong and I had no right to call the police on him. The police issued him a citation for trespassing and let him go, then the police officer came to my office and proceeded to criticize me for how I have handled the situation.

First he told me that if I don't want to be bothered by people like that, I should keep my door closed at all times and only open it for people I know. He said "I don't think it will wear you out too much to have to get out of your desk chair from time to time and walk all the way to the door, ask who is there, and open it. Then you can return to your desk chair." Perhaps he has Issues with people who work in offices?

I invited harassment by provocatively leaving my office door open?

Then he asked me if I preferred to be listed on the report as "Dr." or "Professor". I said that it didn't matter, either was fine. He said "Ooooh, how nice for you to have all those titles." That was bizarre as well. This is a university campus and this police officer is a member of the campus police force. This place is littered with PhD's, and some of them are even women.

Then he said "If this guy has been bothering you since May, why haven't you called the police before?". I said that I had called the police before, as had many others in my department and other departments throughout the summer. He said that he had no record of this. I said that he could talk to the administrative assistant in the main office for a full accounting of the trespasser's activities, and he could also check with the Other Science Departments to find out what had been stolen from them. He replied "Yeah sure, me and my crack team of investigators will get right on it, science lady." Then he rolled his eyes and walked out.

Lest anyone think that my days are relentlessly grim and filled with people who insult and patronize me, I have had many fun and interesting interactions with colleagues and students, and a major paper that I worked on for years was published this week.

Closed Door

When I am in my office during the day, I almost always keep my door open. I like that my students and colleagues can stop by any time and chat or ask questions. I'm sure I'd get more done without the interruptions, but I'd much rather have the interactions. I close my door when I have something urgent to accomplish by a deadline and need to minimize interruptions.

Today my door is closed, but not because of a looming deadline. My door is closed because I am being harassed by a random person who walked into the department one day last week, saw my door open, came in, and has made a habit of doing so every day since. His visits have been annoying and it is difficult to get him to leave my office. He's clearly a deeply strange person, but only yesterday did he really disturb me when he asked me for money and became upset when I didn't give him any. Mostly he has been stopping by in the afternoons, but today he was in the department early, asking people where I was, and asking for my contact information because he said he was going to work for me. Everyone who met him was disturbed by their encounter with him and told me to call the police.

I have been very reluctant to call the police. Asking for money is not a crime, and this is a public building. I called the campus police today because my department chair asked me to, but the police were not helpful. The person I talked to said "What do you want us to DO?" I guess I just wanted to see if other people on campus have reported disturbing encounters with this person, and I wanted to make a record of his 'suspicious activities'. The police said to call them if this man comes to my office again.

Yesterday during my disturbing encounter with the strange man, I considered reaching for the phone to call a colleague, but the way I have my office set up is not convenient for such things. I would have had to turn my back on the guy. Also, my crazy visitor was between the office door and me, so I was backed into a corner.

This is my third encounter with a scary crazy person in my office in the past 10 years, and each time I have considered changing the organization of my office, and then I don't. I suppose it is human nature to try to forget about a bad, random experience and hope it won't happen again, but another part of it for me is that I don't want to arrange my office in a really inconvenient way because of anxiety. I have been trying to figure out if there's a way I can arrange my office so that I'm not constantly reminded that it's arranged that way to give me an escape route, but there are some serious architectural limitations to this. But then I think maybe I am being foolish not to rearrange things, since I've had these anxious encounters several times now and perhaps I should learn from experiences.