At the end of a hard day, in a hard week, I found myself in my office, feet up and eyes closed, listening to my old friends the Tony Iommi Quartet...loud. Very loud. The way it was meant to be....
"People think I'm insane
Because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things
But nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind
If I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me occupy my brain?
Oh yeah!
I need someone to show me
The things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness
I must be blind"
Oh, yes...sing that depression, John Michael Osbourne, give voice to that paranoia. Let's just hope we don't get to this:
"And so as you hear these words
Telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late"
Geniet die naweek, all. I intend to.
So the long-awaited (and now much over-analysed) results of the UCT Climate Survey have come out...and what do they reveal, you ask?
Well, pretty much the same as the last one, it seems, only slightly less positive.
Meaning almost uniformly grey, with patches of sunshine, and patches of rain. A lot like Seattle, in fact. But at least the coffee is better there....
No, but seriously: go to this link, and check out what is a sober, serious, way over-analysed and stultifyingly boring, overlong statement of what has been creeping up on many of us for quite some time: that UCT is not a particularly exciting place to work; we don't on the whole think we earn enough; we don't much like the methods of assessment of performance, or possibly the people doing the assessments; we think management is well on its creeping way to full autocracy.
I found it most educational to look at only the first graph in every series of analysis of every question asked in the questionnaire: this gave the overall response, and man (sorry, non-PC; that should be "person"!) it was grey. As in "neutral" in most cases. NOT the response you'd expect from a campus of happy chappies!
Oh, there were differences in the way PASS and academic staff saw most things - former usually more gloomy, latter more happy with The Way Things Are - and in demographic responses (more racism perceived by pigment-advantaged folk); this survey was apparently less happy than the previous one (and we thought that was gloomy, didn't we??) - but overall, the lesson for me is that UCT is now like the civil service: monolithic, slow to move, full of people who think they need more rewards, and grey, grey, grey....
I shall start to wear kaftans, skip down University Avenue, and distribute flowers in class. Then at least I'll be happy* B-)
* I shall also be emulating Christopher McQuaid of fond memory, who I once saw doing just that - in around 1975....
From the VC:
"It is with a combination of regret and pride that I inform you that Professor Cheryl De La Rey has resigned from UCT to take up the very important position of Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Higher Education (CHE)...."
Wooooo...the two DVCs who went up against Max Headroom - sorry, Mr Price - BOTH now going to go. And the original Martin retiring soon - and then there was one.
Talk about lack of institutional memory in a transition period!
Hugh, you'd better not be going anywhere anytime soon...B-)
