Keep Your Hands to Yourself!
I know this is a petty issue, but would the new GTAs please keep your damned hands off of my thumbtacks on my corkboard? Honestly, the bookstore is just down the street. Go buy your own. The tacks did NOT come standard issue with the corkboard. So you should NOT feel free to simply grab one of mine when you think you need one.
This isn't the first time I've had a malfunction with one or more of the new crew. I hope we weren't that obnoxious when we were coming through. (I know a few of us were, but in general, I hope we didn't present ourselves like these people.) Gossip around the water cooler is that many people think they're a bunch of brats. I want to say that I'm sure they thought the same way of us, but I don't think that's true. We talked to the profs, we got to know the other grad students really quickly, we didn't act like the copy room was our personal (messy) living room, and we didn't expect other people to pick up after us. Most of us don't really know the new GTAs at all, and the impression they're giving doesn't make us care. I've met a grand total of one of them, and he's OK with me. But he also seems to be a little older than the rest of them. If you interrupt their social circle, you know, by trying to get to the printer, or something, they give you a rather dismissive look, barely move and keep on talking. Next time, I'll jab one rather hard in the rib cage.
Their antics have even pissed off our Dear Leader at this point. This is part of an email that circulated yesterday on the listserv: "One of you, however, seemed to mis-remember the rules on Thursday regarding the computer classrooms on the ground floor. Someone entered a classroom in which another instructor was still conferencing with students and used the classroom to print out materials--identifying herself only as a "GTA and I have something to print." Har. Apparently, being a GTA confers some special privilege I was unaware of.
My earliest impression of them came when I was switching out offices. I'd been moved to something nicer, and I had moved all of my stuff over except my Safe Zone flyer. The Safe Zone flyer is something we put up if you've been through the training on sensitivity to students who are coming into college as either out (or not) gay students, bi, transgender, etc. It's more or less a show of solidarity that we expect tolerance for people who aren't straight, and that people who aren't straight have a safe place to go if they need it. Anyway, I went and took my Safe Zone paper out of the old display and put it into my new display by my new office (which also has our names on it). Thirty minutes later, after making copies and running errands, I went back to my new office--and the sticker was gone. I don't know what made me think of them first, but I went back to the old office, and sure enough, someone had swiped it out of my new spot and stuck it back in the old one. I guess they wanted to keep it, maybe they thought it went with the office, I don't know what. But it pissed me the hell off.
I know it's just a piece of paper. But it's MINE, and I sat through a training for it. So, I turned on my heel and marched back forcefully, ripped it out of the old place--their door was open, and I think about five of them were in there--and with as much professional hate as I could, I said, "Hmph!" And marched back to my office. It stayed put.
Graduate school, my ass. Some of these folks need to go back to kindergarten and figure out how not to take people's things and to keep their hands to themselves.
-- Virgil
Their antics have even pissed off our Dear Leader at this point. This is part of an email that circulated yesterday on the listserv: "One of you, however, seemed to mis-remember the rules on Thursday regarding the computer classrooms on the ground floor. Someone entered a classroom in which another instructor was still conferencing with students and used the classroom to print out materials--identifying herself only as a "GTA and I have something to print." Har. Apparently, being a GTA confers some special privilege I was unaware of.
My earliest impression of them came when I was switching out offices. I'd been moved to something nicer, and I had moved all of my stuff over except my Safe Zone flyer. The Safe Zone flyer is something we put up if you've been through the training on sensitivity to students who are coming into college as either out (or not) gay students, bi, transgender, etc. It's more or less a show of solidarity that we expect tolerance for people who aren't straight, and that people who aren't straight have a safe place to go if they need it. Anyway, I went and took my Safe Zone paper out of the old display and put it into my new display by my new office (which also has our names on it). Thirty minutes later, after making copies and running errands, I went back to my new office--and the sticker was gone. I don't know what made me think of them first, but I went back to the old office, and sure enough, someone had swiped it out of my new spot and stuck it back in the old one. I guess they wanted to keep it, maybe they thought it went with the office, I don't know what. But it pissed me the hell off.
I know it's just a piece of paper. But it's MINE, and I sat through a training for it. So, I turned on my heel and marched back forcefully, ripped it out of the old place--their door was open, and I think about five of them were in there--and with as much professional hate as I could, I said, "Hmph!" And marched back to my office. It stayed put.
Graduate school, my ass. Some of these folks need to go back to kindergarten and figure out how not to take people's things and to keep their hands to themselves.
-- Virgil
posted by contemplator at Saturday, September 27, 2008
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