Office Space

What you are looking at is my new faculty office. It might seem boring or uninteresting to you, but it totally made my day today. It's an office I share with only one other person who isn't even on campus when I am scheduled to be teaching. Not a cubicle, not a desk in a room full of other desks, but an office with a door that locks and a window. It's freshly painted and has a new desk and a big file cabinet. A matching bookcase that's completely empty is hanging out in there too. I couldn't believe my eyes.

I have been working in a cubicle den for about a year and a half. In a large grey room sat about 10 grey cubicles. Each one was shared between 3-4 faculty. I liked it because I got to work in close proximity to friends, but it was starting to wear on me. You got maybe a locked upper cabinet if you were lucky. And even then, if you came to work on a day you weren't scheduled for office hours you could walk into a completely full room, thus requiring you work in one of the study carrels in the Library. When you did get your cube to yourself, if a student stopped by, everyone in the room could hear the conversation. I had the pleasure of "overhearing" crying students, overly familiar students, asshole students. One student actually told a colleague of mine "So you teach the pop culture course? Do you like, watch TV all day?" Yes, we watch TV all day. I was too professional at the time, but I really wanted to show him my PhD reading list and then ask my colleague to give him a pop quiz right there just for being an ass. The big office was shared between American Studies, Liberal Studies and some other department.

A couple of my office mates were total douchebag professors who made their students feel like shit all the time. One even required each student to come in for one-on-one meetings wherein he would continue to lecture (very loudly). He even talked down to other professors. I think maybe he reserved it for the women in the office, though. Once when the fire alarm went off he jumped to his feet and walked out the door. I was finishing up an email and apparently not running fast enough for him because he told me "time to get out of here, there's a fire alarm." Thanks Dad. I stayed in there for five more minutes. I may have burned up in a fire, but he was not going to be telling me what to do. Now I don't have to share airspace with him for at least one semester. Glorious!

This is my view. Won't you come by if you are on campus Mondays and Wednesdays? It's UH-217.