Volunteer, volunteered, voluntold

There are some things about a job that are the same regardless of where you live. Most jobs want you to be on time, cover up various body parts, and do what you’re told to. And then all the jobs I’ve had require you to engage in the somewhat irksome and annual task of listing your goals and objectives for the upcoming year. Just when you think they’ve forgotten you this year, the dreaded e-mail pops up in your inbox, requesting you to list your teaching, research, and professional goals.

It’s not that I don’t have any goals. I do. And I probably have too many. The problem is that I never quite know how to word them in a way that will make them measurable by the end of the year. I mean “I want to survive teaching six classes and one independent study without losing my mind” can hardly be passed off as a goal. You’re supposed to put things like “To create a significant improvement in my ability to stimulate my students’ critical thinking”. The worrisome part is that all teaching goals are measured using student questionnaires which are administered right after midterms, when half your students think you are the devil incarnate anyway. So much for a reliable measure.

But I can deal with all those things. Sure, I will complain and gripe about it, but I know what needs to be done. I’ve learned to write “To submit an article to..” as opposed to “To publish an article in…”, since you never know when your nemesis is one of your reviewers.

No, what struck me about the list of goals and objectives this year is that it included a new header “service”. Slightly alarmed, I asked a co-worker about its meaning, and it seems that we’re supposed to “give back to the community”now too. I thought educating unwilling mini-adults for a paltry salary was a service in itself, but I was wrong. The administration has decided we have to volunteer in the community, and thus create goals to that effect. So next to conducting research and teaching, we now have to develop goals like “coordinate the national turn off your TV week for the local schools”. At first, I thought I was all set. I volunteer on base, in several different capacities, but I quickly found out that the rules state you have to “give back” under your professional title. So I can’t be Mrs. A when I’m serving the community, I have to be Dr. R. So that rules out all the work I do on base.

But that is not the most interesting part. No. That would be when I heard that this service thing is not something we’re supposed to do during working hours. Nope. No talking to kids about media use during school hours. All volunteering has to be done outside of work. After all, work is meant for, well work.

Right. I won’t go into how hard I work. I also won’t talk about how many hours I put in each week, or the incredible bureaucracy I have to put with. All I have to say, and you can call me selfish if you want to, is that if I don’t get paid to do it, I don’t do goals and objectives. Volunteering is great. It’s very important, and I love doing it. But I’ll do it on my own terms thank you very much.

After not receiving a lot of sympathy from my co-workers on this matter, I talked to my husbad, hoping to find an ally there. Instead, the love of my life tried to convince me that American employers simply expect a higher level of commitment from their employees nowadays. In the Air Force, being “voluntold” to do something is apparently very common, especially once you’ve reached a certain rank. But you know, I can understand that. You join the military, they pretty much own you. They not only pay you, they feed, clothe, educate, and house you. So I figure that means they can pretty much tell you what to do when. I, on the other hand, just get a paycheck. I refuse to believe that Americans have this burning desire to spend their precious time off working (for free!). They may work harder than their European counterparts, but they’re still human.
After listening to my little rant, husband-dear sighed, and gave me the look he reserves especially for me “Maybe you just need to play the game.”

Yeah, no. I do play the game plenty. I stick to the dress code, I don’t call people by their first name, I fill out the same form ten times without complaining, and I go out of my way to accommodate our students than ever before. But it ends here. I will not spend my precious time off doing something to keep my employer happy. I will find a way around this. So bring it on I say!