Actually INFP
November 8, 2007 at 1:20 am | In 9 to 5 | 2 CommentsStaff retreat at Adelynrood Retreat and Conference Center in Byfield, Mass., next door to what used to be Governor Dummer Academy, recently (and wisely) renamed The Governor’s Academy. It was a gorgeous fall day and I was dangerous driving up Rte. 1A this morning, gawking at color. The salt marsh spread out forever like some kind of apocalyptic wheat fields.
So I’m an INFP and not an INFJ, after all. I never took the real thing before anyway, just the Cliff’s Notes version online, a kind of parlor game. INFP totally makes sense—especially makes sense of the piles of papers that accumulate on my floor because I cannot seem to file them, and of my constant struggle to obey the earnest bulleted lists of “to dos” I (or an alter-ego) print up for myself each day.
It’s important to resist the urge to treat this four-letter acronym as something like an astrological sign. It’s a sign, yes, but signs are just marks on wood or paper pointing us to the Real Thing.
I am at a loss to explain the hula hoop part of the workshop, though. You really had to be there.
INFJ
November 3, 2007 at 11:34 am | In 9 to 5, life | 1 CommentWe are having an all-day staff retreat assessing working styles this coming Wednesday and as the instigator/organizer, I feel reponsible for making sure it goes well. Part of that is framing it, providing an introduction, and it is important to consider possible reservations people bring with them, spoken or not. For starters: There is never a good day in a busy department to take an entire day away. So why are we here? What do we hope to accomplish? I will try to convince all of us (myself included) that this is a necessary stepping away from the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ in order to reflect.
“Send him an email, and ‘cc’ God”
November 3, 2007 at 11:31 am | In 9 to 5, life | Leave a CommentSomeone needs to do a manual on email communications. MOST OF US KNOW BY NOW THAT USING ALL CAPS IN AN EMAIL COMES OFF AS SHOUTING, and is generally not advisable unless that’s what you intend. What kinds of relational disasters can occur when a message that should have been a “Reply” is inadvertently sent “Reply All”? And what kinds of power-plays (veiled threats, intimidation, tattling) are revealed, in certain situations, by whom you “cc”?
Exercise ball (blue)
November 3, 2007 at 11:23 am | In 9 to 5, life | 2 Comments
The pink 65 cm. exercise ball I was using as a desk chair developed a slow leak so I bought another one. It came with a DVD featuring a frighteningly perky-looking Exercise Lady. The ball takes forever to inflate with the toy plastic pump they provide, so I’ve been doing it a little at a time and feel slightly self-conscious about the heavy-breathing noises the pump makes—one of those times you hope no upper-level administrator is striding down the hall about to pay a visit. Other examples (purely hypothetical, of course): when everyone’s down on the floor playing with the brand-new puppy someone smuggled in to show off. Or when you have just forwarded a funny YouTube clip (e.g., “Dog Afraid of the Water”) to your coworkers and the chain-reactions are erupting all down the hall. Or when (fill in the blank)…
Thinking in Taglines
October 31, 2007 at 8:31 pm | In 9 to 5 | 3 CommentsTags: 9 to 5
In an institution, taglines are necessary to convey the ethos of the place, or to help galvanize a vision. Lately we are trying to be more “green” in our PR work, and to raise awareness of entrenched (and often unexamined) ways of publicizing events and programs. What Would Sustainable PR Look Like? we ask ourselves.
Sometimes brainstorming takes an unexpected turn and reveals more than we intend. There’s at least occasional tension between staff and faculty at any college, and ours is no exception. At one staff meeting, we came up with a few taglines of our own, but which won’t ever make it onto a poster or the website:
Staff: We’re Smart, Too
Staff: We, Too, Have Degrees
Exercise ball (pink)
October 23, 2007 at 2:03 pm | In 9 to 5 | 2 Comments
This is the exercise ball I use as a desk chair for a few hours each day to relieve neck and shoulder pain caused by too much sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen and manipulating a mouse. We pass it around the office, taking turns. One tends to bounce, ever so slightly. One of my colleagues said she’d had a dream the night before about coming in to work and discovering that our suite of offices (with actual doors, and windows with views of the outside world) had all been converted into cubicles. In her dream, I’d gone on a rampage with a chain saw. “No truth to that whatsoever,” I said. “But if we were all in cubicles, there might be.” Mostly we keep our office doors open, but it’s nice to have the option to close them once in awhile if you want to talk to a son or daughter in the Big City having a down day, or take a five-minute power-nap on your floor, or just look out the window, for a bit longer than you really should, at the fall colors reflected in the pond.
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