importance of deadlines
Pfc Chew David
20140614
Deadlines
I have never worked in any job were it is acceptable to miss deadlines. Deadlines should never be disregarded as they are. I can offer no explanation as to why people routinely complain about instructors who do not return graded tests and papers when promised; faculty routinely complain about colleagues who neglect to complete their work on time; and I have seen administrators that simply plead with faculty, time and again, to complete long-overdue assessments or other important work.
I’ll grant that in the current economic circumstances, with many academic units at many colleges, universities and branches underfunded and understaffed, faculty and staff alike are being asked to do more and more work with fewer people, fewer resources, and less time. But if we’re being honest we have to admit that the problem of faculty who are unaccountable to deadlines is an older problem than the current economic crisis; within academe the problem is endemic, systemic, epidemic. Regardless of the cause, when the routine, sometimes mundane business of the university is neglected or even just delayed, complications and stress cascade through the ranks, amplifying the problems that fellow faculty, staff, and even students must then deal with and solve. Even worse, sometimes the most egregious offenders when it comes to blowing off deadlines are senior faculty, who should, frankly, know and behave better.
One step toward reducing the stress and work we create for others, and ourselves, might be to take more seriously the deadlines that often accompany our work, but that are sometimes neglected when faculty perceive, often quite wrongly, that there are no negative consequences for missing a deadline.
Some deadlines are absolutely rigid, such as the filing dates for theses and dissertations, the sorts of deadlines that must be met if one hopes to graduate on time. These rigid deadlines are the types of bureaucratic deadlines that we
20140614
Deadlines
I have never worked in any job were it is acceptable to miss deadlines. Deadlines should never be disregarded as they are. I can offer no explanation as to why people routinely complain about instructors who do not return graded tests and papers when promised; faculty routinely complain about colleagues who neglect to complete their work on time; and I have seen administrators that simply plead with faculty, time and again, to complete long-overdue assessments or other important work.
I’ll grant that in the current economic circumstances, with many academic units at many colleges, universities and branches underfunded and understaffed, faculty and staff alike are being asked to do more and more work with fewer people, fewer resources, and less time. But if we’re being honest we have to admit that the problem of faculty who are unaccountable to deadlines is an older problem than the current economic crisis; within academe the problem is endemic, systemic, epidemic. Regardless of the cause, when the routine, sometimes mundane business of the university is neglected or even just delayed, complications and stress cascade through the ranks, amplifying the problems that fellow faculty, staff, and even students must then deal with and solve. Even worse, sometimes the most egregious offenders when it comes to blowing off deadlines are senior faculty, who should, frankly, know and behave better.
One step toward reducing the stress and work we create for others, and ourselves, might be to take more seriously the deadlines that often accompany our work, but that are sometimes neglected when faculty perceive, often quite wrongly, that there are no negative consequences for missing a deadline.
Some deadlines are absolutely rigid, such as the filing dates for theses and dissertations, the sorts of deadlines that must be met if one hopes to graduate on time. These rigid deadlines are the types of bureaucratic deadlines that we