Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Pencil it in

One aspect of my job that really surprises me is how time consuming it is to maintain my calendar. My job duties include:
  • Shifts at a Research Help desk (one-on-one consultations, no appointment necessary)
  • Shifts at the Information Desk
  • Instruction sessions
  • Committee meetings
  • Training
  • Working on stuff in order to get tenure (eek)
  • Eating lunch (por favor!)
Sadly, the university uses a mail/calendar manager from the 1990s so the Research Help and Information Desk calendars cannot be instantly imported into our calendars to point out scheduling conflicts. So, when the shift calendars come out I have to manually create a new "appointment" to designate each shift into my calendar. If there's a conflict I e-mail everyone and ask for a swap. I then have to note the swap in the shared calendar. I just feel like it takes a lot of time. Thankfully, we have an awesome reference/instruction coordinator that assigns us shifts and instruction sessions fairly and takes into consideration our standing commitments - so the issue is purely an outdated technology (is IBM even around anymore?)


I swear I'm busy!

I also keep a paper calendar (National Gallery of Art, whatwhat!) that usually looks a wreck by the end of the week. Call me old school, but I like having the paper calendar to take home with me just in case I want to remember if I need to be in by 9am or if I need to dress up for an instruction session. Don't even get me started on Web access of our calendar/e-mail system. It doesn't even load on my Mac. I've heard rumblings of a switch over to Google but I won't get excited 'til it happens.

2 comments:

  1. I have a decorative Pixar UP calendar, a paper planner and a regular wall calendar. Additionally, I use a personal Google calendar, Outlook and a Google calendar for a major joint project for Spring of next year. Needless to say, I've already made a scheduling mistake and missed a meeting today.

    I'm working on it.

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  2. Dude, I missed an INTERVIEW a few weeks ago because of a scheduling idiocy on my part, so Miss Moon has nothing on me.

    I didn't want that job anyway!

    ReplyDelete