Overworked and Underpaid

I am swamped! Help! Work is crazy. There is way too much going on and such an unrealistic expectation placed on me that I can do it all. This month and the next few months are going to be hell (sorry mom, but it is time you knew that I swear). My life will be consumed with attempting to sell our model of chapter improvement to the many different fraternities and sororities at Cornell. So far this week, I have logged a total of 52 hours at work and it is only going to get worse in the weeks to come.

Now one of the things I have learned about the culture of higher education is that it is expected for people to work more than 40 hours a week and work late hours (students hold a lot of their meetings at night and events happen over the weekends). And I have never really had a problem like this. I do not typically count my hours. But there are times such as this that I get curious.

In addition to preparing for this huge presentation on February 12th and then other countless presentations to individual chapters after that, we are also in the middle of a major office staff reorganization process. There is a huge potential that my job will change significantly. . . and right now I am not ecstatic about the changes. Quite truthfully, they do not make a whole lot of sense.

So right now I am feeling very overworked and underpaid (or maybe undervalued) and hope that there is a happy ending to all of this maddening effort I am putting in. Sure, a good outcome would be for this program to receive rave reviews and go off without a hitch but I know the likelihood of that is slim to none. We will always have our critics.

I guess more of what I am looking for is an acknowledgement that I am a valuable player within the university and within this task and that future job descriptions and pay increases reflect that. Right now . . .. it's really not that clear.

But I work anyway until the task is done. Overworked and underpaid.