Tuesday, August 03, 2010

I Hate Paperwork

And it seems to be out to get me this summer. I have forms for parking permit requests and electronic access card requests (the form for that one isn't even completely intelligible, because it keeps referring to explanations that don't exist -- I mean, not that I just don't have them, but that aren't written anywhere -- the only explanations in existence are for the previous version of the form, which is out of date), because I need both for the new Round Rock campus of ACC. I'm teaching one course at a different school this term, so I've had to fill out transcript requests and the typical I-9 etc. forms. They do background checks, so I had to fill out a form authorizing a background check. I got my doctorate in Canada, and was a student instructor while I was there, so I now have to fill out five forms for an additional international background check. (Five! I could strangle someone.) I will need to fill out a parking permit request for them, too, and probably some more forms for other things. The Texas legislature has instituted a three-click rule, ostensibly for transparency but in the form that it was passed little more than busy-work that is unlikely to help anyone very much (as always happens when non-educators tamper with education), in which certain information for each course and instructor has to be available within three clicks of the homepage. So I will have to fill out and upload to the online form for that for three different courses, once things are finalized for them. And, of course, all this running around getting information about and finding and filling out and filing and sending in various required forms is eating into my grading time for my summer course and my actual preparation time for my Fall courses, which makes it worse.

And it's bad form-filling weather, too: hot and humid, with cicadas singing in the day and crickets singing in the night, so that you just have to look at a form in order to feel tired and fall asleep.