There appears to be no end in sight for the now three-week-old faculty strike at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The latest round of contract talks broke down Monday following six days of failed negotiations with the university and faculty blaming each other for the deadlock. The sticking point is money.
Acadia’s faculty association has asked that a provincial-government mediator be brought in help settle the dispute, but the university says it will reject that idea unless professors and librarians go back to work first.
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader:
One Response to Strike Continues at Acadia U.
rhoccrim - January 3, 2012 at 12:39 pm
I have a sign in my office that states “Farmers spend as much time preparing to plant as they do in preparing to harvest.” It strikes me that what you experienced is typical and necessary. That is, to jump headlong into something new without getting bearings and planning a direction or at least reconnoitering the landscape, could lead to a lot of wasted energy or a direction you do not want to go. I deal with this regularly with undergraduates as they begin their senior thesis. Learning to ask the right questions, narrowing the scope, creating a clear focus on something interesting … is a daunting task. Bite off too much and you can’t complete it [especially in a semester]. Bite off too little and you starve for lack of data and material. Getting your bearings is a necessary step in the process.
The other factor is the normal down time after a successful event or series of events. I have heard it called the “post success blues.” In academia as well as American life, we measure ourselves on productivity and sometimes forget the celebration along the way. The symbolic activity or award for a job well done that marks the end of an event to open the way for the start of a new one helps us mentally prepare to move on and gives some time distance between the old and new. Even something small like eating the breakfast croissant at Dunkin Donuts on the way to class the first day of the semester to the celebratory margarita and two days of extensive naps at the end, help mark time and “announce” completeness.