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Collegiality

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    Collegiality

    Does it exist anymore?

    Perhaps the best thing about being in the work-force (or employment-violence, to give its correct name) is — or used to be — the people you worked with. I’ve had eleven proper jobs in the past fifty years (give or take), plus a decade of self employment.

    At all of them I made friends, sometimes of longstanding. I met my first wife in my first Vancouver job, for instance. It wasn’t only a matter of after-work drinks. We’d share Christmases together, baby-sit for each other, share each others problems, cry on each others shoulders. I remain close to several today, though few of them remain in Vancouver.

    I began to detect a change a decade or so ago, post-university I guess. I expected both my Masters and PhD programs to lead to similar attachments, and while I was a student they did. But as soon as the gown came off after grad, they vanished. Almost overnight. Similarly, I’ve been doing basically the same teaching gig now for twenty-years (eek!) Originally it was a small cohort based full-time program. In any given semester five or six of us would be teaching and we’d meet regularly, at least once a month, with a semi-social get-together at the end of the semester. Two years ago the structure of the program changed. Courses ran in the evening and weekend, and it was no-longer built around a cohort of twenty or so students. Since then, though we email, I haven’t so much as seen a colleague, there have been no meetings at all. I love my students and my subject, which is why I’m still there, but, so far as the faculty’s concerned I feel like a phantom. What’s particularly weird is that it’s the same group of instructors, but the experience is quite different. It must be down to the change in structure somehow.

    I guess I’m asking whether this is typical or not? From talking to younger family members I sort of feel it might be, and there’ve been hints like that on here too. It’s not such a big deal for me. Realistically I’ve probably only got a few more years at this anyway, but if it’s true then the institutional loss — whatever the profession — is considerable.

    #2
    Collegiality

    We need to have dinner; BC is on my list for next year.

    I think that there is something to your supposition that there is a generational component here, but also think that there is more than that going on.

    New modes of communication very clearly have an impact, but so do broader ideas about how one's "work" interacts with one's "life" and to what degree "work" is seen as a zero sum game.

    Collegiality is absolutely fundamental to way our firm is organised (to the point where it is part of our marketing), but it has become harder to maintain in the 25 years I've been here.

    BTW, this should be in World (not that I care, but some do).

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      #3
      Collegiality

      Bugger. I'll move it.

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        #4
        Collegiality

        Sorry to hear that AdC. Collegiality is so crucial in so many ways. It's worked for me through my career: I've got so many friends now who were once work colleagues at my old law firm. Far more friends than I made at university. The experience of legal work would have been unbearable without the hugely pervasive collegiality.

        And yes, this should be in World. I almost ignored the thread because the subject of collegiality in football - which I assumed would be what it was about - didn't spark my interest.

        Maybe the admins could move it?

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          #5
          Collegiality

          Can an Admin take this thread down please?

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            #6
            Collegiality

            If they can't get rid of it, I'll revive it in the fall to talk about NCAA soccer.

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