(no subject)

To Butler students: Words from the belly of your beast.

My problem is that I care about my job, about my stats. So every now and again I skip an ask, fudge an ask level, schedule a callback past a week or two. And for what? A pledge. For one person who will agree to help their school which, odds are, I have never visited.

I don't know how to not care. I don't know how to be apathetic when my performance is quantifiable, appearing on charts and tables and boards and in end-of-the-night phone calls, but for all this emphasis on individual performance, the reductivist push for everyone to be identical cogs in the machine, to be twenty identical mouths for the same words can be... wearing.

I want to succeed. I want to do well, to stand out as unimpeachable... I know I'm merely a part of the system, but I want to be a relevant part. When I don't perform well enough on a coaching form, which happens once or twice out of a few dozen a year, I have a momentary crisis of panic and self-loathing. It's hard for me with no knowledge of WHY the script is written to ignore my own judgment and just say what I'm told to say. It feels like I'm doing less than I could.

Beaurocracy. I don't work for it; I am an organ in the beast. I feed it pledges. My weapons are ritualism and conformity. I am bound to its service by need, and will remain bound by inertia. It will get worse, I think.

( And the anthropologist's view... )

(no subject)

To Butler students: Words from the belly of your beast.

My problem is that I care about my job, about my stats. So every now and again I skip an ask, fudge an ask level, schedule a callback past a week or two. And for what? A pledge. For one person who will agree to help their school which, odds are, I have never visited.

I don't know how to not care. I don't know how to be apathetic when my performance is quantifiable, appearing on charts and tables and boards and in end-of-the-night phone calls, but for all this emphasis on individual performance, the reductivist push for everyone to be identical cogs in the machine, to be twenty identical mouths for the same words can be... wearing.

I want to succeed. I want to do well, to stand out as unimpeachable... I know I'm merely a part of the system, but I want to be a relevant part. When I don't perform well enough on a coaching form, which happens once or twice out of a few dozen a year, I have a momentary crisis of panic and self-loathing. It's hard for me with no knowledge of WHY the script is written to ignore my own judgment and just say what I'm told to say. It feels like I'm doing less than I could.

Beaurocracy. I don't work for it; I am an organ in the beast. I feed it pledges. My weapons are ritualism and conformity. I am bound to its service by need, and will remain bound by inertia. It will get worse, I think.

( And the anthropologist's view... )

(no subject)

To Butler students: Words from the belly of your beast.

My problem is that I care about my job, about my stats. So every now and again I skip an ask, fudge an ask level, schedule a callback past a week or two. And for what? A pledge. For one person who will agree to help their school which, odds are, I have never visited.

I don't know how to not care. I don't know how to be apathetic when my performance is quantifiable, appearing on charts and tables and boards and in end-of-the-night phone calls, but for all this emphasis on individual performance, the reductivist push for everyone to be identical cogs in the machine, to be twenty identical mouths for the same words can be... wearing.

I want to succeed. I want to do well, to stand out as unimpeachable... I know I'm merely a part of the system, but I want to be a relevant part. When I don't perform well enough on a coaching form, which happens once or twice out of a few dozen a year, I have a momentary crisis of panic and self-loathing. It's hard for me with no knowledge of WHY the script is written to ignore my own judgment and just say what I'm told to say. It feels like I'm doing less than I could.

Beaurocracy. I don't work for it; I am an organ in the beast. I feed it pledges. My weapons are ritualism and conformity. I am bound to its service by need, and will remain bound by inertia. It will get worse, I think.

( And the anthropologist's view... )