What Makes Us Stronger...

The past couple of weeks have really not been anything I wanted to write about--but now that I have a little hindsight I think I can share a little of what has been going on.

First, January 20 was the first day of school. This is normally a crazy and stressful time for us in the advising office. We get the people who have instantly decided they want to go to school but can't understand why all the classes are full--umm duh! And all the people who realized they didn't listen to us before and consequently don't have a particular class they need to graduate...again I say duh! And a plethora of other issues that normally come through our doors the first day/week of school. But this first week of school was particularly stressful because the Vice Provost was coming to campus specifically to meet with our school. So I was stressing for the entire weekend--the joys of being the low (wo)man on the totem pole with whispers of layoffs.

Well the meeting happened and overall the message was good. Our school was being disestablished and our programs were being combined with the teacher education college on the west campus. In fact the west campus college was going to administer all of the teacher prep programs at ASU. But our jobs were safe (for the moment) because they still wanted a full staff to help students on this campus. hurray!

And later that day we met with our new dean and she seems to follow the same philosophy that the advising office had--that the important thing was to make sure students are helped and that the campuses should not be in competition with each other.

But my lower stress level was not meant to last long. Corey went for a jog at midnight (his favorite time to run--I know he's crazy) and was jumped by three or four guys who wanted his ipod. So we got to meet the police at midnight and go to the hospital at midnight and all that fun stuff. Yes he is okay, but the experience in general left a bad taste in our mouths.

And then if that was not enough stress for just over a week period. ASU announced that in order to deal with the budget cuts that the state is requesting of the university all paid employees have to take a 10-15 day unpaid furlough. I fall into the category of 12 days. Luckily they are letting us spread it out--do a day or two a week between now and June 23. But still essentially it is a pay cut. And there is no promise that June 23 or thereabouts we won't get another message about the furloughs we need to take for the next fiscal year. If you live in Arizona and agree that higher education is important (or even if you just want to make sure I have a job), contact your representative and tell them that you don't want them to cut higher education funding as much as they are proposing.

And since I thought pictures were worth a thousand words--here are pictures of what the students put up on campus to show their feelings about the budget cuts. They had this up the day that the Vice Provost came to campus to talk to our school--and she actually said that she thought it was a great statement.

And just so you know, Danica is doing very well. She is sitting in her bouncy chair right now laughing at me. :)