Ok, this will be my last email blog post, I promise! (at least for awhile)
One thing about being chair is you tend to think, I better keep a record of that. So I am always inclined to save emails, even my own outgoing messages, whereas prior to this I deleted like crazy. But the chair has to be ready in case there are any accountability issues to deal with. So I am constantly saving emails and trying my best to file them in a systematic way.
For awhile, I was keeping everything in online folders which I access through my various computers using imap. But, that quickly led to me getting the dreaded "email quota at 90%" warning message. That's a message you don't want to see. Plus, while mail on the macintosh is a good email program for handling tons of email on a server, Outlook on the pc side slows to a jurrasic pace whenever it encounters too much email on the server. Just one more of those little "macs are better" items.
With this problem in mind, I went to IUP's Academic Computer Policy Advisory Committee (ACPAC), of which I have been a longtime member, in hopes of getting the problem addressed. Naturally, it's a cost issue. IUP gives faculty 500 MB of storage. I think it is about the same for students. Google was giving people 2 GB (about 4 times as much) and recently jumped to 7 GB. Some people felt raising the quota would just encourage undisciplined email use. Probably true. But even the people who are really good at managing email have told me they often hit the quota warning. So I was pleased that IUP's Chief Information Officer (I think that's the right IT title--I have to check) said the quota will grow to 2 GB in the fall. Thank goodness. A lot of us need that.
There's an electronic hoax that has circulated about the government charging an email tax so that people would have to pay a fee for each email message they send. I think in Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign she was asked about it and said she would fight the tax. Then of course her staff learned there is no such bill to impose a tax. That's still true, as far as I know.
But would an email fee be such a bad thing? Probably. Still, when I think about how much stuff everyone copies me on as chair. And sometimes, people will be in the middle of a discussion. Then someone copies me on it. So I read the message and think, "what the heck are they talking about?" That forces me to decide if I do somehow need to respond to this issue so I have to backtrack, but often I never did get the first few emails. Plus no one ever bothers to say, "let me catch everyone up on the situation."
If people had to pay a small fee, even 10 cents, for each message, at least they would think twice about sending unnecessary emails. And maybe that would make spamming non-cost effective, though who knows if spammers could be forced to pay the fee. Though it might be possible for the internet service provider to charge the fee.
Still, in the long run, I suppose it would be the average consumer who would have to pay the fee and it would be another $40 or $50 per month we'd have to shell out. So I guess I should just admit it's not the best idea.
At the Ward Churchill event I wound up chatting with this bright CMU student named Heather. I was telling her about the nightmare which is the chair's email load. And in particular I was complaining, why can't people learn to use a simple subject line? I have one graduate student who for some reason never puts anything in the subject line. Most people use very vague or generic email subject lines which require you to then read the message. And then lots of people just hit reply to any old message. Some people will start a whole new issue up by replying to an old topic so that the subject line has no link to the body of the message. That's fine if you only are getting a handful of emails each day. But I get 100-200 per day. If the subject line is clear, I can more quickly decide how to handle a message. Or to ignore it. I suppose a vague subject line forces me to look at the email. But if the subject line is an old issue, I might think the message is unimportant when it really is critical. I suppose the larger problem is just that as chair I get too much email.
Hmm. Here's a new aspect of blogging I had not considered before. In my last blog entry, I mentioned the mountain of email the chair faces after returning from a conference or other trip. That reminded me that there are several email related chair topics I was thinking of writing about in the blog. But now I'm wondering if I have written about these issues before. I guess I need to explore the blog search feature to make sure I'm not being redundant. But at least some of these issues I know are new.
Anyway, about that email mountain. When I can, I do bring my laptop on trips to stay on top of the email. That can, help, but it can be equally depressing. At CCCC I was sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco chatting with my wife on my cell phone. As I sat talking to her, I could see my laptop on the desk. In the space of 10 minutes I watched about 20 email messages come in. And this was after I had cleared the new messages out.
One other problem linked to email is that while I have a laptop, half the time I can't get wireless. Wireless had been free in airports, but now there is always a fee through this boingo hotspot service. And conferences are often in Hiltons which charge about $14 per day for wireless. I wouldn't mind paying if my total travel budget at IUP wasn't under $400. I don't even get any extra travel money as chair! I suppose I could allocate some funds to myself, but that doesn't really seem fair and the budget for the dept. is too small anyway. At least as chair, I finally was prompted to apply for an IUP senate travel grant since I had written about a dozen letters for my colleagues who were applying for travel grants. And the result? Still no word. Hopefully I didn't mess up the application for the grant somehow.
Well, I managed to get the fall and summer schedules done, somehow. Not an easy task, that's for sure. And of course both are due on the same day. But since I was slow figuring out the schedule, I didn't give the secretaries nearly enough time to get the schedule into the computer system.
I think one thing that might help me would be a computerized scheduling program. Although with all the changes that get made during the process, who knows if that would really help. At least it would make my notes clearer for the secretaries!
I had not realized how many people make comments about other people's schedules. That's something I had never done myself. I just always hoped to get a schedule that gave me classes I like to teach and some writing time. But people seem to love to make comments about what other people are teaching. It's one of the issues you have as chair. Not everyone works the way I work. And everyone likes to give the chair their comments,
I've found its better to ignore these emails than to respond to them. Responding never clarifies issues. Email just muddies things up. So I have to remind myself to limit the email debates at the very least. Just one more part of the joys of being chair.