Holiday Wish Lists

What are your holiday wishes or New Year's resolutions that you hope the faculty majority - both lower and upper case, will make? What do you see or hope to see in your own future in (or out of) the academic workplace? 

 

I'm still in that vague holiday / vacation mode, working myself up to Serious Summitry (NFM National Summit, Jan 28, 2012 ~ hashtag #newfac12) in the form of updates, exhortations, and other pre-Summit blogging exercises. There are other items on the "I really should get around to blogging this" list, serious, important, meaningful items ~ really, that I am not yet in the mood to do. Why not? Holidays. Winter. Snowed in. Whatever. Procrastination is the obvious solution. Despite tweeting and sharing on Facebook more to make up, the burden of regular blogging beckons yet. Seasonal themes work for other social media commitments, why not here?

NFM board member Judy Olson's birthday was Monday, day after Christmas also Boxing Day. She asked us...

Merry Humbug, everyone; hope you're keeping warm and sane.

If you could ask Santa to get the NEA to do one thing, what would it be? It has to be something the NEA can actually do, but this could be lobby for legislation, for instance.

Monday's my birthday, so maybe we could make your request to Santa your birthday gift to me, and make that the deadline. I'd like a quick, simple off-the-top-of-your-head response anyway.

Thanks!

Hohowhatever

We came up with lobbying to legislate revisions in Federal labor law to close the loopholes in state codes that let states deny adjunct / contingent faculty unemployment compensation, getting the DoL to revise job titles and descriptions so we can be eligible for student debt relief waivers for teaching, among other benefits, and, finally, endorsing and moving to implement the Program for Change. 

Judy's deadline is past but the season extends to January 5, Epiphany and Three Wise Men. What could be more appropriate than that? We might even get an epiphany out of it. Let's reshape the parameters and use this a focus exercise for 2012 and the Summit - an extra few days for resolution making. 

 

Quick, simple and off-the-top-of-your-head still preferred. Here it is:

If you could ask for precariously employed academic knowledge workers to accomplish just one thing this year, what would it be? That's all of us, including but not limited to New Faculty Majority, unions, higher education action and even Occupy groups. It has to be something within the realm of possibility, but this could be to implement a campaign or lobby for legislation.