Over at Feminist Law Profs, Bridget Crawford has some excellent tips on “How To Act Busy And Important.” Of course, she forgot a few:
1. Make the support staff mark your exams and papers. Why should an international superstar waste time on menial activities like grading?
2. Even very busy professors should take the time to demonstrate their importance. Email your faculty list serve with regular updates about your standings in SSRN’s Top Authors ranking.
3. Truly busy people have little time to spare for even relatively efficient communications like list serves. Save time: blog about how much more productive you are than your colleagues!
4. If you burp, sneeze, or say something important to the local media (like “fraud is bad”), make sure that your school’s website reports on each instance, thwarting attempts to highlight colleagues’ scholarly accomplishments.
5. Don’t use your own office for media tapings. Instead, demand the use of scarce classroom, library, or other common spaces. In fact, insist on the dean’s suite.
6. Busy people must multitask to get everything done. When on a symposium or conference panel, text in full view of audience members and fellow panelists. If you receive an amusing communication, laugh out loud while others are presenting.
7. Another panel tip: demand to present first and then leave as soon as you speak without waiting to hear your co-panelists. Alternatively, demand to go last, then show up late, just before your start time. One instance may not be enough to demonstrate your busyness. Make it a hard and fast rule.
8. Time, page, and other limits are for less important people. When giving a faculty workshop, send a paper that is at least 100 single-spaced pages, and spend the entire hour presenting it. Why leave time for questions? Your paper’s already perfect.
9. Treat attempts to schedule committee meetings as an opportunity to demonstrate your many contributions to the institution. When prompted by the chair for a list of available meeting times, do the opposite: list every event on your calendar.
10. Don’t try to remember the names of students, staff, or untenured faculty. You’re too busy.
Always use your BlackBerry during small committee meetings with colleagues, but make sure to never reply to e mails from members of that committee.
Posted by: David Levine | November 23, 2009 at 10:33 AM
Good one, David. We could probably do an entire "how to behave badly enough to avoid all future committee assignments" thread.
Posted by: Kim Krawiec | November 23, 2009 at 10:42 PM