Just this month, my department came into possession of five new faculty offices, owing to the fact that brand spanking new faculty offices were created in the old library building, and some of the faculty from other offices in this building are being moved into them.
Forget that our chair actually had to fight for these additional offices (armed with data on student-to-faculty ratios and such) with another department that still occupies much of this building. Forget that the offices we fought for are old, water-damaged, haven’t been seriously cleaned in years, and are painted in such 1970s colors as orange. Forget that the university looked like it was going to try to stick us with the costs associated with disposing of the broken furniture and piles of trash left by the faculty that vacated the offices (and that we will end up eating the costs of installing internet jacks in the offices that need them).
We have more space!!
What this means for me is that I go from sharing an office with three colleagues to sharing an office with just one colleague. I actually get more real estate in the filing cabinets and on the bookshelves, which is making me ridiculously happy right now. (I loves me some books!)
And, I salvaged an old coat rack from one of the new offices, so now my academic robe doesn’t need to hang from a filing cabinet drawer handle.
And, with the space we recovered by moving out one of the three desks (yes, there were three desks for four people), it looks like there will even be room for a loveseat one of my colleagues is trying to get out of his apartment. (Granted, it is upholstered in white with orange stripes, but it’s comfortable seating!) With a couch, of course, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for a garage sale coffee table, and possibly a magazine rack for the weekly Chemical & Engineering News. (Seed will go on the coffee table.)
Decreasing the population density of my office by half probably shouldn’t make me feel this darned giddy, but it does. Anything else I should try to add to my new-found space?
Well, at least it sounds like the loveseat will go with the paint on the walls, in a weird, tacky 1970s institutional sort of way.
Depending on the nearness of your break room: mini-fridge, microwave, water boiler, tea stash? The geochemists are moving out of my office and taking our food/amenities desk with them, I’m going to need a new home for all the napkins, spare plastic forks, tea, etc., that I have forgotten how to live without.
I’m still recovering from the shock that you had four *faculty* sharing an office with three desks. That sounds like a miserable condition even for grad students. How about a plant?
I’ll see your philosophy department ratios and raise you, um…oh hell. My office is in the bathroom…
The answer to your question is a trip to Ikea!
That sounds like a miserable condition even for grad students.
Faculty here have offices to themselves, but grad students and postdocs either share cramped desks in a sort of cubicle farm on the other side of the corridor from the labs, or (like me) work on the small desks between the lab benches and the windows. In the last place I worked, it was worse: faculty had offices, but everyone else crammed in three to a 12×12 office or perched a computer on the far (away-from-wet-things) end of a lab bench.
Anyone who goes into science for wealth or glamour is too stupid to be doing science anyway. The same would appear to be true of philosophy.
Loveseat? Coffee table? Aren’t you forgetting the First Law of Faculty Offices? Paper expands to inhabit all available space!
You’ve got a raw deal, Janet. For the past couple of years, I’ve been sharing an office with two other grad students and we have 6 desks! That’s 2 desks per person, and we’re grad students. And that doesn’t include my (slowly dwindling) bench space in lab, that I appear to be losing pieces of daily due to not making token appearances in the lab. My goal for the rest of the summer: reclaim some of my bench space.