moving on

For my family and friends who’ve asked why, especially considering the economy, and deserve some sort of explanation. If this is published before the new year, maybe it will finally be archived, gone, along with the hurt, the sadness, and the loneliness.

I worked hard. For 17 years I was in early and stayed late. I read anything and everything that might apply to what I might be expected to do; and then finally, I looked in to things that might apply if my vision could be fulfilled and I needed to do what I expected to do. I provided illustrations – visual support – for instructional designers. To do that well and be aware of new potential techniques and technologies, I learned pedagogical theory, the use of multimedia in multimedia learning, printing technologies, digital publishing technologies, animation, video, web development. I stayed current, even ahead of the curve so that I could give sound advice and helpful, intuitive assistance. When we all were supposed to blog, I blogged like crazy, sharing what I learned and presenting new capabilities for educators to review and have ideas for learning sparked by my efforts. If anyone asked, I helped: at any time, on any day, for projects that I was assigned to or projects I would never be listed as participating in, on other staff’s personal and family projects or work from other departments. I always delivered more than requested, always got my own regular work done, satisfied all contacts, and managed to share with the larger work group in micro posts and larger blog posts.

I felt that I always did more than what was asked, but it never felt that my work was recognized. A white paper on the Axiotron Modbook and a dozen detailed blog posts had my insights recognized outside of the university, but went unused and unlinked to at home. A special Flash animation developed for faculty was developed by special request when my coworker was bored to death. The animation was picked up by the libraries as a prototype for digital presentation of fragile texts and picked up a $50K grant for the faculty. The work went unmentioned, unlinked to, unreviewed by my own work group. I was asked to develop a lengthy law book chapter of text and multimedia in different digital formats so faculty could test and assess the formats with students. For several months I worked to analyze and produce a series of html, xhtml, pdf, and ePub chapters for testing, demonstrating pros and cons of each, with fairly conclusive evidence that html5 would ultimately be best. I shared the URLs with the work group and faculty, then at our meeting, it turned out that no one had tested, assessed or even took the time to look. I met with faculty, gave one on one support and guidance in downloading the samples, assessing them, and moving forward with the code. She was excited to extend the html version. At our office, I suggested that, since the faculty seemed competent and motivated, our group might loan them an old Mac laptop so they could try iBooksAuthor. The idea was seen as good and very possible. After a month, nothing had happened. I checked emails for the paths of responsibility and asked if there was anything I could do, and I was assured it was out of my hands and in someone else’s court.

Our work space has always been a problem. Some people get awarded large offices while others get cubicles. The directors wanted walls to come down so people could collaborate, but they always went back to their own doored offices. Noise, privacy, focus- all became critical issues. On the weekend before we were supposed to meet with Arts and Architecture students to discuss “space” while at the same time finding time to discuss SRDPs with managers, I thought I’d take conversations we’d been having in the hall to a more public, more creative venue. I made a post to Yammer that perhaps managers could try to find a time to have SRDP meetings in staff spaces finding first hand exactly what the current work environment was and required. Before Saturday evening, our director had nixed the idea saying it was impossible. I answered that that was the point, and perhaps it was good catalyst for an an empathetic discussion? The director didn’t see it that way and didn’t like my attitude. Since I’d been contacted by HR for my advice on the ongoing political tensions in our unit, I sent copies of the conversation with my director to HR- the lack of effective communication between the director and I was on-going: he cosistantly over-reacted, and maybe a meeting could get to the bottom of it. A meeting was set up, I asked my manager to attend as support, but several days later, she told me that she was asked by HR to attend so wouldn’t be going because I asked. I didn’t see a problem, but a few weeks later when the meeting eventually happened, I faced my manager my director and an HR rep all of whom had already met and made decisions with out me. I was a problem. And I was in shock.

The HR rep, on being frustrated by my answering her questions with my questions and my insistence that my blog and yammer posts were intended to have an effect, looked angry and said, “Maybe you just don’t belong in this environment!”

There’s only one acceptable answer to that.

I’d heard that I was being described to new-hires as hard to get along with. One whom I never met prior told me she had a question but was scared of me. Managers were told I didn’t like anything and that they were to give me no assistance. One newly hired instructional designer was walked from cubicle to cubicle being introduced to all of the support staff by his manager, and they skipped right over my cubicle. I could’ve cried.

From April to November my communications with the director amounted to just civil greetings in the hallway. After I turned in my hardware, I still had an experimental digital brush that a developer worked up for my use with an iPad. I though that it was an interesting, creative instrument that I liked but could no longer use. As my last contact with the director, I walked it over to his office, we greeted each other civilly and I set the small, crude wooden brush on his desk. Before I could describe the project, the director shrank back. As I explained the brush’s development and use, the director relaxed and said, “I thought you were giving me a big joint!”

oh well. Like I said. I could’ve cried.