Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Bureaucracy

So I mentioned in my last post (Perspective, Determination, and Personal Work) a little bit about my club's Halloween Gallery and some road blocks that we encountered.  The road block is called:  Bureaucracy.

I'm mean, I knew administration was a headache before in a vague kind of sympathetic way, but the moment I became a club officer it really hit like a ton of bricks.  The school administration is so anal about documenting every single little thing you do, and I get it, I do.  If there isn't order then it's chaos and things won't get accomplished and people will take advantage.

But it gets in the way.



So here's the beat down.  Every year our club does a Halloween gallery called the Gallery of Terror.  Anyone can submit a Halloween themed piece and we put it up for two weeks.  We try to have it showcased in a place that's heavy traffic and will be noticed and appreciated by the rest of the school.  The school has shoved us artists in a tiny corner of the school, far away from the main buildings, so we like to remind the rest of the school that we exist.

This year we had a prime spot.  A huge wall right across from the bookstore, the most trafficked area of the school.  We were so excited, we've never had such a good spot!  So the day came and we joyfully put up our gallery.

Later that day we were informed that the Club Office had taken it down.

Our club adviser went down himself to beat some sense into them (just kidding, he just had a very terse conversation).  Apparently we didn't fill out a club event form, so the gallery was taken down.  We tried to explain to them that this wasn't an event, we just put up some pictures.  There wasn't an opening social or awards ceremony or anything, not any sort of organized get together.

So that didn't matter. And the wall across from the bookstore remained empty.

By this time people were asking where the gallery was, they wanted to show off to their friends and roommates and generally bask in the awesomeness that was our gallery.



It was the last week of October and we decided to get hang up the pieces in the hallway that lead to our two illustration classrooms.  It was really disappointing and underwhelming, but the art pieces were at least appreciated by a few of us.

So there's my one of many stories about the bureaucracy of administration.  I'm sure I will have better and larger tales of red tape the further I along my career I go.  The Lesson?  Bureaucracy Exists.  It is one of the many horrors in the professional world and just like making art or finding a job it is work.  The faster you learn the ins and outs of whatever administration you're working for the better off you'll be.

If you have any questions or suggestions of posts you would like to see, please leave a comment down below!

Fin

 

2 comments:

  1. That's so dumb. Why is the Club Office so insistent on destroying everything club related?! Why would people want to be part of clubs when they have so much red tape to chop through? It also seems like they add in new things every year. It's impossible to stay on top of everything!

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    1. Yeah, you really need someone specifically to learn and keep up with all the rules. School's kind of a headache.

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