So today's post from the annals of academia deals with that oh so dangerous animal to the arts employee: The Administrator". These are a breed of people whose sole purpose in life is running other peoples lives for them. In the University music world these are often people who used to teach music (or other arts) but have gone one to "bigger" things.

This breed has control over both personnel and budgeting, often neither of which they truly understand. They often appear insecure (and slightly neurotic) with a hint of OCD on the side. They believe it is their job to have complete control over EVERYTHING that happens in their department, and that everyone they work with is incompetent. They also know more about everyone else's jobs (i.e. they are a brass playing, woodwind specialist who can sing, direct musical theater, perform as a concert and marching percussionist while holding a string instrument at the same time).

Now do get me wrong, there is a second subsect of this breed: The good Adminstrator. This breed actually views the others they work with as competent colleagues worthy of their respect. In return, they are respected by their colleagues. They ackowledge when good work is done by others. They also don't believe they know everything about everything. For example: a chair who is a vocalist would not tell the trumpet teacher what methods he should be using.

What do you do when you see the good breed of adminstrator: praise it and love it at every turn.

With the other breed: lock yourself in your office and hope they don't find you.