A Love Letter to the University of Oregon

I, Meaghan Emery, love my job.

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much

Like all good jobs, mine is fascinating, challenging, filled with the support of amazing co-workers, and is preparing me for my future. Also like many good jobs, mine is exhausting, sometimes bewildering and full of bizarre red tape, and frequently follows me home. My job is salaried, which is a fancy code word I've learned means "work more than this number of hours," and divides up in the following ways:

• about 20 hours of actually paid time in the museum or the classroom depending on my exact role that term 
• about 20-35 hours of technically unpaid research time which is often eaten up by proposal-writing instead

• and about 5 hours of bitterly wasted hours answering emails and attending meetings. 

Sometimes I work weekends but not always - sometimes I can go climbing instead. My job helps subsidize the conference I attend each year (so professional). I have health insurance - like, we're talking really good, 15$-massages-without-referral health insurance. Oh, and I get paid well enough to pay my bills and buy new climbing shoes when I want them, rather than when I need them.

I have this fantastic job for two reasons: because my department and my advisors value and emphasize the importance of a healthy work-life balance, and because my school has a union that advocates for me, protects me when I am weak, and works hard to keep the University an amazing learning environment and workplace.

Our excessively patriotic union logo.
Yes, we see what you're doing there, GTFF, with your subliminal "THE UNION IS FOR 'MERICA" message.