short-changed at work

when i arrived at work today, i bumped into one of my colleagues while waiting for the lift. he looked listless and did not hesitate to tell me that he felt terribly bored and was not in the best state of mind to work. somehow, something is not right, just do not feel like getting up of bed to come to work, somehow, the fire is not there these couple of days. no, no, not that he is not motivated or passionate about our profession (altho for me, my passion for my organisation died a sudden death since may 2005). it is just one of those periods where he felt lethargic.

interestingly, i felt the same way too. and i could sense this same feeling in most of my other colleagues. perhaps it is cos we are coming to the tail-end of the course we are managing and that all of us are feeling somewhat burnt out... and, at this point in time, while pre-occupied with course reports, results compilation, etc, we are also caught in an unhealthy state of having to manage an on-going online course, administering another concurrent course conducted by our education partners in engring faculty (nus) as well as reviewing next year's curriculum. it's really very tiring.

current realities. current tensions.

on a larger context, i really think we are short-changing ourselves. two years ago, we reviewed and restructured our courses and curriculum and then rationalised that with these new courses and more focused curricula, we can start to relook at how our set-up can be better streamlined. and, as part of the overall rightsizing masterplan, we restructured. we collapsed our curriculum development component and integrate it as part of the duties of instructional staff, centralised all our admin, hr and logistics resources and only retained a small set-up to run some basic admin. that set-up now does almost everything under the sun (very apt that we called it the `one-stop center' - and yes, everything stops there!). then, before the dust have even settled and processes fully smoothened out, this year, higher management wants us to re-look at how we can extend our courses and take back some of the areas that was previously taken away... except that now, with lesser manpower and a set of overloaded instructional staff...

crazy!