Word: gibsonized
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When trying to explain the rationale behind the bureaucracy to a perplexed student, Gibson sometimes just gives up. "I reach the point when all I can say is, 'that's the way it is,' I can't account...
...Gibson does not foresee keeping her present jobs for more than a few years. If she eventually decides to enter college administration, her post in Epps's office will provide her with useful background, although she realizes Harvard "isn't about to promote a staff assistant to dean, or even assistant dean for that matter." A deanship is not "an immediate concern on this employment level," she adds. A few of her counterparts in the other deans' 'offices have landed administrative posts at other schools, and most of the staff assistants, whatever their eventual goals, do view these jobs...
After her work at Widener, Gibson believed she knew her way around Harvard fairly well. "I thought my Widener experience would be to my advantage here but once I got started I realized how little I knew of the University structure," she says. "now that I know the procedures, I'm more confident about saying how to change things, to suggest ways to consolidate an unnecessarily complicated procedure," she says. Nonetheless, no matter how impressed with Harvard's bureaucratic operations Gibson is at times, the same system can be very frustrating...
...despite the mounds of paperwork, Gibson finds plenty to keep her busy. She hopes to be actively involved in writing the preliminary report of Epps's Committee on Race Relations this summer, and in general she feels her job provides her with a lot of leeway. Gibson believes most deans appreciate employee initiatives. "They don't try to hold you back or pigeonhole you. It's to Dean Epps's and my mutual benefit for me to take on more responsibility, and I can make my own job more interesting that way," she explains...
...Gibson terms her position as "among the upper echelons" of Harvard employees. The spacious suite in which she works houses only four deans and about a half-dozen staff assistants and receptionists, each with their own office, and just doesn't produce the type of tension that "100 yards of typewriters" creates...