Sorry for the recent complaining, but its my blog and I'll do what I want to! If you want to ignore the rant-y entries, ignore this one, too
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ooooohhhhh sammeeeeeeeeeeeeee this is serious! not getting paid! i assume that the person who hired you is a rutgers staff or faculty...? has the person been hit by a bus recently? sometimes that happens. if that person is up and around, though, living happily and simply not paying someone, then i shall charter the next bus and come over and kick some rutger-butt.
Yes, the person is definitely alive and well, still smiling and smoozing people, but ignoring us. It's the orchestra conductor, and I never see him because I don't play any instruments in the orchestra, and others who do see him are being ignored or avoided!!!!
Since I am a current "freelancer" I will offer this bit of advice---NEVER agree to do program notes without a written contract that says how much you are getting paid (or at the very least, an email). I don't care what the research is on....it matters not.
People (conductors, agencies, etc) often think that musicologists are born with infinite amounts of historical knowledge in our head and that we just sit down and write program notes for the hell of it (not unlike pianists who are constantly being asked to play something whenever there is a piano available in the same room).
This totally stinks and if it is the university orchestra, I'd take it to the dean. Good luck sammee!
Sadly in many academic or academic-related circles there is a belief that content is or should be provided gratis or near-gratis. The sad reality is that without this convention much reference publishing would grind to a halt. It's in part a leftover from the days when most scholars were people with independent incomes or with other jobs, such as in the law or in journalism - in the UK, the late nineteenth century - bolstered in the UK at least by relatively high (well, compared to today) wages and an abundance of jobs in the expanding higher education sector in the 1960s and 1970s. There is now a large group of semi-employed or unemployed learned people whom publishers think will do work for very little, and often they are sadly right.
Yes, but in the United States, scholars are regularly paid fair and competitive wages and receive many privileges in conjunction with their positions. For example, in the USA, graduate students are regularly paid to attend most universities, and their tuition and fees are waived.Tenured professors cannot be fired or forced into retirement. Another example is the well-established practice of paying for program notes, which is not really considered an academic practice, but is done for organizations such as Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic. I'm definitely not the most patriotic person, but I have to say that in the USA there is definitely an established practiced of people being paid for doing the work I did for these programme notes, and I should expect to get paid. I will go to speak with administrative personnel -- such as the academic dean -- if I don't hear about anything within a week.
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ooooohhhhh sammeeeeeeeeeeeeee this is serious! not getting paid! i assume that the person who hired you is a rutgers staff or faculty...? has the person been hit by a bus recently? sometimes that happens. if that person is up and around, though, living happily and simply not paying someone, then i shall charter the next bus and come over and kick some rutger-butt.
Reply
Horrible man!!!!
Reply
People (conductors, agencies, etc) often think that musicologists are born with infinite amounts of historical knowledge in our head and that we just sit down and write program notes for the hell of it (not unlike pianists who are constantly being asked to play something whenever there is a piano available in the same room).
This totally stinks and if it is the university orchestra, I'd take it to the dean. Good luck sammee!
Reply
Reply
I'm definitely not the most patriotic person, but I have to say that in the USA there is definitely an established practiced of people being paid for doing the work I did for these programme notes, and I should expect to get paid. I will go to speak with administrative personnel -- such as the academic dean -- if I don't hear about anything within a week.
Reply
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