Re-energizing leave

A few years ago, the UP System circulated a memo from its president announcing to administrators that they may take their re-energizing leave provided that it will be availed of during the summer break. It was assumed that at this time of the academic year there would be less activities regardless of the nature of the administrator's work.

The term administrator applies to a variety of positions and responsibilities depending on the nature of the post. The President and the Chancellor are administrators along with their respective VPs and VCs, who also have varying responsibilities (e.g., the VC for Student Affairs obviously has a different job description compared to the VC for Community Affairs). There are also the Deans of UP units who preside and manage the academic units like the Colleges and Schools. There are also the Institute and Center Directors, and Department Chairs, some of whom handle units with research and/or extension as their primary thrusts.

Load credits vary with Presidents, VPs, Chancellors, VCs, and Deans having 12 unit administrative loads that allow them to not handle courses during their terms considering that the full load for faculty members is 12 units. Usually though, they still teach a course or two depending on the needs of their mother units thereby incurring overloads. And usually too, these are graduate courses that are supposed to have less students are thereby assumed to require less work.

Directors and Chairs usually are given 6 unit administrative load credits. Thus, it is common for these to have 6 more units usually allocated for teaching. There is a one to one correspondence in the number of units of a subject to the teaching load. A Director or Chair may handle 2 typical 3-unit subjects during a semester and it is common to have overloads from additional 1 or 2 subjects. The load credits do not reflect research or extension work being undertaken by the administrator and makes declared workloads misleading and to some extent, unfair to the person.

The purpose of re-energizing leaves is to allow administrators to have a break. That break is usually a vacation that provides the administrator a breather from the pressures of work. It allows one to reflect on the more important things in life. Health and family, as one saying goes, is more important than anything else especially work. Stress from work has been cited as a leading cause of health problems and has been well documented as a major element for hypertension, heart problems and other ailments brought about by the weakening of our defenses. Once you're broken, it is just too costly to recover and it is just not worth it.

Last year, I took advantage of my re-energizing leave to vacation in Panglao Island in Bohol. It was a return after 13 years when I first visited the province. Just like in 1996, I decided to stay at the Bohol Beach Club. This year, we took advantage of a wedding invitation to vacation in Gen. Santos in South Cotabato, and Sarangani where the wedding took place. The trips were indeed re-energizing and the Clairvoyant and I had a great time. Perhaps next year we'll explore another part of the Philippines. Among those in the shortlist are Misibis Bay in Legazpi, Puerto Princesa in Palawan, and maybe Boracay. We wouldn't mind though if we take another trip to Bohol as the province promises a lot more to explore and enjoy.