I come to with another question about 'politics' inside academia.
Some months ago I was promoted with a managing position inside the university (in my case, associated chair of my school, being for instance the head of admission committee and the director of doctoral studies).
Let me tell you that (at least in my country) these jobs have a teaching reduction. However, my intention taking this position was to try to make contributions to the bad way that my university is doing right now.
However, I have encountered a really big issue that I was not expecting:
1.- The type of duties I have are really of 'administrative' nature. This means: preparing schedules of courses, preparing calendars of bachelor thesis defenses, preparing slides of how satisfied are the students with their courses... I found that there is no really 'important' duties to do (strategic duties, let's say).
2.- But this point worries me a little more. Due to all these monotone work I am feeling discouraged about my research lines. It has been like 3 months that every day I arrive home after dealing with this administrative things I say to myself 'Today is another day that you both did not finish several things, and even worse, you did not have even 1 hour to work on your projects'.
Some months ago I was somehow discouraged about my place in this university, but after taking this position I feel that I am going directly to a disaster. Either if some months ago I was a little tired (maybe burnout), I had still some energy and feeling happy making research. But now I had arrived at a point that I have started giving a deadline for this situation (December 2019), and if this does not change, start looking for something else outside academia.
What do you recommend to do? I have considered to talk with some senior professor here, and even to quit this administrative duty...but the thing that worries me more is that nowadays I have lost the passion I had for research that make me sense to stay at the university.
Any suggestion and/or comment will be highly welcome.