Change in pay, whether or NOT they choose to inform me

Today, only because I asked about a time sheet that I never received, I was informed that the way they award pay for newspaper writers has changed. Apparently, I was previously informed through a letter sent by the financial director of the college. Yes, apparently, but I never RECEIVED a letter that explained I wasn't getting paid per month, but that I was getting paid per article length with an additional unsaid amount per quarter. Whatever happened to advance notice of pay changes? Actually, whatever happened to any notice at ALL? Was I supposed to just notice that my direct deposit never got deposited and just hope the financial department's black hole would just FIX IT? Man, sorry I'm not that naiive!

Here I go with my military comparisons again. In the military, you know months in advance that you're getting a pay raise. You don't get pay CHANGES (which usually means less money for more work). If the military DOES screw up your pay, as in they happen to give you too much, they don't take it out little by little over 12 months, they take it out ALL AT ONCE. But, if you're on top of DFAS and income increases, you know that they screwed up, and you don't spend the money you're not supposed to have received, so it's not as much of a loss when they finally collect on their mistake.

Much harder to budget when you don't know exactly what the mystery amount is per quarter. And, I'm gonna have to write a heckuva lot more to get close to what I was getting before. Maybe I can just submit a lot more photos or I can just fill the articles with filler space and blather on about something insignificant. It's not like students even read the articles unless it has photos of them, or it's about their particular club or technique ANYWAY.

I took the job as a writer for the Triune because I like to write, and I wanted to contribute something positive to a paper that otherwise seemed to take cheap shots at administration or student council. I wanted to be the voice that could point out the cool and groundbreaking things that were occuring in the profession or on campus. Whether or not anyone read it, it was a chance to write about something that I cared about. Not that I've changed what subject matter I want to cover, but the motivation has changed slightly since I'm still trying to make ends meet until next May. Now, I'm going to go less for succinct and efficient, and more for descriptive details and extra tangents. Let's see how my writing holds up.