OPSEU Local 560

In this issue....
Provincial Election  - Oct. 2
OPSEU Continues Court Fight for Francophone College
And have a nice day, y’all
Has My Salary Been Calculated Correctly?
Strategy For Increasing Your Pension
Creating an On-line Course:  A Cautionary Tale
V. P. Globetrotting: Are Taxpayers Getting Value for Their Money at Seneca?
Ontario’s Colleges are in Crisis
Mandatory Training for New Faculty Must be Included on SWF
Seneca’s PD Needs Major Overhaul
The Back Page

You might wonder what the impact of the current Ontario election could be for us in the post-secondary education sector.  Let’s start with most immediate impact.  We are in the process of negotiating a new contract and, while the employer at the bargaining table is represented by various college administrators and their lawyer, the real decision makers are all behind the scenes.  Not the least of these is the Ministry which holds the purse-strings.  Without knowing who is the government, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reach a settlement.  Thus, instead of an on-time contract, we’ve got a lousy offer that we cannot accept and we’ve got rejection of any improvements to workload and staffing issues.

 One of the key planks in the Eves’ platform is to ban strikes and lockouts in the education sector.  When floated previously, this notion was applied to the elementary and secondary systems only. Now, it has been carefully re-written to include all public-education-sector workers and employers.

 Eves who openly opposed and scoffed at this idea during his leadership campaign, clearly now sees it as a good vote-getter for his target group.  Even Mike Harris opposed such bans.  Why?  Arbitrator-imposed contracts have historically awarded higher wage and benefit settlements than achieved  where there is no strike ban.

The Eves government has solved that problem by taking control of arbitrator appointments and, further, by instructing that awards must be within government funding allocations.  In this way, the government can manipulate awards.  Some arbitrators have escaped this noose by deferring wage increases to the end of contracts (back-end loading).  Costs within the year stay within the constraints but end rates move well up.  This, of course, just pushes the problem to the next contract, when those bills come due.

 What about us then?  If forced to squeeze more students into the classrooms ? and we know that is happening ? the Colleges have several approaches, all of which will be used:  a higher student/teacher ratio; reduced curriculum and service; more and more part-time teachers; more “productivity” i.e. higher workloads; and no real improvements to the compensation package.

The College presidents have finally acknowledged the need for better funding and are adding their voices (albeit rather quietly so far) to those of the faculty and students, who have long demanded proper funding for the College system.  The College presidents’ focus on new charters and money-raising foundations will not solve the underlying problems.  A government committed to the college system might.

 We do great work in the Colleges, but our most valuable resource is strained and in need of support.  That resource is the faculty - the Professors, Instructors, Counsellors, and Librarians.  All the buildings, hardware, and software are not worth a damn without the faculty.

The student/teacher relationship, no matter how it is structured, is the central and key element to the success of the students and of the Colleges. In order to sustain our success ? and in many cases restore it ? we need to address the challenges for the Colleges now.  Onerous workloads, compensation packages good enough to attract and retain high-quality faculty, dangerous reliance on part-time workers - all of these are at stake in this provincial election.
The next government must ensure that Ontario has colleges guided by educational priorities. Fiscal responsibility is not just spending cuts. It is meeting the needs of the Colleges with realistic funding.

You can be sure that the Colleges will not be a campaign focus.  We are not up there with health care, clean water, energy, etc.  Voters examining the record of this government will focus on Walkerton, Aylmer, Ipperwash, Hydro costs, School Board funding. Understood.

Give some serious consideration to our situation when you vote.  We need to put in place a provincial government that actually supports education at the college level, not one that either ignores or underfunds us, and certainly not one more interested in privatizing education rather than supporting the public systems.

OPSEU is challenging the decision by the minister of training, colleges and universities on Oct. 5, 2001 to accept the recommendation of the Grands Lacs Board of Directors to close the only French-language college serving the 165,000 Francophone in Central – South Western Ontario.

“We’re acting to protect our members, who were harmed in this case, and also to protect the rights of Ontario’s francophone communities,” says OPSEU President Leah Casselman.

OPSEU, and the other applicants, Julie Gigliotti, an OPSEU local president, and Claude F. Leduc, are seeking a declaration that the minister’s decision was illegal on grounds that it violated the constitutional principle of protection for minorities, as well as Ontario statutes and regulations.

The applicants have retained the services of the Ottawa law firm of Nelligan O’Brien Payne and are working with Ronald F. Caza, who represented the francophone community when the government tried to shut the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa.
 

"Before making such a drastic decision, the minister had to take into consideration the impact of such a decision on the linguistic minority," says Caza.

"This was obviously not done. It is our position that such a failure was in violation of the unwritten constitutional principle of the protection of minorities outlined by the Supreme Court of Canada.” 

Yes, the Centre for Equity and Human Rights really does exist, but in a separate and not necessarily parallel universe.  Consider the case of a faculty member who had been the subject of a student complaint investigated by the Centre who received an e-mail last spring from one of the centre’s staff asking the professor to respond  to  a questionnaire entitled Confidential Testimonials from Senecans.

 The CEHR questionnaire informed the faculty member, “Your answer will be used as a testimonial about the Centre for Equity and Human Rights.  You need not include your name, as the testimonials are confidential. However, please indicate what constituency group you belong to. (Academic, Administration, Support Staff, Student, Former Student)”
 
The question asked of the faculty member was, “What are your experiences and views regarding the Centre for Equity and Human Rights and do you believe that the Centre is a value-added service to you, your colleagues/classmates and the College?”

 Judging by the comments we receive from faculty, we’d conclude that asking a complaint respondent to comment on his/her experiences with the CEHR is a bit like asking a departing inmate, “How did you enjoy your stay at the Don Jail?”

While teaching provides a wealth of intangible rewards,  only the monetary ones will put food on our tables and roofs over our heads. So, it’s worth checking to determine whether our  salary has been accurately calculated.
When you were first hired as a partial-load or full-time faculty member, the College calculated your starting salary, based on information you provided regarding your relevant work experience and your educational qualifications. While our Collective Agreement outlines the “Appointment Factors” to be considered, the College sometimes undervalues these factors (education and relevant experience) in determining our initial placement on the salary scale.

As well, if you subsequently upgrade your educational qualifications or move to another area of the College where previously unacknowledged work experience becomes “relevant occupational experience,” you may be eligible for an increase on the salary step ladder.

You can check the accuracy of your salary placement by completing the salary calculation form available on OPSEU Local 560’s web site at: http://opseu560.org/salary-formula.htm. If anything seems amiss or unclear, please contact the union office at 416 495-1599 to arrange an appointment to examine your placement.
 
 

Strategy For Increasing Your Pension
Bill Kuehnbaum, OPSEU Local 655, Cambrian College

Faculty members who retire at the beginning of the vacation period can increase their pension benefit by more than $1,000 a year over what they would get by retiring at the end of the vacation period.

The typical time line for faculty about to retire is to stay on Cambrian’s payroll during the July to August vacation period and to then start collecting their pension in September.  An alternate strategy is leave the college’s payroll at the beginning of the vacation period, receive a lump-sum payment for vacation entitlement and start collecting their pension in July.  The alternate strategy is by far the better choice because, not only does it create a significant increase in annual pension entitlement, but the retiree also collects more pension payments.  The college benefits from the alternate strategy because it costs less to make a lump sum vacation payment at the beginning of the vacation period than to keep the employee on the payroll until the end of the vacation period.

How can this “more for less” strategy possibly be true?  It is based on two principles contained in the collective agreement and in our pension plan.  The first principle is that our annual salary is earned over 10 months even though it is paid over 12 months, which has the effect of making a lump-sum vacation payout part of pensionable earnings.  The second principle is that pension entitlement is based on the best consecutive 60 months of pensionable earnings.

A specific case illustrates why this works.  Consider a faculty member who has worked 35 years and retires at the end of the vacation period.  The best 60 consecutive months would be all pensionable earnings back to September 1, 1998, which includes the amount earned during the vacation period of July and August 2003.  If this person’s 60-month total were $357,140, the annual pension would be $50,000.  (Note: Dividing $357,140 by 5 gives a 5-year average of $71,430 which when multiplied by 2% for each of the 35 years of service gives a pension of $50,000.)  The first monthly pension cheque of $4,167 would arrive in September.

If the same faculty member were to leave the college at the end of June with a lump-sum vacation pay in their pocket, the calculations are as follows.  The best 60 consecutive months would include all pensionable earnings back to July 1, 1998, and would include the lump-sum vacation payout earned over the 2002-2003 academic year.  The effect would be to increase the above 60-month total by an amount equal to earnings in July and August 1998 – about $10,000.  This increases the 5-year average from $71,430 to $73,430 which will increase the annual pension.  The number of years of service would fall by 2 months, so the multiplier falls from 70% to 69.67%, leaving an annual pension of $51,156.  The increase of $1,156 annually is created solely by leaving at the end of June rather than waiting until the end of August.

As an added bonus, those who retire at the end of June and take the lump sum will also collect pension payments of $4,260 in July and in August.

The net effect of leaving at the end of June is to increase the annual pension and to start  payments from the pension plan two months earlier.

The only downside to this strategy is that the retiree who opts for benefit coverage will have to start making payments in July instead of September.  These payments could add a one-time charge of about $600 to the retiree’s costs. The chart on page 5 outlines the two options for a sample case.

In this sample case, let’s assume that our retiree has 35 years of service at the end of August and is earning an annual salary, at step 20, of $76,567. His/her best 60-month average earnings would be $71,430/annum.
 

Retirement Date Options	Option “A”:End of Vacation Period	Option “B”:Start of Vacation Period
60-Month Total	$357,140	$367,140
Annual Average	$71,430	$73,430
Years of Service	35	34.833
Annual Pension	$50,000	$51,155
July – August Pay	$12,760	N/A
July – August Lump Sum	N/A	$12,760
July – August Pension	N/A	$8,520
Benefits Payment	N/A	$600 (paid by retiree)

There is no question that the college is very keen on our providing on-line courses.  Before jumping in, remember that this is a time-consuming process and that you should demand ample SWF time for such course development, Another factor to consider is your right to ownership of the product.

Under the Collective Agreement, if the college assigns the project, or if you do the work on college time, using college resources,  then the college owns the copyright. That being so, they are free to use it as they see fit, and you have no contractual recourse if they make a dog's breakfast of it, or flog it and make millions. Therefore, if you want to control the  work and reap the profits from it, do the work on your own time, using your own resources.

However, you may wish to do such work through the college as part of your professional commitment  to develop and advance a program in  your area, to improve the program, and to reach more students. The college wants to encourage you to do this, so they have created a policy that purports to  recognize some rights an author has in a work copyrighted by the college.

Under this policy, if the work is to be sold, then you may be able to negotiate a profit-sharing agreement. If the work is subsequently transformed or altered by the college, it shall not be to the detriment of your honour or reputation. At least, that is what the policy says.  But just what protection do you have for the integrity of your work.? Just ask Early Childhood Education Professors Nancy Brown and Diane Kashin.

It started with an idea of Nancy Brown to create a virtual lab school, using videos of small kids doing various things to illustrate behaviours and best practices of interest to students in ECE programs. This, in turn, could be and was ? along with other innovations by Kashin and other ECE professors ? incorporated into several ECE courses in the on-line ECE apprenticeship program, developed by Brown and Kashin, and funded by the Ontario government.

Up to this point, there was no interference with authors' course-development activity or with the way it was presented on the computer screen. But when the college decided to present these courses through Blackboard, trouble began. The authors found  that the Centre for New Instructional Technologies, together with ECE Chair, Dale Long, were squeezing the authors out of the process, ignoring their questions, their concerns, their comments, and ultimately their criticisms.

Much of this shambles is an old Seneca story: fiefdoms guarding turf, a lack of clear communication and delineation of responsibility for who does what, the embracing of yet another technology without understanding the consequences, and the patronization of and disrespect for faculty.

And the policy that purportedly protects your honour? At a meeting with the ECE chair, Dean Judith Limkilde, and Associate Vice-President Katherine Janzen, the authors attempted to get some clarification of their right to control their own work and to prevent its distortion and transformation in a way that would damage the authors' honour and reputation. The Associate Vice-President recognized that the policy was in its infancy and said she'd look into it,  but there was no commitment to preserve the honour and reputation of the authors.
Dean Limkilde undertook to sort out conflicts between the new editors and the original authors, but the latter came away from a subsequent meeting indicating that their views were still being disregarded and dishonoured.

The moral of this cautionary tale?  At Seneca, if you have no copyright, you have no control. The college appears to believe it is free to distort your material as if there were no policy at all, even to the extent of damaging your honour and reputation, without your having any way of stopping it.

The policy, to date, is an apparent sham. For all its talk about protecting your honour, it contains no mechanism for you to do that.  Nor does the policy provide any remedy for violations, apart from your demanding that your name be removed from the work, so no one will associate the degraded work with your name.
If you want to protect your  honour and reputation as an author,  do the work on your time, using your resources, and you will be able to claim the profit, control and, of course, copyright. 

Faculty have long known, and nowadays even ACAATO acknowledges, that the colleges have been underfunded for years. As student enrolment approaches a crescendo with the arrival of the double cohort, we need to be sure that the public funds we receive are well spent. Is Seneca spending our money wisely?  One way to find out is by conducting an audit.

The College’s audit, as we understand it, is a traditional one, ensuring that the books balance, and that funds aren’t being siphoned off by some shady operator. Regrettably, there is no audit report on any of our managers’ travel expenses. Furthermore, the auditors do not check to see if the College is getting value for the money it spends. The provincial auditor does conduct value audits, but has noted that he lacks the authority to do so for universities, colleges, or health-care facilities to reveal how the taxpayer’s dollar is being spent. He is suggesting he get that authority. We think this would be a good idea.

While the local has no authority to conduct a value audit, or indeed any audit, we have used the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to inquire about some of the more interesting and possibly questionable expenditures by college officials.

Over the years, we have made a variety of inquiries which revealed, for instance, the cost of administering the student evaluation questionnaire (about $26,000 in the first year), and the cost of former President Quinlan’s midwinter trip to Florida in 2000 with a college entourage ($48,913.90).

Our current inquiry concerns the  travel expenses of  Wayne Norrison, Vice President, International Programs and Student Services. In the fiscal year 2000-2001, those expenses amounted to $34,904.43, (according to Seneca’s FOI coordinator), with junkets to Pakistan, Dubai,  Brazil, Hong Kong, North Bay, and three trips to China. We decided this merited further inquiry into Mr. Norrison’s globetrotting for the fiscal year 2001-2002.  We asked to see receipts.

The receipts and college expense claims tracked Vice President Norrison on the following junkets:

April 3-28, 2001: China and Dubai
May 12-June 3, 2001: China
October 4-24, 2001: China
November 26-December 11, 2001: Chile and Brazil
January 5-12, 2002: Mexico
February 15-24, 2002: Dubai and Azerbaijan

For example, the record of receipts on the Brazil-Chile trip ends in South America, so there may have been additional costs related to the journey home. As well, there is one further trip for which the college has so far not produced any information, other than acknowledging that the trip took place.  Further inquiries of Mr. Norrison’s office to obtain copies of his expense claims on this mystery trip, according to the FOI coordinator, met with the surprising response that he had no copies, and if finance did not have them, then no one did.

Mr. Norrison’s hotel bills include laundry service which is understandable during extended travel, but four bills for the use of hotel room mini-bars whose contents are notoriously expensive represent a questionable use of the taxpayers’ dollars. The expense statements include many claims for film processing, so we might ask if the
College commissioned or subsequently used these photos?

In our research, we also looked for any evidence that travel incentives (such as the “air miles” or “prize points” awarded by hotels, airlines, car rental agencies and some credit cards) had been reported or applied by Mr. Norrison to reduce the costs of travel to the college. We found none. Seneca College policy does not require “formal reporting of these items, …but [it] does expect that employees will apply credits, air miles, points, etc., earned and accumulated as a result of travelling on college business against the purchase of future College travel expenses.” If the employee decides to ignore the college’s expectation, and to keep the Air Miles, he or she is supposed to report the value of these credits in income. Since this policy lacks teeth, a potential reduction of travel costs is as good as thrown away by the College.  Such a policy may be acceptable in a private company, but it is irresponsible for a public institution.

The sloppy record keeping we have encountered is not acceptable for a public institution. Seneca College needs to review its record–keeping and accounting procedures so that its expenditures can be monitored and verified.  The process needs to become far more transparent. An independent value audit would go a long way to plug the loopholes, prevent any abuse of public funds, and ensure the College is getting value for its spending.

The double cohort of students leaving high school in a few months will soon be invading our colleges and universities. It was in this crisis that I abandoned my 12-year hiatus from teaching in the Quebec college system (CEGEP) to enrol in the teaching ranks of the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAAT).

Sensing a historical need for my skills, I enlisted last September in preparation for the onslaught. What I found was a weak, underfunded system compared with Quebec, including campus buildings and facilities crammed to capacity or not yet built, and a demoralized and grossly underpaid teaching faculty.

Centennial college students, for example, are housed in a crumbling old military factory at Warden Avenue and crammed into portables as they await a new building. Unfortunately, this new building will not be ready for this September but by June, 2004 at the earliest.

Furthermore, to alleviate the lack of classrooms, the numbers of students assigned to a classroom are at record highs. I teach, for example, remedial English, important to our multicultural population.
In Quebec, these classes are capped at 20 students with a full teaching load of four courses per semester and 80 students.

In Ontario, with a similar curriculum, I teach classes of 39 with a teaching load of five courses and 195 students— far above the permitted caps.

As a former instructor in a Quebec CEGEP, I was shocked to find four tiers in place for daytime college lecturers in Ontario. In Quebec, whether you teach one course or a full load and whether you are tenured or part-time, you receive the same salary per hour dependent on education and experience.
In Ontario, on the other hand, there are four classes of instructors: tenured full-time at full pay, sessional full-load at half pay, partial-load at reduced pay per hour, and part-time at approximately one-third pay per contact hour.

The sessional and part-time teachers are banned from union representation and receive no benefits. This is due to draconian legislation, unique to Ontario, The Colleges Collective Bargaining Act, which specifically excludes these two categories from collective bargaining.

In addition, according to the act, sessional teachers are allowed two semesters at sessional status in a two-year period. They are then fired and not permitted to work as a sessional for that college for one year.
Colleges are exploiting this loophole to keep costs down by maintaining a large contingent of lower-paid instructors, who often flee the system.

To fund enough employees, it has been necessary to hire unqualified and inexperienced instructors to fill the gap without proper prep time or support.

Lest you should think these are only complaints from disgruntled employees in the system, there is widespread consensus on the massive underfunding of the colleges.

The following groups are singing the same song: the students, the Information Technology Association of Canada, and the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario itself.

A report from the latter has identified the following problems:

• While enrolment has increased by 34 percent in the decade of the 1990s, the colleges are receiving 45 percent less per student than they did in 1990-91. By
• 2010, enrolment will increase by an additional 38,000.
• The college system will need to hire 7,114 new employees to remain at the 2001 levels. Downsizing of staff has seriously diminished the colleges’ ability to deliver programs and value to the students. It is worthwhile to spell out that as student numbers were increasing by 34%, the faculty numbers were declining by 28%.

The system will not attract top-quality teachers. The colleges are competing with universities and the private sector — and they are losing the competition.

Underfunding has decreased student services. We know that the remedial programs have been reduced or eliminated, contributing to unacceptable dropout rates; that libraries are not funded to meet the challenges; and that the new degree programs will put an additional strain on services.

The colleges have not been able to renew, replace or invest in equipment that is required to meet modern standards.

Deferred maintenance costs are on the order of $600 million and operating costs have increased. What is needed is public pressure now.

This is a made-in-Ontario crisis, whether the issue is for students headed to overcrowded universities or colleges or the quality of education being offered. Please support the party of your choice that will fight for quality and available post-secondary learning

Our future economy depends on it.

In the past year, Seneca’s PD department devised an ill-conceived, heavy-duty in-house “PD” program to ensure that all new faculty meet the “Basic Competencies” outlined in the College’s policy statement of June 25, 2002. The traditional five-day PD requirement for probationary faculty has been supplemented with the considerably more onerous obligation to complete three 40-hour courses, over three semesters.

We say onerous, because this assigned “PD” work did not appear on faculty SWFs. Hence, a probationary faculty member’s actual weekly workload could blossom to 50 or 60 hours (comprised of full-time teaching, complementary functions, and obligatory PD) without the faculty member’s SWF running into overtime.

By pushing the probationary faculty member into overtime (albeit unacknowledged), this assigned “PD” course work contravened the collective agreement that states in Article 11.01 J 4, “Probationary teachers shall not be assigned teaching contact hours or total workload hours in excess of the maxima under any circumstances.”
Moreover, Articles 11.01 H 1, 2, and 3 and 11.04 B 1, 2, and 3 of the contract state clearly that all professional development is undertaken only by mutual agreement between the professor and the supervisor.

Last spring, the union settled a grievance on this issue. Henceforth, for all new faculty (and retroactively for faculty hired after August 2002), this mandatory course work, is to be included on the SWF as a complementary function, on an hour-for-hour basis.

While all new faculty must meet the “Basic Competencies”, some will be able to reduce or eliminate their participation in Seneca’s three core courses by requesting an assessment of their prior learning/training (PLA).

In addition, any faculty participating in a mentoring program with a senior faculty member should be credited with two hours per week in the first year and one hour per week in the second.

Faculty receiving new or revised SWFs reflecting this settlement are encouraged to contact the union if they have any concerns about the adjustments to their SWFs.
  

For some years now, as far as many faculty are concerned (as indicated in the Employee Attitudes Survey, for example), the  College’s PD department has become increasing marginalized and irrelevant to faculty PD needs.

Aside from the fact that regular faculty teaching schedules leave little time for PD, the PD offerings themselves are of little use.  Courses on "Finding your Personal Clown" somehow didn't quite cut it for faculty who are begging for opportunities to take discipline-specific PD.

While the Seneca PD staff includes people with adult-education qualifications, they are in no position to deliver professional development on subjects such as "New Trends in Family Law" or "Computerized Patient-Treatment Management".  That kind of material can come only from outside professional associations which possess the requisite knowledge and expertise.

The College needs to earmark sufficient funds and time for such tailor-made professional upgrading to ensure that what we teach students is up-to-date, relevant, and useful.
 

The following analogies and metaphors come from high school students’ papers.

• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan might work.
• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances,  like underpants in a dryer without Clingfree.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• Her eyes were limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in a pH cleanser.
• It hurt, the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
• It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
• Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted.
• He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
• The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
• She grew on him like she was a colony of e-coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
• The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge on a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
• He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
• She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 legs missing.

A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large, empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2" in diameter. He then asked his students if the jar was full. They all agreed that it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. Again, they agreed it was.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "Yes."
The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their contents into the jar ? effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the  important things ? your family, your partner, your health, your children ? such that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter - like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else, the small stuff."

 "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party, and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first ? the things that really matter. Set your priorities.
The rest is just sand.

One of the students then inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled: “I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full our life may seem, there's always room for a couple of good beers.”