Old faculty re-orientation

What I wish someone had told me when I first started teaching here:

1. Where to park. (Seriously--I was an adjunct, so I was not included in New Faculty Orientation, and the sum total of my instruction in parking was "You can park along any of the streets around campus," which led to my first-ever parking ticket, which I could not well afford on an adjunct's paycheck--which, by the way, has not increased in the entire 15 years since I've been teaching here. I'm grateful I no longer earn an adjunct's paycheck, but why are we still paying today's adjuncts the same amount per course that I earned 15 years ago?)

2. Who was sleeping with whom. (Information that would have made some department-meeting discussions much more transparent.)

3. That colleagues may become friends but they're always colleagues first, and some so-called friends will eagerly sacrifice friendship on the altar of professional advancement. (Social Relations 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

4. The Law of Conservation of Curmudgeonliness on Campus: the minute one career curmudgeon retires, another rises up to take his or her place. (And someday I might become that person!)

5. That some day I would be mourning the loss of a long-lived curmudgeon whose notorious name is totally unknown to my younger colleagues. (Aging 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

6. That the wonderfulness that sometimes happens inside the classroom can make all the outside-the-classroom awfulness worthwhile. Or, to quote a former colleague of mine: "The students! The students!" (He was a little drunk at the time so maybe you had to be there.)