Barely promoted

New: turnabout

Last night Miss T. paused and sat up in the middle of her nursedown. Grabbed Miss Spider's ABC off the table next to my chair. Flipped through a few pages, then collapsed back down pulling the book with her. Kept one eye, and one hand, on the zebra butterfly as she went on eating.

(Of course, I'm not allowed to read or surf while she's nursing. Not anymore.)

And the consequences were

Last semester, I took a bunch of shortcuts in my teaching—for reasons which should be obvious. I didn't read my student evaluations until today. So:

Reducing my office hours, from the four to six per week typical in my department to just three, in time slots carefully chosen so as to maximize likelihood of student utilization (hint: the day before homework is due), was fine. They still thought I was "extremely" available.

Now, that reduction needs to be put into context (and all you folks at research universities can just start snickering now): I announce the time of the next few office hours at the beginning of every class, and give at least a week's warning of any cancellations. I add an extra two hours the week of an exam. And I also had regular IM hours, which were much beloved by the few students who took advantage of them. Note: on the internet, no one can tell you're nursing.

(I should write a real entry on how to do the IM hours right, actually; the Chronicle piece last year was such unnecessary scaremongering.)

On the other hand, they were unhappy about the grading of non-exam work. Which, for the first time, I had allowed to be done entirely by people other than me.

Also, some of the responses to "difficulty," "enthusiasm," and "organization" questions show they knew I was less engaged. Which wasn't so much that I was putting in fewer hours, but that I was recycling as many course materials as possible. Sometimes the lectures recyled from spring '04 didn't quite match the projects from fall '03 or the exams from spring '02.

Overall: my numbers didn't go up, but they didn't go down either. And I've been here long enough, and taught all of last semester's courses enough times, that there wasn't anything shocking on the evaluations (yes, I should have given them more time for that project assignment, yes, my voice can be too quiet, but my enthusiasm for the subject is deep and, on good days, contagious, yes, you would have learned more if you hadn't fallen asleep in class, and thanks for saying so). I can remember the traumas of my first few semesters of evaluations so vividly; I feel old just getting useful feedback from them. It's just part of the job, now.

The professorette introduces herself

Hi. I'm Emma Jane Maple, of Granolan College. Everyone else has talked about the terrific work they've done and how it relates to underwater basketweaving. Um, I've done some stuff. But it's about something sort of different, and there isn't very much of it, and you'd all laugh, and I'm ashamed of the details, so let me just skip that discussion.

I'm here because my doctoral advisor, Dr. Complicated, and my current collaborator, Dr. Wow, dragooned me into it. Not that either one of them particularly wants to talk to me. But you're all at research universities, and you've all published lots, and you're all smarter than I am and work harder, too. So I don't really blame them. (Although, hey, Dr. Wow, could you at least say "hello" in English? I'm not the only person at the workshop who doesn't speak Russian, you know.)

My primary concerns right now are, well, extracurricular. Where, in this horrible open-plan space, am I going to pump? How is Miss T. doing on her day with dada, and how will she do with a strange sitter tomorrow? Why in the name of God am I attending three days of talks and breakout sessions, to which I have nothing to contribute, when the net result will almost certainly be a baby who cries more than she would have otherwise? And why am I not home working on syllabi and stocking the freezer with lasanga and so forth, when classes are about to start and my blessed beautiful helpful Beaker is about to go into the hospital for an entire month?

What am I hoping to get out of this workshop? A good evening or two visiting the friends I'm staying with. No direct insults from either Dr. Complicated or Dr. Wow. Beaker will get some face time with his bosses; the location was good for him, as it turned out. Oh, and I might hear about some things I could try to work on—although Dr. Zoom up in the front row usually publishes a showstopper paper on any subject I start looking into, about a week after I articulate the questions to myself. (Is it true you're working on a monograph, Dr. Zoom? Perhaps I should just give up now, since it will probably anticipate everything I'll ever try to do in my entire career.)

In closing, let me request that you don't ask me any questions. If I know the answers, then I'm sure you already do too.

The professorette has some bad news

—First off, please observe this summer's required shoe for the early-mid-career academic mommy picking up her infant at daycare:

Yes, you should cry. (The professorette is.)

—Tight ragged jeans are never appropriate for the post-doc attending a conference, no matter how expensive they are. They may be acceptable for a graduate student, but only if she's (a) giving a plenary address or (b) spending the entire meeting standing at the back of talks giggling with her friends.

—The young Turk sitting next to the professorette, the one with his legs spread so wide he took up nearly three little folding chairs? The one with a tense woman of higher academic rank than his on either side, legs compactly crossed? The one making the back row of the talk as welcoming to women as a typical three-quarters-full number 7 train on its way to Flushing? Yeah, him. He was wearing a Daily Kos T-shirt.

Things I found in my grandmother's desk while searching for the deed to my mother's grave

The deed to my great-grandmother's grave (which is in Ohindinois, but several hours away).

Trimmings from my first haircut (Miss T.'s hair is a bit darker, but not much).

A certificate sent by a neighbor after my grandfather's death, declaring his eternal membership in the Silesian Purgatory Society.

Two credit cards, with activation stickers intact (one of them from the scumsuckers at Capital One).

The big-print lists I'd made for my mother after she first got out of the hospital after the bad '97 crackup, telling her when her all her appointments were and why she needed to go to them.

A six-inch-high stack of those address labels that charities send you.

A gift-wrapped dog coat, never opened, meant for my mother's dog (the one we had to send off to "rescue" in 1997).

Two small plastic vials of holy water, sent by charities.

A candle from my baptism (which happened in Pennsylvania, for complicated reasons, and when I was already about 6 months old).

A thank-you letter from the Heritage Foundation.

Five years of payment coupons for her Medigap insurance, apparently not sent in.

Five small planner calendars, and two full-size ones, sent by charities.

The deed to my mother's dog's grave (the one that died in 1995).

Warning

If your baby scratches you in the eye, and it hurts, go see an eye doctor.

If your baby scratches you in the eye, and it hurts, and then a day later it stops hurting, and two weeks later you wake up in the morning and the same eye REALLY hurts, and it feels like there's a giant rock in there, and then the next morning the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENS, ow, ow ow ow, go see an eye doctor.

No, really.