Category Archives: dealing with life

What’s next?

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Drowning. I feel like I’m drowning.

A decision has been made, and I’m headed for new territory next year.

Meanwhile, the work here and now stays piled up. I need to make forward progress.

If you had to move across the country, what would you keep? What would you get rid of? What would you want to do differently?

I do want to down-size. I do not want a complicated yard to take care of. I do want to be able to hire help for housekeeping. I want to simplify. But, of course, there are also many things I probably don’t want to give up. I have to, though, and I think the advice I got from a friend to leave as much of it behind as possible is good.

A new start. So start new. Start where you want to be, if you can figure out where that is. I’m not sure yet, and I know it is a long road and a lot of work in front of me to get there. Do one thing every day to make progress, and, in theory, I will get there.

First, though, I have to manage the end of the semester. I’m behind in my class, and it is time to triage what I am going to do and what I am not going to do. I just hope that whatever I do is good enough.

And second, I’ve been under an immense amount of stress for months. This might not end today. Or soon. But it would sure be nice if I could get it under some semblance of control so I was sleeping better. Better rest = better productivity, and I need it.

Third, I have gotten to doing some calisthenics: pushups, planks, crunches, arm exercises at home. In short bursts. It’s an epsilon, but an epsilon that I need to make myself stronger. I am grateful for the start.

Fourth, I weed-and-fed the lawn today. One more small chore accomplished. The stuff didn’t say it needed to be watered in, but if I’m right, we should have rain within 48 hours. Here’s to a nicer lawn while selling my house. I am grateful for another small chore accomplished.

I need sleep. Soon. Now. No better time than the present. Good night all.

Decision Made

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It is done. A decision is made. Dr. Jinx is leaving the world of non-tenure track faculty, and entering the world of tenure-track faculty at a school that emphasizes and values teaching, but that still has a scholarship requirement and encourages scholarship. May I find my way to productivity in teaching and in scholarship while I am there.

I am happy to have this decision made; knowing an 11th hour offer from another school with some really good policies was coming maybe on time and maybe not wasn’t helping matters. Talk about being pulled in multiple directions, wondering what the right thing to do is. It was good that I’d made a rubric for evaluating schools earlier; when my mentor told me to go home and apply it, it became clear that the 11th hour offer was unlikely to be enough to overcome the other issues that school presented. And it didn’t — the salary was barely above my other offer for a city with cost of living that is about 1.5 times greater than where I am or would be moving too. Not a deal.

I am sad that they scrambled to put the offer together when I had to reject it, but I did tell them what my other offer was and that the cost of living was comparable to my current home town.

Now I just hope that I can get some sleep and get started on the next things that need to be accomplished. Hopefully my anxiety and stress will go down now that I know where I am headed. Now maybe I can do a better job of concentrating on my teaching and research and do a better job with both. Oh, and all those pesky service tasks I need to chase after (ugh).

I am happy. I am scared. I am happy. Concentrate on happy. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

Queasy

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More interviews. An offer that I successfully negotiated to a point where I am comfortable/happy about taking it. A major teaching award.

I should be over the moon happy, but reality is that mostly, I’ve just been queasy and anxious. That seems ungrateful, even to me, but there it is.

The teaching award really put me in a funk for about a week. I think it brought home the idea that you really can be doing outstanding work, and, if you are not a tenure-track or tenured person in our department, you are still not really valued by the department.

Looking at it from another perspective, and this is the one I would like to get fixed firmly in my head, this award represents how much I’ve meant to my students. One in particular. The students wrote letters for me. They are telling me that I made a difference, sometimes a big difference, in their lives. I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to teach them and for the trust that they put in me. I am honored and grateful to be able to make that difference. I hope they know that they, too, have made a difference in my life.

On the job offer, I negotiated the salary to the point where I thought it was advantageous enough to me financially. The department chair himself told me to negotiate as hard as I could, and I did. It appears I pushed them as hard on salary as I could, hopefully while being polite, supportive, feminine — all the things women are required to be. Shouldn’t I be proud of that? So why do I feel kind of squicky about it now? Is it just that negotiating and asking for what you want is acting out of character for women? Is it the chilling news about the negotiation at Nazareth College that resulted in a rescinded job offer? I’m certainly familiar with the literature on women and negotiating, and that literature certainly makes it clear that often you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

That little voice in my head asks me if I have damaged relationships with colleagues by taking the chair at his word and asking for more than was offered. That little voice in my head says I was just doing what I am supposed to do. And it also says that life is not fair. My challenge is to find some peace and some path through all the things the little voice says.

Last the interviews. It was pretty obvious that the first school I interviewed at recently wasn’t as interesting as my current offer. The other one I liked a lot, but there are both perks and red flags with the position. First, the teaching load is lower. Second, they have a nice system of course buy-outs for pre-tenure faculty, even though they are a teaching school. Third, they are a department of 5 faculty nearing retirement, all of whom are greatly motivated to mentor me towards success. On the down side: the school has had financial problems in recent years. No raises. At one point, no contributions to the retirement fund for either a semester or year. There are reasons to believe it is on a healthier track. Things to seem to be getting better. On the other hand, there are also reasons to worry.

In any case, I find it unlikely they can get an offer together before I have to respond to the one I have.

It looks like a big decision is coming on Friday or later today to move to a new school and start a new position as a tenure-track assistant professor. I wish I felt less scared about it all, but big changes, even good changes, bring up a lot of anxiety. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to stay. The only way is forward. There will be many very difficult moments ahead, but that would be true no matter what. As Lois McMaster Bujold writes,

Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

Onward.

Fear and Flashbacks and Moving Forward

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Eleanor Roosevelt says that you should

Do one thing every day that scares you.

I don’t know how I’m doing on the one-a-day count, but I know that in this past academic year, I’ve addressed a lot of things that have terrified me.

  • Going on the job market.
  • Deciding to go after tenure-track positions, which required me to write a research statement. I didn’t think I could. I was afraid to try. But I did it.
  • The interviews themselves have scared me on and off. Sometimes more confident, sometimes more shaky.
  • Dealing with my home department and its problems. There are people in that department whose lack of anger management and general fairness creates a hostile and intimidating environment.
  • Having to raise issues outside the department and within, to face these problems.
  • Dealing with people who are acting in an obstructionist manner.
  • Needing to go back to authorities within the university about even more blatant diversity and climate issues.

And I have gotten through most of that, though some is still pending. With a ton of discouragement, and not a lot of confidence. I have kept moving forward, nevertheless.

But tomorrow … tomorrow we open a job negotiation. I remind myself that we should be on the same side. But last spring’s fiasco has left me with anything but confidence on that point.

I am dealing with things that I am not sure are major enough to be called flashbacks, but they are like flashbacks. I am suddenly back in that emotional space where nothing I can do or say will change anything, I am not being supported by the person closest to me, and I am scared and paralyzed. I feel the obligation to say the right thing to make things go right, but I know that you cannot make unreasonable people reasonable. That is beyond my super-powers.

What if this happens again? I don’t want to stay where I am. I will not go somewhere that isn’t treating me right. What if we end up in the grey zone of uncertainty? Then how do I deal? What if I say the wrong thing or don’t deal with things perfectly?

And that’s ridiculous. I don’t have to be perfect. Neither does that dean have to be perfect. We both just have to be good enough. We both just have to want to make a deal that is good for the school and good for me, then work on what exactly that is.

Well, at least this time, I cannot lose a significant other over what happens. Right?

A principles/ideas of the negotiation:

We all want me to accept this job offer, and bring what I have to the school. This negotiation is about making that happen.

Tools that can be used:

  1. Figure out our common goals and priorities.
  2. Ask why the other person has whatever stance they have.
  3. Generate alternative ideas that might help with the problem. This can involve hiring me with a different title, for example.
  4. How can funds get best used to further everyone’s goals?
  5. Find out from others some details on start-up packages.
  6. I don’t have to respond to anything immediately. “I need some time to think about that.”
  7. If offered a salary that is obviously too low, the pregnant pause and, “That was lower than I was expecting/Is less than I am making now.”
  8. Find somewhere that we can have success together.

That’s the basics of what I can do. On the rest I have to trust.

A friend reminded,

Fear is a sign of profound opportunity.

And that goes along with a corollary,

Make the most of the opportunity in front of you.

Tumult

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It’s been a tumultuous week, not all of which I can even discuss yet.

Yesterday was perhaps the apex, with news that a job offer from my first choice school is pending. I wrote about my worries before the interview, but they knocked that out of the ballpark. I still had some concerns about the size of the community, but having seen a few more places and having more time to think about it leads me back to the thought that the signs and portents are good.

I’m still worried about negotiating out the financials. I want to take a step forward in my career, and that certainly includes a step forward in compensation. In moving from industry to academia, I took a big hit financially. I want to say that from here it is only fair to have forward momentum, but there is no fair in this world. But, fact, I want to have better compensation at my new job than at my old. That is part of what makes me want to move forward.

Of course, the whacked out, dysfunctional world of the old department makes staying there feel untenable or uncomfortable at best. I pressure myself, and a few others have also pressured me to find a way to make the current situation acceptable. This makes me want to scream and cry like a small child. Surely, surely, surely, I’ve tried. At an extreme cost to me in stress, distraction, and time. The response has been that I’m a special case. That we don’t want to address the situation head on, we want to see if it settles down. We don’t think my concerns represent a larger problem. And that is the larger problem. If every sign of a problem is just an individual little thing, then it is easy to dismiss each one. And that’s what I’ve been seeing again and again and again.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is to stop beating your head against the wall. My head hurts. I’m tired of beating my head against the wall. I will ask my department if they want to make a counter offer, but the rest is on them.

I know I should greet all of this with gladness, but tonight, I have just felt distraught and sad. I’m up in the middle of the night having trouble sleeping, and I know I need the rest. Too much stress, bad or good, can overwhelm a person, and that’s me right now. I want some safe place to be.

I’m trying to find words to comfort myself, but they just aren’t coming.

The closest I can come is to give it a few days. To get some good rest (which is laughable when I am up in the middle of the night). To trust the process, as I’ve said so many times. Good things are happening. I hope I can start to feel good about them.

Things you can fix, things you can’t

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I was talking to a friend earlier today.

There are things you can fix. There are things you can’t.

You know how someone can have a problem with himself or herself, but blames you for it. That is not a problem that can be fixed. That is a problem that you have to run away from.

Lately my world seems full of problems. One question I am always asking myself: what did I do to cause this? And a lot of the time I just don’t know. Keeping silent doesn’t seem right. Speaking up seems to go nowhere. Should I say things differently? If so how?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Lean in to the discomfort and learn from it. I am trying. I don’t know what the lesson is, but it seems to be that there are a lot of things I can’t fix. A lot of things no one can fix.

Life is a lot of suffering. The lesson seems to be that we have to make peace with the suffering. Somehow. It is so hard.

What comfort and happiness can I bring to others in all this? What thanks can I give, what help can I give, what kindness can be accomplished? I think the only route I have for accepting the pain is trying to find some way to make it better, even just a little, for the people in my life.

Be Your Own Hero

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I returned exams on Tuesday. Wednesday brought a steady stream of discouraged visitors to discuss performance in the class and on the exam. “This class is abstract, and I’m not comfortable with abstraction.” “This class is difficult.” “I just can’t seem to get it, and I am working so hard.”

What do I say? Sometimes I want to ask, “Well, why haven’t I seen you in office hours before now? Now that you are here, how about you open your book and start working on some linear algebra?” In reality, I find myself saying, “Yes, the class is abstract, but one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox is the power of abstraction. You have to learn to think of matrices as mathematical objects, and vectors as mathematical objects that have rules for manipulation that we can follow, rather than visualizing a rectangle of numbers or a magnitude and direction in 3-space. If you aren’t getting this, something needs to change.” I can make a list for you (and sometimes I do), the top of it is put serious effort into doing and understanding the homework as it is assigned (which has been mentioned many times so far this semester), but you, Dear Student, have to be the one to carry out the actions and the plan.

I am both amazed and not amazed at how few have their books open before talking to me about their grade, and how many leave immediately after, never opening up that book to take advantage of the time and opportunity to work some of the linear algebra that is causing the difficulty.

Thursday I decided to bring the topic of discouragement up in class as an opening activity. What would you say to someone who is discouraged, specifically a classmate who feels that the material is abstract and hard and arbitrary and meaningless? Or someone who is just discouraged about something in general?

What did they come up with?

  1. Keep trying, don’t stop.
  2. Hope is needed for hard work.
  3. Forgive yourself and get to work.
  4. Pray.
  5. Take a step back. Take baby steps forward. Figure out what you know and go from there.
  6. There’s always a solution and always people willing to help you out.
  7. Spring break is coming!
  8. You are not alone, find support from others.

Two and three and five and six and eight, those are some good profound thoughts.

I admitted that this was on my mind for personal reasons as well. I am dealing with discouragement and frustration, though not with regards to our class or my teaching. I contributed some wisdom from what I’m currently reading, Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart. She advises us to

Lean in to your discomfort, and learn from it.

That is what I am trying to do with my situation. And it is hard. But with abstraction and confusion, that’s where you’ve got to go to make sense. Lean in to your discomfort.

What surprises me most about this discussion is the impact. I find it mentioned in notes written on the back of the quiz we took Thursday. In emails from students received over the weekend. One that included a link to this video, passed on to her by her father, full of wisdom and a change of perspective:

http://leanin.org/education/be-your-own-hero/

Does it make a difference to talk about it, to waste valuable class time on something other than math? I hope so. Especially since that quiz had some disappointing results, indicating we need to buckle down and figure this out. I know it’s tough to learn this stuff, to learn how to think differently. But that’s our job here, this semester.

One foot in front of the other

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Some days you feel stronger.

And some days you end discouraged. I know bureaucracies protect their own and are extremely resistant to change. I know that speaking up is not likely to result in much change. But seeing it in action just takes the wind out of my sails. I wonder if I should bother with the other next steps I can see before me. Or just shut up, as the universe seems to be telling me. Shut up and take it. Or shut up and leave. Don’t care. Don’t bother.

Hard for me to not care and not bother. But even I get discouraged sometimes.

So it’s the second option for me today.

clouds

Clouds in the distance.

I saw two students I much care for this evening. One at the seminar. And one that I taught several years ago. I didn’t even recognize her, although as soon as she said her major, I knew her name. I wrote her a letter of recommendation. She just happened to be in a room where we interrupted to see if anyone wanted any of our leftover pizza.

One thing that was definitely good about today and brought smiles was making students happy with the leftover pizza.

One thing that was good about today was lunch with my friend. And the tale of mayhem, that I know was excruciatingly stressful at the time, but Oh My Gosh, Can You Believe that Really Happened? I hope he is finding it funnier as the days go by. And I hope that the authorities involved are taking steps to make sure this does not happen again.

One thing that was good about today is that I took the car, and I didn’t have to bike home at 9:30 pm.

One thing that was good about today was that another instructor used one of my ideas to encourage her students and cheer herself up.

One thing that was good about today is that judges in both Texas and Arizona said no to laws that discriminate against gay people. Texas! And Arizona! Imagine that.

One thing that is good about today … is that I’m about to head to bed.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a very small voice at the end of the day that says, “I will try again tomorrow.” — Mary Ann Radmacher

Stronger

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I’m feeling better after Sunday’s post. Stronger. Less like a crime victim. More powerful. More capable. Less like I had the crap kicked out of me. And that’s a good thing.

We had an REU meeting on Monday. I walked in, looked them in the eye and said “Good afternoon.” Including to you-know-who. You can be an asshole, and you can hurt me, but you cannot keep me down. It may have started as the PIs meeting, but by the end it was clear that it was my meeting. I’m the one who knows what’s going on and what needs to be done. I’m grateful for that ass-kicking attitude when it shows up at just the right time.

Fractal Tree

An amazing fractal tree.

I am grateful for a friend who suggested I could get a copy of our REU grant proposal from the office of research services. I did. Now I just have to read the 67 page beast and see what it says about the role of the co-principal investigator.

I’m grateful for plans for lunch tomorrow with a former student who has become a friend.

I am grateful to everyone who came to check on me last Wednesday, successful or not. One downside to shutting your door because you are feeling crappy is that you miss the people who come by to comfort you. Thank you all.

I am grateful that I could comfort a student last Wednesday after another instructor (in another department) said some cruel and hurtful things. I’m not grateful for the cruel and hurtful things. I’m not grateful for his pain. But I am grateful that I could be present for those few moments, to sit next to him on the floor in Blocker, to hold his hand, and remind him of what I saw of him in my class. Those small moments of grace where comforting another reminds you of who you are, no matter how hard someone else knocked you down earlier in the day.

I’m grateful to have exams graded and handed back.

I’m grateful for finding music I like on Spotify to add to my playlists. I’m trying to join the modern world of music appreciation!

I am grateful for student reflections on their exams. I am looking forward to reading those. How many points should I give them?

I’m grateful for sunny days and bicycle rides. Trees that turn into these amazing complicated fractals in the wintertime. And clouds. There’s always a new cloud.

I’m grateful to know how to sew on buttons. Especially since several have come off recently.

One step at a time, one day at a time. Things move forward. Things come together. And things fall apart. My job is to keep my spirits up. To love the people in front of me, as best I can. To promote a more human environment for my students, for my colleagues, for myself. To look at and speak up about the elephants in the room. To hold myself with grace, speak with grace, act with grace, and to be grateful when grace appears for me, unbidden and unexpected.

Bruised all over

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I think the title says it all about how I feel about last week and its meetings. I feel like I was mugged and beaten, and the signs should show all over my body. In reality, all the damage is to the soul, all invisible, except for those who look closely.

I know I’ll heal. I knew this might hurt. I knew I might get nowhere. This feels like nowhere. Or marginal progress towards anywhere.

So what happened? First, I hope I don’t have to justify to anyone here why I involved the faculty ombudsperson. After all the misunderstandings I’ve had with the department over my job duties, when it appears that now we have a new one, I went to her and asked her to attend the meetings with me. This was, I think, a good thing overall. Documentation!

One conversation I needed to have was with the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) grant. I am the co-Principal Investigator. I always thought that made me co-responsible for the program. I’ve got a lot of good qualifications and successes with undergraduates and research, and it was logical that’s why I was asked to be involved with the program.

I’ve heard third hand reports of a meeting the PI had with the department chair discussing my position with the REU and credit I should get for the position. Some of what I heard did not match with my understanding. It’s not fair to just get angry. You have to ask the other person their side.

Perhaps he was offended that the ombudsperson was there. Perhaps I offended him. I don’t know. But when I told him I was hearing stories about this conversation and wanted to know what was going on directly from him, he replied with a hostile, “That was a private conversation and I will not discuss it.” Private my ass when I’ve heard about it third hand. But that was certainly a conversation stopper, or hook, and I was hooked and off balance from it.

Things didn’t improve from there. The conversation felt hostile to me. The ombudsperson felt that the PI was apathetic and ambivalent about the REU, rather than hostile. In the course of the conversation, I discovered my duties during the year consisted of nothing more than

  1. Assembling the applications from students.
  2. Sending out acceptance and rejection letters.
  3. Arranging dormitory accommodations for the students.
  4. Sending them an informational email about College Station and TAMU.
  5. Arranging a get-together every other week in the program with lunch.
  6. Arranging for them to give their final presentations.

I was flabbergasted. I confirmed that list more than once to make sure I got that down correctly.

I’ve been doing a hell of a lot more than that. No wonder we want to devalue my contribution if this is all the contribution that is expected. I made sure to clarify that in his mind my performance would be considered excellent — by him — if I did nothing more than that. Yes.

I asked about all of the other expectations that have been placed on me, usually in the form of statements of what my predecessor in the position did. I got dressed down for not, until now, formally requesting a list of expected duties. No, instead I asked, “What needs to be done?” I asked, “How can I help?” I asked, “What is expected here?”

Let’s notice something else about this list. This list is entirely secretarial. And presented to a woman Ph.D. — the only such involved with the program — who has a solid track record in mentoring undergraduate students in research. How insulting can you get?

The last issue I will discuss is whether I was asked to bring a research project into the program last summer. I recall that I asked what needs to be done to find research problems for our group. I was told some came from the PI and his collaborators, but that my predecessor usually brought statistics related projects in and mentored those. This set me up for the expectation that I should do this too, and I busted my ass to make it happen. I mentored two students solo. I was informed by the PI that I had done this voluntarily, for my own professional development. I am sure I commented that I thought it would be good for my professional development to try to do this, but that’s not where I recall us starting from.

The fact is, that I felt obligated to figure out how to get this done, and at a fairly high cost to myself, I did.

It has done me good in the long run, but ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

I walked out of that meeting, back to my office, asked the ombudsperson to please shut the door. I buried my head in my hands, and I started sobbing.

I had less than 20 minutes to pull myself together and get to my next meeting, with the department chair, who seemed rather unconcerned about my report of this previous meeting.

This is still bothering me. Greatly. I have a meeting with all the REU mentors on Monday and I am trying to figure out how to handle it.

With my head held high, and with professionalism. Obviously. But I’d rather hide in my closet.

It was hard to sit there and listen to someone devalue me professionally like that. Especially after the incident this past spring. When I know I’ve been trying my guts out to help, to do what’s right, to do it well. And when I realize I’ve not been given resources my predecessor had to get the job done. I did do it well. I did a fantastic job. Then to find out the job requirements are so minimal and different from what I thought I was supposed to do, and all that other stuff is considered “volunteer work”. I know I was asking good questions. I know I didn’t go into this with a cautious, document everything, legal mindset. I trusted that we all had a common goal we were working for.

Common goals aside, apparently it is more important to put a lecturer in her place than to make sure this program runs well. I’m disappointed in the PI. Disappointed in the department. And disappointed that my internal radar didn’t give me warning that I was dealing with people who are untrustworthy.

This is yet another reason why I don’t want to stay at Texas A&M. Dammit, you idiots. I have done so much for you. Is it too much to ask that you value me accordingly? Good luck finding my replacement.