Eventually I'll learn

I had mentioned my dread of this meeting (which is now over) and also my having been blindsided by a very bad meeting that I wasn't expecting back in grad school, and a friend commented, "Once that kind of thing [being blindsided by an unexpected bad meeting] happens to you, it takes a long time to get over it fully."

With me, it may be even more difficult, because, to quote two different people in my life: "You're exceptionally good at dreading things, aren't you?" and "Don't borrow trouble, Erica." (That last from my father. I probably heard it a couple times a month for the 18 or so years I lived with my parents growing up). I have either a genetic (I'd argue genetic, because it showed up early, and also, I think more aspects of our personalities are genetic than we might care to admit) or learned tendency to expect things to be bad in the absence of information clearly to the contrary.

Yeah, to use an internet phrase, "Everything went better than expected." It was just a chit-chat type of meeting, coupled with a "who do you think would be a good candidate for the next chair?" (It threw me a bit that she wanted to meet over that; she had originally sent an e-mail asking for us to e-mail our suggestions.)

I had also been concerned because no one else in the department mentioned being invited to meet with her - but, derp, if she were going in alphabetical order, my surname would be the first one ANYWAY. (And also, a few folks are out of town).

I figured it was a "good" meeting because when I walked into the outer office, she came out of her inner office, all smiles, and said, "THERE she is!" (I was, for the record, a few minutes early.) And the first thing she did was to congratulate me again on the full professorship. (I guess it is kind of a big deal: another friend remarked that I had achieved that at an age some 10 years younger than most of the people she knew in academia.)

My mind had gone to all KINDS of bad places in the dark of night the days before the meeting. Even though the most potentially-embarrassing photograph of me on the internet is one I took myself, as a joke, of me (fully dressed) with a pancake on my head. And that when I Google search my name, 90% of what comes up that's linked directly to ME (and not another woman by the same name) is papers I've written, and the remaining 10% is pretty innocuous.

And my other big worry: that there'd been some kind of complaint against me, well, that probably would have involved HR more than her, or my department chair would have spoken to me first, or whatever.

And it wasn't even an arm-twisting session of "This person suggested you as the new chair and I REALLY WANT YOU TO DO IT." (I did subtly - or, *I* think, subtly, sometimes my "subtle hint" is something that flies over other people's heads - hint that I do not want it because of the volume of field research I do)

Then again: blessed are the pessimists, for they shall often be pleasantly surprised. Or something like that.

So now it's done. And four more of the soil samples have been gone through to find the remaining invertebrates in them. (I think I'll try to do three or four more tomorrow, as well: I want to get these done and also, I find I'm happier when I spend part of the day working on something and part of the day relaxing, than if I spend a whole big day working and then a whole big day relaxing.)