One of the things I came in to work today to do is to write up my "faculty development plan." We do these every year - they are a list and catalog of things we've done in the past year, and also sometimes we list areas where we want to improve. There is a whole rubric of things we are "supposed" to have done that we can pick and choose from.
And, I don't know. Some of the things, like "will always meet office hours" seems kind of, well, silly to me. I list it, because the whole thing is part of a game, part of a dance. But I feel like if I routinely skipped out on office hours* I would not be doing my job and would not be worthy of my tenure. But I guess some people do? I guess that's why we would occasionally receive e-mails - which I always found maddening because I interpreted them as nagging - reminding us to whole our whole ten hours of office hours per week.
*(There have been times when I had some minor household issue requiring a work-person to come in, and I would find myself dithering - do I cancel office hours so I can get my air conditioning fixed? Is it okay for me to skip out early so I can get the drain line unplugged? I admit, if it's a "mission critical" thing (e.g., not having a functional toilet) I cancel office hours, but if it's something like getting a socket rewired, I wait and try to find a time that I am neither in class nor in office hours - which can be difficult)
And, I don't know. I always feel like I could do "more." I strive to return papers the next class meeting but I could write more comments on the exams rather than going over them so extensively. Then again, what about that group of students who looks at the number at the top and then ignores everything else? Writing comments in that case is like spitting into the wind. And I also admit, I could give more essay-type exams, but I have some people with atrocious, illegible handwriting (usually far too small) and it is painful to try to read their essays. And also with larger classes, grading is very labor intensive for an all-essay exam. (Not to mention dealing with the complaints).
Also, this year I am striving to do less cut-and-pasting of narrative than I once did - formerly, I could recycle blocks of text from the previous year's plan with minor changes but we are now going to some kind of three-year cycle where our previous three years' documents are going to be scrutinized, and I don't want to risk getting dinged for being too repetitive....I don't know. Maybe everyone does that and I'm just overthinking it, and taking the time to write blocks of new narrative is counterproductive.
I don't know. I like being in a 'good' department where we really don't have anyone who is "deadwood" or who drags their feet or who refuses to do anything extra. But it also sets the bar really high and leads me to doubting myself a lot. (I once speculated that the fact there was no "deadwood" in my department may have meant I was it).
I hate these kind of reflect-over-the-past-year things because I see all the places I fell down, all the places I didn't do something I could have done....could have stayed down here over most of Christmas and worked on research. Could have declined teaching an overload and worked on research. Could have volunteered for more committees. Could have chosen a new textbook and therefore done all new teaching for a class. Could have volunteered for the "Online Experiment" of teaching.....I don't know. I lack a good metric of what is "enough" and so I always feel like I'm kind of inadequate. Part of the reason of my fear of something very bad happening here (us having to close for some budgetary reason) is that I fear I haven't done enough to stay current, haven't done enough to be a "superstar" (i.e.: had too much of a life outside of work) and that will make me unemployable in any kind of permanent position. And I realize that's PROBABLY not true, but I also know a number of talented, smart, good teachers who are teaching at three different schools as adjuncts, barely making what would amount to a full-time wage, and having to buy their own health insurance on the exchanges because adjuncting doesn't carry benefits with it. (And another thing a lot of schools have done: to game the system, they have cut the maximum "allowed working hours" of adjuncts back to 29 per week, so they stay under the threshold of being able to employ WITHOUT benefits....which means a lot of people wind up dealing with the fallout of that)
I don't know. I am not good at looking at what I have done in any kind of objective way. All I can see are the flaws in it or the stuff I didn't get done. I think one of the reasons I say some of the crazy stuff I say is I want someone, anyone, to respond with "What? No! You're awesome, you're excellent at what you do" because I have a hard time believing it about myself.
That's pathetic, I know. And I don't know where it came from but there you are.
So I hate doing these things and I kind of hate all the things that are aiming towards more and more and more self-assessment or more "evaluation" on a more regular schedule because that just means I don't get to stuff that part of my brain that tells me I'm horribly inadequate in a closet quite so much.
I'm also just not, as I said, good at the "game" or "dance" part of this. I look at the line about "will hold office hours every week" or whatever and go, "But of course a person does that; they're supposed to do that, they shouldn't claim in any way that they are 'good' because they do that - they shouldn't claim 'goodness' for doing what they are expected to do!" (And this is where I have to tell the literal-minded part of me to shut up a little and just play along, because this is apparently how it works).
But being an adult is frustrating some times.
1 comment:
I've been critical of professors who shirk office hours, but still, 10 hours a week seems like A LOT. Perhaps it seems like a lot to me because I'm just basing it on my undergrad and grad schools, which were more research focused and the required office hours were from 1 to 3 hours, depending on the school.
(Office hours themselves, I think, are kind of weird requirements. It's often easier and better to meet with students by appointment because the hours might not fit the students' schedule (I assume that's less of a problem if you hold 10 hours instead of 1, though), or because the times when one student is likely to come in are often the times that most students are likely to come in, and in order to give each student good attention during such "rush" periods, it's necessary to make appointments anyway.)
At my current job, we have yearly evaluations, due in May, and I have to fill out a form that's probably a similar process to yours (but we haven't done a 3-year thing yet). I'm still relatively new--it's my second year filling out such forms--but when I filled out my last one, I carefully noted my "goals" from the prior form and discussed whether or not or how much I fulfilled them. And some goals I didn't meet. But my supervisor told me just to talk about my accomplishments and not about what I didn't do. Which makes sense, but it felt a little dishonest. Still, I'm also very contingent (full time, but "visiting"), and every good thing helps.
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