Still too busy of a week though after today I think things ease up a little. I did my early alert reports, I've already done the job-candidate assessment, I'm going to look at the scholarship letters today, and I've set up my lab (the only class I teach today) for today.
I do have Elders' and Board Meeting tonight and supposedly there's a ministerial search committee report and I admit my anxiety is up a little, every time we do this (too many times in the past 15 years) I worry that the state leadership is going to go "what are you thinking? You are too small, you need to close" though since a couple of the women who were on the committee were at CWF Monday night and I could detect no concern/sadness and we were making plans for at least the next month or so, maybe that worry is unfounded.
But yeah, I think all the events of last fall have triggered the old anxiety I had about "things are just a few inches away from totally falling apart." Back in the early 2000s and even the early 2010s, that fear kind of ebbed away for a bit, but since 2016 (with the budget cuts) it's come back. I'll be glad when the meeting is over tonight. I HOPE the search committee report is "we have a couple candidates we are looking at in more detail" even though the mostly-layperson filling the pulpit now is good, he has another full-time job, and I canNOT IMAGINE. It must be very wearing on him; I couldn't do it.
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Also a reminder to myself: I have to make a batch of the jam bars Friday afternoon. Long story short but: someone who was a former member (part of their family was with the group that left during the split, but whatever) passed away and their son has asked to hold the funeral at our church (they have a minister in the family who will be doing the funeral). At first, they wanted no food, but I thought (and said) at CWF meeting: "I bet they change their minds on that"
They did. I don't need to go and serve - already said I was too busy this time - but the person in charge of lining up food asked if I could do a dessert and I offered those because most people like them and they are simple but look nice.
The person who died was only 46. I *think* I remember them but it's been a long time. I do not think I am going to the funeral though. If it's who I think it was, we weren't close, I haven't seen them in 15+ years and....I'm just not up for sitting through a funeral right now.
I feel slightly guilty about that but whatever
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And there are bad/weird news stories out there.
Semi-locally: A prof at OU (the law school, maybe? I think?), when confronted with the "OK, Boomer" meme, said "that's like calling someone a [n-word]"
Yes, there were a couple African American students in the class.
Cue me drawing my breath in sharply in horror.
Look, people say LOTS of things to me as a prof that I don't like, that annoy or wound me. But a big part of it is "conceal, don't feel." You have to be the bigger person and not show you're offended, and definitely not offend what were probably innocent parties in the process.
Yes, "but mah freedom of speech" but also exercising freedoms sometimes carries consequences. We have freedom but we also have the responsibility to use that freedom well. (I police my own speech pretty hard these days. Not that I'd ever remotely say a word like THAT; I doubt I've ever said THAT in my entire life. But there are other things that can be hurtful that are less of a bright line you are crossing)
Anyway. The cynical side of me says: guy gets offered early retirement, he takes it, and all the rest of the profs have to attend lots of extra diversity and sensitivity training. 'Cos that's how it works on college campuses now; the many pay for the sins of the few.
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And universities/colleges are not covering themselves in glory this week. There's a mindboggling (to me) report that at Sarah Lawrence, a student moved her dad (an ex con) into her dorm room (!) where he set up an MLM/cult/sex-trafficking operation (allegedly). And this went on for a while with no one supposedly knowing.
Frankly, college campuses are small hothouses. There's a LOT of gossip that goes on so I am wondering if this chap greased a number of palms in order NOT to get reported.
The other thing that amazes and horrifies me in this: I am what is called a 'required reporter.' I have had it drummed WELL into my head that if a student reveals to me evidence that they are being abused by a partner or even just a "date," I must report it. I am not just morally bound to do that, but legally. (I am allowed to warn the student: I am a required reporter and if you reveal evidence of abuse I must report it, though I think in some cases it's too late to say that by the time you realize maybe you should).
I would literally be legally liable if one of my students was being sex-trafficked, I knew, and I didn't tell the Title IX/legal guy. (Even beside, as I said, the moral liability - what I owe to the student)
So I am just shaking my head about "how could this happen" and I can only think "bribery and perhaps intimidation." I don't even know. It's a strange old world and I hope the young women involved in that get the help they need to recover.
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What I quoted earlier about how compliance culture in bureaucracies poses a heavy burden on those who try to comply but apparently an opportunity for those who would flout them and scam the system.
It's just like leadership, in a way: I was trained up in what is called (at least in certain Protestant churches) the "servant leadership" model, and leading ANYTHING is exhausting to me because I worry so much about "am I doing the right thing for the largest number of people" even if it's not what *I* want, but all too often now it seems people who get into leadership roles make it about consolidating power and grabbing perks for themselves. I know the few times I had "power" (as a committee chair, as president of an organization) I was all too happy to give it up and I would much rather do something like being recording secretary which, while it is WORK, at least is work where you don't worry about the consequences of your decisions for the group.
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Yesterday was apparently Women in STEM day on Twitter and some of the ways it was promoted raises my hackles.
And yes, I probably can't even really claim to BE a scientist any more; I barely do any research; 85% of my on-the-job time is spent involved with teaching in some way and 15% is committeework stuff.
But again and again, I saw tweets about "being a badass woman in science," or "being a rockstar" or things like that and it makes me very tired for several reasons.
First: I can't be badass or a rockstar. One of my friends on Twitter suggested "session musician scientist" instead - as in, the steady, reliable person, who is good at their job but not flashy, and whose work helps the rockstars shine, maybe. And yeah. That's more like me.
But I still don't like the image. I don't like how our culture pushes the "rockstar" or "superstar" or "badass" narrative all the time. I'm old and tired and uncool. Even when I was younger and more idealistic, I wasn't a rockstar. I'm not even sure I ever thought such a thing was possible of me when I was at my most inexperienced and most exuberant about my abilities. I don't like the image in part because it excludes people like me or dismisses the contributions of people who aren't rockstars. And really, 99% of us AREN'T and it annoys me to divide the world into "rockstars" and "don't even bother trying," which is what I hear.
Also, the thing is: "rockstar," in my mind, implies someone who is a bit of a glory-grabber, someone who promotes the idea of "I did this all myself" and in most cases? Highly successful research requires a lot of collaboration. It's not just because I'm at a small school, have no time, and am somewhat limited in my abilities that I only do very small research: I don't really have anyone to collaborate with and except for a couple of student collaborations, most of my trying-to-work-with-someone has led to grief; either they grabbed what they could use out of our unfinished research and used it in their OWN writing where I did not get credited, or I did most of the work and then the project died, or we couldn't coordinate schedules and the project died.
And yes, I feel bad about not doing more research. I tell myself that if I were teaching at a community college it would not matter because I would be EXPECTED to only teach and never research, and my schedule right now - 4 classes a semester, 5 this semester if you include Directed Readings - approaches what a community college prof does.
But still.
The other thing about rockstars is what I've said before: we don't need more rockstars in this world. As I commented on Twitter: when all you have is rockstars, all you get is broken guitars and trashed hotel rooms. And someone has to clean that up. And yes, ideally the person who trashed the hotel room would be the one made to clean it up, but....when you have a lot of people figuratively trashing hotel rooms and only a few people cleaning them up, those people doing the cleaning get awfully tired.
The other problem for me personally with the badass/rockstar narrative is it makes me feel very "less than." That what I'm doing isn't good enough because it doesn't qualify as "badass research" or anything like that. And yes, there is VERY much a bias in some corners of academia that "teaching should be secondary or even tertiary to research, and if you care about teaching you are a chump and a loser" and having BEEN at an R1 school for a while, it's hard for me not to have absorbed that a little bit. And a common way of being for me is me asking myself "what's wrong with you, why aren't you better" and of course the fact that I tend to "privilege" my teaching over doing research (even though really teaching is what I was hired to do and how I earn my pay) makes me wonder if I'm lacking somehow.
So yeah. I didn't really participate in "Women in STEM" day, and not just because I have a locked-down account only my followers see.
I mean, really, in retrospect: my career is not that different from my dad's. He did more research and he was at schools where there were more grad students (and much more support for them, and for people mentoring them), but fundamentally he focused on teaching when he was teaching and I don't even know.
One of the problems I think with the "be a model 'minority'" (even if women are really NOT a minority in botany/ecology any more) mindset is that there is the push that you always have to do so much MORE than a "majority" person would, because you have to "show up the haters" and all that and I'm just so tired.
And just generally so tired of feeling like everyone, everywhere, every time, is telling me what I "should" be doing. Kind of in a way like the little red hen, where all the animals were "too busy" to help her work, but as soon as she took the bread she baked out of the oven, there they were, wanting a slice of it. The problem with being told what you 'should' do is it's usually by people not lifting a finger to help you, or to make things easier for you to achieve what you "should" be doing.
Odd thought: I wonder if the prof accused of using a racial slur in his class was regarded as a "rockstar" earlier in his career....As I've said before, the world doesn't need more rockstars, it needs more kind people who are sensitive to the feelings of people in their vicinity.
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