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I just came home for going to dinner after school with some colleagues to find a message from my college's tenure committee. I opened it expecting to be told I got tenure, but then to my dismay found that it was not so. I wasn't denied tenure, either. I've been asked to return to address some negative comments on some of my evaluations in a special meeting expected to take place during Spring Break and set aside only for that topic.
I'm disappointed, but not that surprised. I had negative comments on some of my evaluations when I got tenure at Drake University. There was one that actually just said "Fire him! Fire him! Fire him now!" in letters three inches high. Back then, as now, such comments were strong, but in the minority, and weren't ever taken seriously. Here at my community college this time around, though, they are, and I don't know how to respond to the difference.
Despite those student comments on some evaluations, I've done good work here in the past 5 years and I've grown a lot. I realize this is academic politics and that's never fair. Hence the title of a novel years ago was "Murder in a Tenured Position."
The problem now is my age and how that damages my marketability. I want to consider my fight or flight PTSD response wisely. If I "fight" the committee to stay and get tenure and I lose, that has more than local implications. It affects what might be said about me in recommendations or references going forward in applying to other jobs after the meeting Tuesday March 22nd. So would "flight" be the wiser response in the first place to avoid hard feelings this coming Tuesday?
I'd appreciate your feedback in the next few days. Meanwhile, send me good thoughts as to processing my feelings about the unfairness of this, would you please? With its request to meet me Tuesday March 22nd about this, the tenure committee hasn't given me much time to steady myself.
Thanks,
Muji
I'm disappointed, but not that surprised. I had negative comments on some of my evaluations when I got tenure at Drake University. There was one that actually just said "Fire him! Fire him! Fire him now!" in letters three inches high. Back then, as now, such comments were strong, but in the minority, and weren't ever taken seriously. Here at my community college this time around, though, they are, and I don't know how to respond to the difference.
Despite those student comments on some evaluations, I've done good work here in the past 5 years and I've grown a lot. I realize this is academic politics and that's never fair. Hence the title of a novel years ago was "Murder in a Tenured Position."
The problem now is my age and how that damages my marketability. I want to consider my fight or flight PTSD response wisely. If I "fight" the committee to stay and get tenure and I lose, that has more than local implications. It affects what might be said about me in recommendations or references going forward in applying to other jobs after the meeting Tuesday March 22nd. So would "flight" be the wiser response in the first place to avoid hard feelings this coming Tuesday?
I'd appreciate your feedback in the next few days. Meanwhile, send me good thoughts as to processing my feelings about the unfairness of this, would you please? With its request to meet me Tuesday March 22nd about this, the tenure committee hasn't given me much time to steady myself.
Thanks,
Muji
Be strong and you have not done anything wrong. You were put into a difficult situation for anyone even without PTSD.
I find writing notes is a good idea for your meeting just as a back up if the brain gets a bit fuzzy with the stress
too bad you could not hire a PTSD interpreter :)
On acceptance: We all have our bad days, and you try very hard to not allow yours to carry over into the classroom, but sometimes a little slip is inevitable. So no beating up on you by you, or by them, okay? I've seen professors agitated, rude, distracted, and one who was quite possibly on Thorazine and not even fully conscious when I was in school, and as a rule, it was the exception. (Wait, what? Never mind. You know what I mean. I hope!)
Big purring support!
A tricky thing for me is that it seems that if the tenure committee really wants to know how I process negative feedback then, whether they know it or not, they're asking to know how I cope with PTSD. That's because for most of us, the two are one and the same. Negative people traumatized us to begin with, so now negative people trigger us and we cope with our PTSD therapy tools. Mine are somewhat spiritual, not just psychological, as in the Serenity Prayer that AA uses also. I'm an ordained hospital chaplain, though, and they hired me as such and I've taught Religion here as such, so it will be difficult for them to say it is "off topic." I just don't want to hammer that, but it does sound like part of the answer they're looking for as to how I process negative feedback.
I listen to the minority of negative student evaluations on my record and do care about them. I have 3 examples to offer:
1. a guy who was accused of rape when he became my advisee, faced the charges, and now is married with a family and is a professor, too.
2. A gay student with OCD who grew too attached in class, stalked me, wanted me to "date his mom" (I think he wanted to date me, really), got angry when I drew a boundary. I still recommended him for a job that he got and holds now.
3. Three young women who disrupted class so badly I sent them to my Chair for discipline. After that, the poured acid on my car's hood (half of the hood's is still ruined from it). But I got through the semester with them, and one of them actually took a class with me again the next semester.
If they don't want these specific examples, I can tell them about how the Serenity Prayer works for me and about DS PTSD, I suppose. Other than that, I don't know how one actually proves oneself to be a caring person if caring itself isn't seen and isn't enough. I won't be mad if that's not enough, but sad that in that case it would turn out that this workplace wasn't the kind of workplace I though it was for me.
Prayers for my Monday meeting are VERY welcome. Thanks for that.