Have I mentioned yet that I hate applications? This is my first reappointment portfolio (thank god it's not for promotion). Today was the first day that I really sat down and spent some time working on it. This is such a monster application (in terms of both the scary and the huge) . Only there are no forms. Well that's not true. There are secret forms that you're not allowed to have but are expected to fill out in narrative form anyway. And the faculty I've asked about it have produced such wildly different portfolios that I might as well not have asked (which I guess means I can not worry about it, but I have a deep-seated need to be right and be praised.)
I have to evaluate myself and write about what I do and then document it. whiiiiiinnne. My instinct, or rather how I've been raised, is to be modest--do my best but not brag. I hate statements where I have to write about how great I am because it feels so wrong when I do it and I get that icky squirmy feeling. Like any minute my grandmother is going to walk in the room and tell me to act like a lady. I have no problem knowing I'm awesome, but writing it down? on paper? and giving it to someone who is going to judge me? and then might decide that my awesome is just not good enough? no thanks.
And community service? Who the fuck decided that community service was part of a faculty job? That's ridiculous right there. When I'm in charge, "community service" goes on the list of "things that make academics martyrs" which will promptly be renamed "things you are no longer expected to do." I mean, it's not volunteering if you're doing it to keep your job, is it? And who has time? And what if I don't care about my community? There are people in my community and I'm anti-social! Once I'm done with my PhD (because I'm not stupid enough to give myself more stuff to do until then), I'll have to find some place where I can play with preschool kids and call that community service.
1 comment:
The community service part really annoys me too. (a) Give us this job that requires 12 hour work days, between teaching and prep and research. (b) give us no time at all for our families anyway, should we somehow manage to acquire a family despite the unholy, unnatural requirements of the academic world. (c) Then, as a requirement for promotion, demand that we use some of the scanty, precious, supposedly personal hours remaining to us -- I think I added it up once and I had about an hour and a half a week left over outside of my job requirements during my first year on the tenure track -- we're supposed to take that time and use it "volunteering" at some worthy social cause, because if we don't, forget getting tenure/getting promoted?
All for the relatively slim amount they pay us?
WTF, and by the way, my ass.
(Not that I'm bitter.)
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