We've gotta get out of this place...

... or at least I've gotta get out of this place...

... if it's the last thing I ever do.

I can't figure myself out. On the one hand, I'm often an extremely assertive person who has a hard time keeping her mouth shut. On the other hand, sometimes I'm not. Unfortunately, I tend to make a lot of noise about things that don't help me and just get me in trouble, while I tend to keep quiet about more meaningful things. For example, I have no trouble complaining about the fact that our department excludes instructors from important meetings (even when they pertain to courses taught solely by instructors) or that when it comes to things such as hiring decisions and meetings with outside reviewers, we actually get less input than students do, and various other things that basically just make the Chair dislike me. However, despite my occasional complaints, I never ask for anything. I have never tried to negotiate a higher salary for myself, I have never asked for extra money for doing "extra" things, I have never asked for an offload in exchange for doing X, Y, or Z, and yada yada yada. Part of the reason I've never done these things is because I didn't know these are things people actually do; however, after five years at the university, I'm perhaps becoming a little less naive. I've always rationalized the fact that I don't do any of these things by telling myself that at the end of the day, you have to be able to live with yourself. There's some truth in that, I guess, and the stress that things like this would cause me would probably outweigh the $500 or so that might come from them.

But the reality is that I don't do these things because I'm just too scared. I'm scared of the physical act of actually doing these things (which makes no sense considering I don't have a problem voicing my opinion) and even more, I'm scared of what will happen if I don't get what I am asking for. I'm scared of pissing my Chair off and coming across as too needy and getting even deeper on the Chair's shit list than I already am, and I'm also scared that I will be so bitter that I won't be able to function, and I will do something irrational like quit before it makes sense for me to quit.

Here is a specific example. I am in my sixth year right now, which means that I am eligible for a promotion from "instructor" to "senior instructor." In fact, I was eligible to become a senior instructor this academic year, which obviously did not happen. This is the only promotion that NTTF can ever receive, and it basically results in a minor change in title and a small pay raise ($3,000/year). The process of being nominated for senior instructor starts with department Chairs, and is almost always approved with the support of a Chair. It basically requires a letter of support and teaching evaluations from the past five years (mine are good, and even "really good" considering I teach mostly required courses to massive numbers of students - both factors that tend to make evaluations lower). In other words, it's not a highly selective process like tenure or even promotion from associate to full professor. In the large scheme of things, it is a sort of minor thing and I don't care that much, especially now that I've decided that I'm not going to be a lifelong academic. However, this is something that I feel I deserve, and I cannot help but feel somewhat pissy about the fact that my Chair has not put me up for promotion.

While this promotion has been in the back of my mind for a while, it actually only came to the front of my mind after several other people, including the Chair of the NTTF Committee as well as the former Provost of the school, told me that it was ridiculous that I had not been promoted, and that this was an Epic Fail In Leadership from my Chair. They both pushed me to pursue this "injustice" and promised they would try to do what they could from their end as well. The Chair of the NTTF Committee even told me that I could file a grievance for "back pay" after I was promoted (since in theory I "should have" been promoted starting in August). Again, this fits into the category of Really? PEOPLE DO THIS?! Argh. I hate shit like this. I just want to work hard and do my job well and be rewarded for doing my job well. But what do you do when that doesn't happen?

One of the reasons the Chair of the NTTF Committee was really pushing me to pursue this is because apparently the NTTF Committee pushed really hard to standardize the process of promotion from instructor to senior instructor, as well as standardize the pay raise across departments. So the NTTF Chair felt their efforts were in vain if they were not helping people like me. This reminds me of a situation my sister-in-law ran into as a new faculty member (at a different school). She was hired while pregnant and had a baby in her first semester. Of course, she felt that she could not take any time off, since she was only a few months into her new job; however, she was actually pressured to take maternity leave because her school had only recently granted maternity leave for faculty, and those who had fought so hard for maternity leave really wanted her to take advantage of this new benefit. (By the way, maternity leave is not standard for university faculty; at my school, neither TTF nor NTTF have maternity leave.)

With this in mind, a few days ago, in a rare moment of my Chair being in his office and available and me feeling brave, I went in and simply stated that it had come to my attention that I was eligible for a promotion this year, and that I was hoping he would nominate me. He stared back at me with a look that made me want to shrivel up and die, then said that yes, he was aware, and he intended to nominate me (which honestly means nothing except that he can't say no to my face). I thanked him and left. And that was that. And that's probably as far as it will go, because my Chair has a strong record of not following through with things. No one knows if it is because he just doesn't follow through with things or because he just can't say no - like... maybe he feels I'm really not worthy of senior instructor status but just can't tell me to my face. Whatever. At least I tried.

In the mean time, I'm still making plans to exit gracefully within the next few years, which makes a lot of this drama much easier to stomach. Also, I turn 40 in less than half an hour, and I feel like I don't have time to be angry in my 40s. Whether I exit as an instructor or senior instructor is fairly insignificant in my mind, and considering the stupid financial choices I've made in the past, I'm not going to spend much time crying over a few thousand bucks, even if they were deserved. What's the most important thing to me is that I've gotta (eventually) get out of this place, if it's the last thing I ever do.