Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

I am going through a phase where I am absolutely hating my job. Hating, hating, hating. I got to this point in the usual manner: a series of little things building up over the course of a week or so, and then one really stupid little thing pushing me over the edge. It started with a student cheating on my exam, in a very calculated and elaborately planned way, and the stress of dealing with that; then, a very blah week during which, despite all my efforts to be interesting, my students were clearly Not Interested; then, grading, grading, grading; then, that sinking feeling when I realize that despite all my delusions of being an adequate teacher, my students don't know shit; then, my desperate straight-A student; then... I got this ridiculous e-mail from a student two nights ago that really pushed me into full-blown depression.

I put a practice test online for my students before each exam. They can take it as many times as they want and it doesn't count toward their grade. I suggest that they study and then use the practice exam to see what areas they need to study more. Of course, they don't. They take the exam over and over and try to memorize the answers to all of the questions, and in some cases, take pictures of all the questions, which they then store on their cell phones and try to access during the exam. But that's a different story.

Obviously I can't control how they use the practice exam and quite frankly, I don't really care. It's honestly one of those things I do to cover my own ass, so that at the very least, students can't complain that they studied all the wrong things for the exam.

At any rate, in one of my classes, students told me that when they finished taking the practice exam, it wouldn't give them a score, and asked if I could fix this. I eventually figured out that Blackboard would not give them a score because I had hidden the results of the practice exam from the online grade book, since it didn't count toward the grade. Unfortunately, this meant they couldn't get a score when they were done, and it also meant they couldn't review past attempts at the exam. So I fixed the problem by making the practice exam results appear in the grade book, even though they still didn't count toward their grade. Of course, when the practice exam appears in the grade book, it makes it look as if the practice exam is a graded activity, and I think this is the reason I had it hidden in the first place.

After I made this change, I immediately got an e-mail from a panicked student who thought that his attempts at the practice test were giving him a D- in the class, when in reality the D- was because he hadn't completed much of the required work thus far. LOL. I assured him the practice test was not being calculated into the grade, and he thanked me for my prompt response, and that was that. However, on Saturday night, I received the following e-mail:

hello mrs Moon

class  bio 1000 tues thurs

I have a concern. when you told us about the practice test for unit one you never made it clear it was an assignment that would be graded at 70 points. i informed you i was making a copy of it to study for final exam and did all of the work on a hard copy i printed and used it at a study tool. this item was not on our grade sheet as worth any points. also the sylibus indicates nothing about practice tests on line being given at all and i feel like it is not fair that we were not made aware it was worth points and at that such a large number of points. had i known this i would have done it on line and not on a hard copy i printed. it is no longer available and i have a completed hard copy that would be impossible for me to print off and do it after the fact. i wish you will take this under advisement as im sure im not the only student with this issue. on the syllibus it mentions 70 points for all homework and miscellaneous activities total. please take my concern under advisement as i do not believe this is fair

thank you

psychotic student with terrible english

Like I said, this is a really, really little thing, but after a week of non-stop bullshit, it really rubbed me the wrong way. While I do understand the panic, wouldn't you take the time to do the math before sending an e-mail like this to an instructor? Or, at least just send an e-mail of inquiry first, before unleashing? Or... what if I accidentally did have it set up to count toward the grade (it has happened before)? In that case, it would be appropriate to inform me of such. An example of an appropriate way to inform me would be something like, "I was under the impression that the practice test didn't count toward our grade, yet it appears that it is. Can you please check on this?"

Furthermore, wouldn't you capitalize "i" and try to spell syllabus correctly? Perhaps it's unfair of me to hold this against this particular student, but she is a non-traditional student in her mid-40s who is a nurse and now wants to be a doctor, and she makes a super huge deal about this every day in class. IMO, this means that she should have some sense of what it means to correspond in a professional manner. Would she ever send her supervisor such a rambling and incoherent message with absolutely no basis behind her complaints? And even amongst my non-professional, traditional-aged students, it's rare that I get such an extensively rambling, poorly constructed, and poorly thought-out e-mail. Obviously there's just zero respect here.

Add to this that the practice exam is really an extra I provide to students to try to help them, yet all it seems to result in is bitching, bitching, and more bitching, whether it be due to technical issues or because the actual exam isn't exactly the same as the practice exam. I've actually had students complain because I change the questions slightly on the actual exam. As one student explained to me: "Students feel betrayed by slight variations in your questions." Betrayed. It's a strong word.

I just can't win.

And I think that's the worst feeling of all: that feeling of there's nothing you can do. No matter what you do, you're going to lose.

I've been making a concerted effort to not let the little stuff get to me. Even after I had to deal with a cheating student, I had a good talk with a colleague, who told me to let it go. No matter what, students are going to cheat, and while it is infuriating, you can't let it get to you. You can try to prevent it, and you can punish cheaters, but in the end, there will still be cheaters, and you just have to accept it. No matter what you do there will be cheaters. No matter what you do, there will be complainers. No matter what you do there will X, Y, and Z.

I realize that no matter what profession you are in, there will be Stuff Like This, and if you are a person who lets Small Stuff get to you, you are in trouble, because there is Small Stuff everywhere, in every corner of life. I am not naïve; I know that a change of career does not mean less bullshit to deal with. My husband is constantly reminding of this; in fact, he recently told me he was extremely worried about how I might deal with potentially difficult patients considering how much I let difficult students get under my skin. It's a valid concern, and one that merits an entry of its own. In the mean time, I will work on not sweating the small stuff, and consider it a skill I need to improve no matter what my future holds. And, perhaps I should look into veterinary school instead.

What part of "no" do you not understand?

I am a fairly uptight person, so if someone strikes me as uptight, it means they are really super duper uptight. I just had a meeting with a student during which I actually had to tell the student to relax. You are in bad, bad shape if I'm telling you to relax.

The student had requested a meeting with me for an unspecified reason, but I figured it had to do with the exam earlier in the week. He did okay, but not great (81%). He started off the meeting by saying, "I am a straight A student," which never bodes well. The way I see it is that you don't get to declare yourself a straight A student; it is something that you become by earning straight As. So, you can say, "I was a straight A student in high school," but you can't say things like, "I'm a straight A student, but I got a C in her class." If you got a C in a class, then you aren't a straight A student. Duh. It is the students' way of subtly - or not so subtly - putting the blame on the instructor. It irks me, but I usually just smile and nod my head.

However, this student went on to tell me that the 81% he got on my exam was the first B he had ever gotten in his entire life, and up until now, the lowest score he had ever gotten on a biology test was a 94%. I've heard various renditions of this story before, about a thousand times over. Whatever. I smiled and nodded my head. Then he went on to say that he was certain he would have an A by the end of the semester, because, "I do not let myself get Bs." I smiled and nodded my head. Eventually I asked him what I could do for him. He replied that he was transferring and needed all his professors to fill out a form for him with his current grade on it. I asked him if he had the form, and he said no, he would bring it by later. Then he said, "The thing is, since I know I'm going to have an A by the end of the semester, can you put that I have an A on the form?"

I think I stared at him with my mouth open for at least thirty seconds (okay, so maybe just three) before replying emphatically, "No. I'm not going to lie." We went back and forth for a minute or two, me repeating that I would absolutely not lie, and him repeating, "But I am a straight A student; I never get less than an A; I will not allow myself to." I told him if that were the case, then it was his responsibility to explain this to the school he was applying to, and that they would surely factor that into their decision. Then I suggested that he needed to relax a little; his attitude did not seem all that healthy. I told him I understood his desire to get good grades, and that I also have always wanted good grades when I was in school. However, in retrospect, I think I would have gotten a better education if I had worried a little less about my grades. In other words: CHILL THE FUCK OUT!

He nodded his head in agreement and acted like he was listening, then when I was done, he said, "So I was thinking, I was supposed to have this form filled out last week. And last week, I had an A. So maybe you can put that I have an A, because if I had given you the form last week, before the exam, I would have had an A." At that point, I started to get super pissy. Like... WHAT PART OF "NO" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?! Needless to say, it did not end well; he left very angry, and I was also actually angry. Usually after meetings like this, I feel annoyed or frustrated or deflated, or some emotion that mostly goes away after I rant to a colleague. But I'm not usually all-out angry. And even after I went and ranted to a colleague, I was still angry. Then I left work to pick up my daughter from school, and on the way to school, I ran into a neighbor who teaches this same class at the community college, and I ranted to her, and I was still angry. So I got home and started to write about it here, which helped dissipate some of the anger.

Interestingly, while I was writing this, I got an e-mail from our registrar telling me that this student had requested to change sections, and was asking if I approved the drop and if my colleague approved the add. I started to reply, "YEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!! I absolutely approve! THANK GOD ALMIGHTY!" but then I got ahold of my excitement and replied:

I am fine with this; it is really up to Missy if she is willing to take him in at this point. However, I do want to voice some concerns I have about this student's motives behind wanting to switch sections. John came by earlier today and asked me to lie about his grade on a form that he needs to submit because he is planning on transferring out of ABC College. I told him that I would not lie. He asked me at least five times, and I repeatedly told him no, and he was very upset about this. I am more than happy to have this be someone else's problem, but in the interest of full disclosure, I just thought I would share this information.

Now I'm sort of kicking myself, because I do NOT want this student in my class all semester, yet if I were my colleague, I would not let him into my class after this e-mail. (Plus, she had him last semester and told me he was sort of a pain in ass.) So now I am angry all over again, because it's very likely that due to my inability to keep my big, fat mouth shut, I will have to put up with this douchebag for the rest of the semester. And unfortunately for me, it is exactly this type of interaction that leads students to give you all 1s on your course evaluations. And so I face another semester of numerical ruin.

I should have just lied.

A Teachable Moment

One of the complaints that the TTF in my department have is that our students go into upper division courses having no concept of experimental design. This is understandable because our intro courses are taught by instructors like myself who don't actually do experiments anymore. Admittedly, experimental design is a weakness of mine. Even when I had to do experiments, it was a weakness, which is probably a big reason I don't have a Ph.D. That and the fact that not only did I loathe designing experiments, I also hated doing them. LOL.

At any rate, since I realize we are trying to educate our students for careers greater than being a lowly and poorly paid NTTF at a mediocre university, I've been trying to spend more time on experimental design. I am not opposed to trying to teach this; in fact, it fits in with my goal of teaching skills rather than facts. It's just... it's hard for me.

This semester, I attempted due diligence and put a question into my homework asking for a very simple experimental design. In a hypothetical situation, I asked the students to pretend they had a pill that they believed would help people get an A in my class. But before they could market it, they had to do a controlled experiment showing that it actually worked, and they had to write out their experimental design. It actually led to a good discussion about a number of things, including whether or not they would actually share such a pill with their classmates, as well what statistically significant data are, so I was glad I had put the question in, even though it seemed ridiculously elementary at the time. In the discussion, I asked the class what the implication would be if everyone in the control group and the experimental group got As in the class, and a bunch of people immediately replied, "Then it's not the pill." I added jokingly, "Yes, it's obviously my superior teaching skills." They all laughed. I'm not sure how to interpret that. LOL.

Today, they had their first exam. Before the exam, I told them that I had just given the same exam to my online class, and my online class did pretty well, despite the fact that they had to learn a lot of the material on their own, without me constantly harping on them and reminding them of things like INDIVIDUALS DO NOT EVOLVE; ONLY POPULATIONS CAN EVOLVE! ten kazillion times per lecture. Then, I had a thought, and that thought just slipped out, and I said aloud, "What does it mean if you guys don't do any better on the exam than my online class did?" They sat there for a few seconds shifting uncomfortably until one brave student - bless his heart - called out, "It means you're doing a lousy job!" Then he immediately said, "Just kidding!" Yes, I asked for it, and I got it, hahahaha. I was very quick to point out that that was a logical conclusion, then said, "How depressing! If you are no better off with in-person instruction than you are just reading the text and learning the material on your own, then my job is becoming obsolete." Then I added, "So I hope you do better than my online class!"

It was a teachable moment - one in which I was happy that my students immediately understood the implications of a result, even if that result meant I was doing a lousy job. And as for the actual result? Honestly, they didn't do much better than my online class. The implications other than I'm doing a lousy job? Maybe it's time for me to move on.

Student-Teaching

An interesting thing about teaching at the college level is that you need absolutely zero experience teaching to get a job. College-level faculty have advanced degrees in their fields of study and rarely any course work in pedagogy. Now, that is not to say that course work in pedagogy is always useful to actual teaching, nor that you cannot be a good teacher without it. Also, many full-time faculty do have experience from being teaching assistants in grad school and/or adjuncts. Nevertheless, these are not required, and there is no certification for post-secondary education. Considering the requirements for K-12 teaching, the fact that you can get a full-time teaching job at a university with no course work in education and no student-teaching experience is something that makes a lot of people go hmmmmmm. A colleague and I were recently having a discussion about how we'd really like ideas on how to improve our teaching, but most of the time we are in survival mode and just don't have the time to make major changes to the way that we do things.

I am having one of those semesters where I am just surviving. I knew coming into this semester that it would be one of survival because I am back to teaching full-time as well as pursuing EMT certification and trying to be a decent mom and wife and maintain some semblance of a social life. Nonetheless, I continue to care a great deal about my teaching. I'm not sure if it's because I really care about my students or it's just ego or I don't want my students writing horrible things about me on RateMyProfessors.com, but it doesn't really matter, because the end result is that I'm still trying to be a good teacher, and that's a win-win situation.

The spring semester is my nemesis; I teach a class that I have redone every semester, yet my teaching evaluations just get worse... and worse... and worse. Talk about depressing. In my heart, I know that I have improved as a teacher over six years, and I have a number of diatribes I could launch into, but I'll save that for another time. The point is that I have tried a lot of different things and none of them seem to make a difference. Keeping in mind that it doesn't seem to matter what I do with this particular class, I decided that this semester I would go with the course plan that requires the least amount of work from me (in this case work = grading).

My goal every day and every week is to just get through. But being a student again, albeit in a completely different setting than I'm used to, is perhaps teaching me more about teaching than I've learned in the past six years of full-time teaching. I am not "student-teaching" in a traditional sense, but I am "student-teaching" in that I am both a student and a teacher, and my experience as a student is giving me a lot of food for thought on how to improve as a teacher.

Some insights:

• I am learning empathy. A lot of students are really confused. A lot of times it's because they spend 90% of their day with their eyes glued to their cell phones, and aren't paying any attention to what you're telling them, but sometimes the confusion is legitimate. Case in point: a few months ago, I blogged about registering to take courses for EMT certification at the community college. Registering was somewhat of an ordeal. And as it turns out, I thought I was registering for courses that met all day on Sundays, which was doable to me. However, those courses really met on BOTH Saturdays AND Sundays, which was not doable to me. I felt like an idiot when I finally figured this out, but at the same time I feel like my idiocy was somewhat justified, because when you see that a class meets on "SU," it looks like Sunday. And even if you work in higher ed, it doesn't necessarily occur to you that most registration systems require each day of the week to be represented by one letter, and thus the "S" stands for SATURDAY while the "U" stands for SUNDAY.

Apparently a lot of our students have the same problem with "TR," which means Tuesday/Thursday, with the "T" meaning Tuesday and the "R" meaning Thursday. After having taught TR courses for six years, I feel like students who don't know this are idiots (like me), but I now have profound empathy for those students who show up on R thinking it was the first day of class. I guess "TR" looks as much like THURSDAY as "SU" looks like SUNDAY.

On a side note, once I figured out I was an idiot, I promptly dropped the community college courses and signed up to take an EMT course through the local hospital. The course is at night as opposed to the weekends, which is difficult during my very busy weeks, but at least I have the weekends for my sanity.

• People tell me I am intimidating. I don't try to be, but I've also never tried NOT to be. Until now. A lot of students tell me the college environment intimidates them, especially older, non-traditional aged students, and while I've always been sympathetic to this, I now fully understand it as well. I am the opposite of most people; I am comfortable in academia, and I am intimidated outside of it. Most of the people in my EMT class are people with a lot of practical experience such as ex-military, firefighters, and CNAs. They talk about things I don't understand, like how the emergency response system works in our town and how hospitals work, and they use terms I've never heard before. It's intimidating. Fortunately, there is a very laid back classroom atmosphere so I don't go to class feeling stressed every night. I've tried to bring some of this casualness into my own classroom at the university. I'm realizing that a less formal atmosphere might be more conducive to learning for a lot of people.

• The instructor for the course, quite frankly, sort of stinks. But, he is a super nice guy, and tells a lot of funny stories. As I was telling a colleague, it's obvious he doesn't teach for a living. Being in his class reminds me of a time when I was at a conference with my advisor while in grad school. During one of the talks, my advisor leaned over to me and said, "Obviously all these people are from research universities, because students would never put up with this!" Nevertheless, niceness goes a long ways, and the funny stories and casual atmosphere make the four hours pass relatively quickly. I can actually stay awake and pay attention, which is no small feat after working all day. And... I am actually learning a lot.

The instructor is very positive and fully expects everyone to pass the class. This is a much different attitude than in academia, where introductory science courses are viewed as a means to weed out unworthy people. I certainly didn't invent this attitude, but I've fully bought into it. Now, I am questioning that mentality. I have always been book smart, but I have questionable hands-on skills. I am dreading the hands-on practical at the end of the class. I am certainly glad that the instructor doesn't teach the course as a weeder course, or I'd surely be plucked out and discarded.

Interestingly, on lab nights, our instructor brings in other instructors to help. One of these other instructors is AWESOME but at the same time SUPER SCARY. She yells at you and makes fun of you and will chew you out if you take the Lord's name in vain. I'm terrified of this woman. And I'm not the only one. The class is full of a lot of people with a lot of practical, hands-on experience, and even the 60-year-old Fire Chief in the class is scared of this woman. As our instructor explained, you either love her or you hate her. I love her. I fear her, but I love her. I love her, because I realize she is me. Her teaching style is through intimidation. But it's not because she is mean, it's because she wants you to know stuff and be competent. And personally, I want the person standing between me and death to know stuff and be competent. And if I'm the person standing between someone and death, I want to know stuff and be competent. Nevertheless, I'm glad I don't have to have Scary Woman every day; that would stress me out.

The moral of this is that there is a balance I'm striving to find. Although I do tell funny stories in class, most of the respect I get is from being organized, clear, straight-forward, and running a tight ship, so to speak. I'm not as extreme as Scary Woman (you could never get away with that in academia), but I do think students probably either really like or really dislike me, without much in between. While some intimidation has its place, I realize now that I really don't want my students to see class as a stressful experience day after day, and I don't really want them to see me in the same way as I see Scary Woman.

I am not sure if this new attitude shows or not, or if it is even possible to truly change one's attitudes at the age of 40, but I certainly hope it is. Regardless, I have enjoyed teaching my nemesis class this semester more than ever before. There is, of course, irony in this. In the process of trying to leave my job, I am finding a renewed love for teaching. 

Adjuncts Save

On Tuesday, I got into work late because I spent the morning driving through the snow and going on various wild goose chases at the local community college. (See my previous post.) I almost couldn't find a parking spot at the university and had decided that if I couldn't find a spot in the parking garage, it was going to be a work-from-home day. Between the icy sidewalks and my hip pain, I wasn't up for a long trek. Fortunately I found a spot on the roof of the parking garage.

When I got into my office, my Chair almost immediately stopped by and said "Hi Waning," with a huge smile on his face, so I knew something was up.

...

Let me backtrack.

In August, I mentioned that I was dreading this year like no other. Some of that has to do with a change in Chair and the slow decline of instructor status since that change. But most of it had to do with the fact that I had a rough semester last spring and was feeling very bitter throughout the summer. Most of the trauma centered around a course that I was not planning to teach, but then ended up teaching somewhat last minute. It is a course that I've taught before, but had decided not to offer because I noticed that the enrollment was declining and I wanted the chance to try to develop an online course and teach that instead. The Chair had approved this, the schedule was set, and students had already started enrolling, when apparently the Chair was informed that another department, unbeknownst to us, had made my course a required course for their program and demanded to have it put back into the course lineup. After much ado and reshuffling of schedules, I ended up swapping courses with another instructor so that I could teach this course, because at the time I was actually the only person who taught this course (which is good for job security, I guess).

Unfortunately, this didn't turn out well. For one, I was already trying to develop a new, online course (which, by the way, is an assload of f-ing work), and I basically had to redevelop this course as well - to the extent that it was practically as much work as a new course prep. This meant I essentially had two new course preps in one semester. I usually teach this course in an intense, week-long format; I taught it this way for the first time right before my son was born, so I could squish my fall teaching load into the summer and pre-term session in exchange for the fall off. Even 33 weeks pregnant, it went so well that I've never taught it in semester-long format since then. (Then again, my son was born six weeks early right after I finished teaching it, so maybe it wasn't the best idea, but that's a different story.) When I taught it in this accelerated format, the students were very motivated and focused, and the class was usually on the small side - never more than 40 people. I was also able to give the class my complete attention, whereas when I taught it during the semester, it tended to get somewhat lost in the shuffle.

So last semester, I was faced with teaching this course in semester-long format for the first time in three years, to 120 students who were pissed they had to take it. Since I had never taught this class with more than 60, and in more recent years not usually more than 20-30, I had to redo pretty much everything - mostly based on the fact that there was no way I could do that much grading (keeping in mind that this was just one of three courses I was teaching). I did the best that I could, but in the end that wasn't enough. I don't have the energy to go into the details, but I definitely finished the semester feeling extremely burned out and frustrated by a number of the students, by the fact that I had to teach more students in one class than many instructors teach in an entire semester or even year, by sooooo many things. And then, our teaching evaluations were posted and I pretty much lost it. As people later pointed out to me, they weren't actually THAT BAD; however, they were bad for me. In fact, I've only gotten worse evaluations for one course, ever, and that was my first semester at this job.

I could say a lot about teaching evaluations, but I'll just say a few things here. We are rated on various things on a scale from 1-6, and our evaluations are actually posted publicly. I don't think most people would actually stumble across them randomly, but of course all the faculty look at each others' evaluations, even though no one will admit to it openly. Although everyone seems to agree that evaluations don't tell the whole story, in the same way that the average temperature in Santa Barbara, CA, is the same as the average temperature in Chicago, IL, there's no evidence that instructors are really evaluated based on any other criteria. So evaluations matter. While a few really negative comments seem to be pretty much inevitable, it's still hard not to take them personally. And apparently this never gets better; I've had many conversations with people with 30 years of stellar evaluations who still get really upset over a few bad comments here and there. Probably the hardest part of it was that I usually get a few 1's here and there - again, pretty much inevitable - but this was the first time I've gotten so many 1's. Something a colleague once said to me pretty much sums up how I feel about 1's. He said, "I'm not saying I'm the greatest teacher ever, but I know I'm not a 1. If I get 1's, it's personal."

...

Anyway. I met with my Chair over the summer and told him I didn't want to teach the course anymore. Actually, I didn't go in to tell him that I didn't want to teach the course; I really went in to see if he could provide some guidance/leadership - like... you know how in some places the more experienced people mentor the less experienced people? Just a thought. (Note the sarcasm.) However, he just immediately volunteered that I didn't have to teach the course if I didn't want to, and that was that. Like... oh, your hip is hurting? Let's cut it off! In the end, I agreed I would teach the course in week-long format at the beginning of the fall term, but not in the spring. And then I ended up having to drop the fall course.

Enter: Adjunct to the rescue! 

So ever since my fallout last spring, this course has been taught by an adjunct, and seems to have fallen into the category of "class that will always be taught by an adjunct" - at least in the mind of the Chair. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, many adjuncts eventually realize that they are being exploited, and leave. Which is what happened with this adjunct. After all, it is not difficult to find a job that pays more than $6,000/semester, which is about what this adjunct was making teaching 150 students in my former course + two labs. Since this adjunct had said he would teach the course in the spring as well, it leaves us in somewhat of a bind. And it puts me back into the same situation I was in a year ago. And it is the reason that on Tuesday, my Chair acknowledged my existence, and came into my office and said hi to me for the first time ever. Because now we're back to me being the only one who teaches this course. Unless, of course, we can find another adjunct, which is exactly what my Chair agreed to try to do. So I'm keeping my fingers and toes and eyes and heart and every other body part that can cross, crossed. There must be another sucker out there who can save me.

Turn and Face the Strange

All these years, I thought that David Bowie was singing "Turn and face the change" in his song "Changes," but I just Googled the lyrics, and it turns out he is actually singing "Turn and face the strange." I guess that is just as fitting.

Speaking of changes, I'm not a big fan. I complain about my students who can't stand me, yet sign up for my course second semester just because they can't stand the thought of change, but the reality is that that's exactly the way I am. I'd rather stick with a professor I know I don't like than venture into the unknown. Then again, I do not feel like I ever loathed a professor as much as some of my students apparently loathe me. I guess that just goes to show you that some people are even more change averse than I am.

I was re-reading some of my old journal entries, and three years ago, right after my son was born, I was writing about how excited I was at the prospect of applying to PA school. In fact, my colleague and I enrolled in an online abnormal psychology class at the community college together in the spring of 2012. That (former) colleague is now finishing his third year of PA school, while I'm... still here. So much for change.

I can come up with a few explanations ( = excuses, to be completely honest) for why I seem to have a hard time changing. Perhaps one of them is that it doesn't take a lot to make me happy. I've never been a super ambitious type. Now, just so I don't give the completely wrong impression, I am a fairly competitive, Type A person. I've always gotten good grades and the youthful me excelled in a number of different sports. But I never pushed myself quite hard enough to be as good as I could possibly be. And I'm okay with that. In my adult life, I'm just happy that I have a husband and kids and a house and a car and a decent job. I used to joke that my greatest ambitions in life were to own a house with two bathrooms and a car with air conditioning. I have both of those things now, so what more is there to want?

As I look back upon my past history of Not Changing, I'm finding it difficult to take the first step toward extracting myself from my current job and moving forward toward PA school again. Because, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of good things about my job, and not only that, I am good at my job. The idea of leaving a good job that I'm good at for something that could possibly suck for at least a few years, and that I might not even be good at, is daunting. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to do what I need to do to make it happen.

Anyway. I turned 40 on Sunday, and as a midlife gift to myself, I decided to take a baby step toward making a change. Today I drove down to the community college and enrolled in all the courses necessary for me to become an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). I had tried to enroll online, but apparently these courses require instructor permission, and of course the instructor was simply listed as "TBA," and I tried calling various numbers, but not surprisingly, there is no single contact person for this program. I figured I might as well just go down to the campus in person and try to hunt someone down who could help me. I eventually succeeded, after multiple runarounds - though I have to say that everyone was very friendly and helpful, which has made me vow to be more friendly and helpful to the annoying people who pop into my office with extremely random questions.

When I finally got face-to-face with literally The Only Woman On Campus Who Could Help Me, the first thing she asked me was whether I had the prerequisites. Prerequisites? I asked what they were. She said there was an exam you had to take showing you were proficient in English and basic algebra. I said I hadn't taken the exam but that I did have a master's degree in biology. She asked if I had a transcript with me and I was like, "Uh... no." Fortunately, at that point, she looked at me oddly and said, "If you have a master's in biology, why on earth do you want to be an EMT?! You know you aren't going to make any money." I then explained to her that I knew that EMTs barely made any money (which is actually sort of frightening - I'd like to think that the person who stands between me and death is making more than $10/hour), and that I didn't really want to be an EMT. However, I was applying to PA school, and several people had recommended EMT certification to me. One of the programs I'm interested in requires 2,000 hours of paid medical experience, and one of the people I spoke to who is currently in that program suggested the EMT route to me. The other program I'm interested in does not require medical experience but is much harder to get into (and a lot of people do have medical experience despite the fact that it's not required). My PA actually suggested taking an EMT class just because she thought it would help once in PA school. She said the academics weren't difficult for her, but that the hands on stuff was more of a challenge.

By the end of the conversation, I had the woman convinced to grant me permission to enroll without taking the exam or producing transcripts. :) She added that it was too bad I couldn't take the Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes because that was the instructor she wanted me to have. She explained, "Most people find her really hard, but I think she's just really thorough." She then added that she often had to cancel the weekend classes (the ones I signed up for) because there weren't enough people, so I should have a Plan B. I told her that I'm actually a little worried about how my semester is going to unravel with four classes to teach and 12 credits to complete, so it won't be the end of the world if I have to put this off until the summer.

But for the time being, I'll just be proud of myself for making some baby steps toward change. I mean, who knows. Maybe I will HATE everything about this and decide not pursue PA school after all. But, it is a relatively minor financial investment, and I have to figure that it can't hurt. It is time for me to at least start pushing my comfort zone outward to see what sort of life might exist for me outside of the bubble of academia I've lingering within for the past 39 years. I think the 40th year is a good time to try something new.

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.