But why can't you smile more?

I'd just finished doing a joint presentation with a wonderful colleague when another colleague offered praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy." Well, we looked happy because we were happy. We were presenting interesting information about terrific authors to illustrate fascinating ideas about the way history and literature illuminate each other, a topic on which we are both very passionate, so of course we were happy.

But I heard the unspoken part of my colleague's praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy for a change." Ouch. Maybe if we had a chance to celebrate our research and share ideas amongst interested listeners every day, we would constantly parade all over campus in great big clown smiles, but there's a lot more to campus life than a once-in-a-career presentation.

The problem is that the two of us have been around higher education for a long time. We've both served as Faculty Chair during particularly trying times, and we've chaired departments and committees and worked on projects that exposed us to the most irritating aspects of campus culture. We've been through the wars and we try to carry our scars with dignity, but sometimes we get weighed down by past struggles, current challenges, and the stark forecast for the future of academe.

So we have been known to complain about injustices on campus, but what of it? If tenured senior professors don't use their voices to address problems, who will? 

And of course our experience reflects the ongoing epidemic of men telling women to smile more, as if the only value we bring into a situation is aesthetic. We're happy to smile when smiling is appropriate, but if the situation requires a stern mien, a pointed critique, or even a raised voice, we'll step up.

So I'll accept my colleague's praise: we did good work, and we were very happy while doing it. But don't expect us to smile through every situation, especially when the context requires critique.  

A new Olympic sport?

I thought I'd gathered a good number of eggs from the chicken coop yesterday until I realized that two of the eggs were actually golf balls. "Don't fry them," texted the resident chicken fancier, whose temporary non-residence resulted in my being tasked with gathering yesterday's eggs, an easy task in balmy weather but downright treacherous when the intervening landscape would be most suitably traversed via luge.

After what feels like years but is probably just weeks trapped in a repeated snow/slush/freeze cycle, the slopes on our property are now covered with a thick layer of snow topped with ice that sometimes holds firm and sometimes allows the feet to break through. I wore stout shoes and carried a walking stick and stayed near the path beaten by my husband's boots, but I still found it difficult walking down the hill and then back up again without losing my footing or losing my cool or losing the delicate eggs (or the golf balls). 

As everyone except me obviously knows, putting golf balls in the nesting box encourages the chickens to lay eggs there rather than, for instance, under the coop or on the ground or in the feed trough. I would have noticed that two of the eggs I'd gathered looked different from the others if I'd been wearing my glasses, but I knew the trek would be a bit of a slog and I can't wear glasses when I'm sweating because they slide down my face, and what with the walking stick and gloves and egg basket, I certainly wouldn't have been capable of pushing my glasses back up again once they'd started sliding.

In this kind of weather, egg-gathering ought to be considered an Olympic sport: it requires special equipment, physical strength, and manual dexterity, and it would benefit by the addition of a luge and ski lift. Who will call the International Olympic Committee? I would do it myself but I've got to clean up the fried-golf-ball mess.    

Friday poetry challenge: Replaceable You

I’m trying to replace myself but it isn’t easy.

The Powers That Be like to insist that I’m irreplaceable—usually when they want to sweet-talk me into taking on some extra bit of work—but nevertheless they want to quickly identify someone to replace me as Director of our Center for Teaching Excellence so I can train my replacement over the course of the fall and make a smooth transition that will maintain our momentum. They’ve asked me to write a job description so they can seek and sort applicants, which is a nice switch from the previous selection process, which ran something like this: "We need a Director. You’ve done it before. Do it again."

So I’ve spent some time trying to succinctly describe my duties and the characteristics needed to fulfill them, because I have to write something more specific than "Wear yourself out trying to meet everyone’s needs without adequate resources or support." I have crafted a bunch of bullet points using HR jargon to describe skills, tasks, and dispositions, but I haven't shared the other list, the secret list that can’t be put into words in an official document. Things like "The successful candidate will possess the ability to say yes in a way that clearly means no, a willingness to allow others to take credit for one's own work, and eternal patience with people seeking the magic wand that will make all their classroom problems disappear."

It could be worse--it could be verse!

There once was a Center Director
whose seat was equipped with ejector,
but before she took flight
the boss asked her to write
a description to help them select her

Replacement, an ideal mixture
of cheerleader, scholar, and fixer;
whose magical skills
could cure all teaching ills
and multiply budgets--neat trick! Sure, 

We're seeking a teacher who's stellar
with students, and then we'll compel her
to trade classroom chores
for admin meetings (bores!)
and "unspecified duties." (Don't tell her!)

So the Center Director is trying 
to describe her own job (without lying)
because she must replace
herself--in some haste--
or else she'll be here 'til she's dying.

 

Your turn--put your replacement's job description into verse. 

Because it was there

I walk alone across the snow-covered campus, my shoes crunch-crunching over snowy walkways stained blue from ice-melt salt that doesn't do much good in single-digit temperatures. At one point I'm forced to guess the path along an unplowed walkway, but I finally make it to the safety of the library. From my office window the campus looks deserted except for the occasional figure bundled up as if prepared to trudge across the icy expanse of Hoth. 

Why am I here? I don't teach on Tuesdays so I could have stayed home, but instead I braved the treacherous roads to spend a day catching up on scut-work and meeting with students. Is it really worth risking my life just to get to campus?

Fortunately, the worst of the Snowpocalypse missed our area; we had no power outages or falling trees and our pipes didn't freeze. But we had plenty of snow, ice, and cold, and the cold is just getting colder. I broke out the long-johns and bundled up thoroughly, but in the short distance I walked from car to building, my face started to hurt.

I suppose I wanted to prove that I could do it. Living with people who scoff at bad weather is a challenge. If I'm hunkering under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and a good book when the resident lumberjack says it looks like a good time to go out and cut down some trees--well, I can't help feeling like a bit of a wimp. It's pretty lame to beg out of driving in snow because I learned to drive in Florida, where snow never entered the picture. I mean, it's true, but that was more than 40 years ago and I've developed some snow-driving skills in that time. The fact is that I just don't wanna.

But I wasn't getting any work done at home and I do have some appointments today, so here I am in my office wondering whether anyone will actually show up. I'm filling the time with meaningful work: peer-reviewing an article for a literary journal (meh), rescheduling all my Monday meetings that were cancelled because of weather, preparing for a campus presentation  that promises to be the highlight of my week, looking out the window at something other than yard birds--which are lovely, of course, but the birds don't pay my salary. 

Campus feels eerily quiet today and I doubt that I'll stay much beyond lunchtime. I'll meet with my students, congratulate myself for making the effort, and then trudge back along the frozen expanse of Hoth to my warm, cozy home. It's a luxury, of course, to go home to a warm house when so many others are left out in the cold, and so I contribute to local charities that serve the homeless and pray for a world in which no one has to stay outside on a day like today.

The view from my window

Snowpocalypse staredown

What else is there to say?

Birding the Snowpocalypse

Years ago a friend from California visited our house and her young daughter was jumping up and down about these beautiful red birds at the feeders.

Cardinals. She'd never seen a cardinal before. 

Around here, they're common as dirt--especially on a day like today, with snow all over everything and an easy source of seeds at our feeders. It's not unusual to look outside and see a dozen or more cardinals vying for position. Later during mating season the males get all territorial, but right now they're content to hang out all together in the trees surrounding our feeders, along with woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees, finches, juncos, and a solitary towhee. It's unusual to have juncos and towhees at the same time, but there they are.

So far, Snowpocalypse has been pretty, with just a few inches of snow covering the roads last night and more big, fluffy flakes coming down this morning. But now the snow has changed to sleet. Who knows what's coming next? No plows have come down my road yet but I don't have to go anywhere today so I think I'll stay home and watch the birds. I can worry about the roads tomorrow.

The view from my bedroom window.

First towhee of the season. 

Friday poetry challenge: Toddlers at the top

Someone said that working in academe right now is like desperately holding on to an abusive relationship: just when you think things are getting better, a fist comes flying at you out of nowhere. 

It was nothing, really--just a little love-tap. Probably entirely accidental. Taking this latest blow personally would be just as petty and childish as taking bad weather personally. I mean, the storm hits everyone--it's not particularly intent upon ruining my weekend. But it would be nice to be able to do the work I love without wondering when I'll be floored by another arbitrary slap in the face.

While I play the toddler pouting in the corner, I wonder what it would be like if toddlers ruled the College. A previous administration taught us what Leadership by Tantrum looks like, and we've seen any number of bright shiny programs and plans get tossed aside the moment a new toy gets plopped down in the playroom. We've seen otherwise rational people hoarding goodies so no one else can touch them, and we've seen the hand of discipline being applied to exactly the wrong backside. Most of all, we've learned that it does no good to stomp our feet and cry that It's not fair! The kid who cries the loudest may occasionally get rewarded, but he's more often sent to the time-out box. So I'll sit over in my corner and sulk for a bit, but by next week this will all be forgotten and I'll be back in the playroom hoping for the best. (And--wham!) 

These toys are mine,
and that one, too! 
I don't want you,
or you, or you

to touch my things.
So here's the line:
on this side, every-
thing is mine.

On your side, play 
with broken toys.
Not fair? Who cares!
These bring me joy! 

Hey, give it back!
Don't make me mad!
Don't kick or I'll
be calling Dad!

I'll scream and cry
and raise a fuss!
He's here! Oh dear--
now all of us

are fleeing from
his angry spanks.
He missed! I'm safe!
He got you! Thanks

For soaking up
his angry blows.
Next time he'll get me.
(So it goes.)

Now your turn: what would happen if toddlers ruled your workplace?