Roller Coaster Week 1

I got alot of encouragement about Monday's post, and I thank everyone for that. I have been keeping track and I thought that I might try to do a weekly(ish) update on the life of a new tenure track faculty. This is partly because I think the whole exercise will be good for me and partly because I think it might be good for others.

So here we go, week 1. Good (2), Bad (1), OK (2).

Overall the week was more good than bad, which surprised me a bit. The bad day was caused by some major rudeness from another professor across campus, whom I've never met, but gave me the vague feeling that a "conflict" might be in my near future. That was early Monday morning, and I had a similiar rude experience with another professor last week so it was hard to take it lightly. For the record, the rudeness is not in my head, others read the emails for both instances, and had similar feelings, and my department head offered to back me up in both situations, and took great care to make sure that I knew that I had done nothing out of line to deserve this treatment. Last week's situation was resolved; not to my liking, but I at least stood my ground and carried it out to the best of my abilities, without having pissed anyone off. A skill that I am rapidly learning to master.

Tuesday's grant news was very good and it's hard to get knocked down off that high. Even a killer sinus headache that stuck around for most of the rest of the week didn't completely ruin my days. Neither did the faculty meeting for that matter. The grant also required me to get back in touch with the collaborators and the joy of science was reignited. It also reminded me that I can pick up the phone and have someone to work with and comiserate with a bit, which made me feel less alone. It is important to keep those professional/friendly contacts alive, especially since I haven't really made any at the new U yet. Teaching could have gone better this week, but it wasn't dreadful, I'm still new and I'm still learning, everyone says that you will improve your teaching with time and practice. The students tell me they are learning, so that's what really matters.

Today was good. I did some socialization with the other knitters on campus, which was very nice. Several in my regular knit night are grad students here, so they are going through what I went through a few years back, are headed towards what I'm going through now, and they knit, so there is always lots to talk about :) They are much closer to my age then any of the faculty I see on a regular basis (by about 15 years or so) and I enjoy spending time with them and they've been super nice to me, even if I am an old woman!

I still feel like I'm behind on my work, but I think in some sense ever faculty feels like that all the time. The thing is no one says it.

So there you have it. I like that I'm starting this experiment on a positive note. I know that not every week will have more good than bad, but I don't feel like I'm in the hole or anything.