I am Not My Husband's Secretary

Students have been repeatedly stopping by my office, interrupting my work, and asking me about the whereabouts of my husband.

How in the world should I know where he is? I am at work!

It has become so bad (3x in less than one hour the other day) that I had to post a sign on my husband's office door. It said: "Dr. JP does not know where Dr. Mr. JP is. Thanks, Management."

I had a particularly aggravating exchange with a student recently. I am sure I was PMSing, but, hey, it happens. The students asked me where Mr. JP was. I said, "I am not his secretary." The student said nothing and just stared. I added, "Why don't you go ask some other faculty member where Mr. JP is." The student continued to stare. I said, "And why are you asking me where he is? Is there a particular reason?" The student apologized and promptly left.

And no, students do not ask my husband where I am. Perhaps I am more present? Or perhaps he is more intimidating. Draw your own conclusions.

Students Crying In My Office

Every semester, I have students crying in my office about their grades. I find the whole situation very awkward and I am not sure of the best way of handling it. I have asked older colleagues and they express surprise that students would cry in front of me. Because, after all, students do not cry in front of them.

I am not a particularly easy or harsh grader - my average GPA is in line with most faculty. So then why do students feel compelled to cry and tell me all about their personal situations that led up to their bad grades and how they are going to get kicked out of school? Surely, it isn't my class alone that is going to kick them out. They must have failed several other courses leading up to mine. So how is that I get the tears?

I usually handle this on a case by case basis, trying to find a discreet way to get the student out of my office without a scene. Not once have tears convinced me to change someone's grade. I see so much crying from my own two biological children that I am not very swayed by adult tears over grades.

I am interested in learning how others handle the crying student.

Taking the Reigns

The last month has been a roller coaster in terms of rejections, rejections, and an acceptance. My 1+ million dollar proposal was rejected, my manuscript in a super-high-IF journal was rejected after being in review for 2 months, and another manuscript is to be accepted after minor revisions.

After these two stinging rejections, I spent a week feeling very low and anxious. The stress affected my body in that the joints in the left side of my body began to ache, and walking became difficult. I began to think: Is this all worth it? I spend all this time at night and on the weekend working on proposals and manuscripts that ultimately get rejected. I forgo quality time with my family all in the name of work. What am I getting out of this job? My kids are growing up and I am present but not there. The stress is impacting me physically, too.

Taking control of my life and my job doesn't necessarily mean working longer hours or staying up later to get it all done. I've decided that I need to come back to "mindfulness" as I once did after reading Full Catastrophe Living. In 2009, I struggled with similar feelings and followed the meditation practices described in the book. I accepted that my life is "as is". Since then, I've lost that acceptance, and I need to be at peace again. I'm rebooting myself today.

Not Reporting

I think I should explain that this institution has a constant stream of low-level offensive statements and actions towards women, and that is why I was quick to be offended by this fellow's comments. That was, by far, the most benign I've gotten, and I'm sure he wasn't trying to put me in my place. But after hearing low-level offensive crap all the time, it is easy to get offended at the small things. 

Just last week, I had a senior white male tell me, "Your body has recovered nicely from the pregnancy." As it is written in this post, it could sound like a complement, but if I could convey the tone and the facial expression that went along with it, you'd be sickened.

I told my department head about this incident and the one from the last post. I requested that these people's teaching evaluations be looked at carefully for any student comments on bias. And that was it - no written reports filed.

To Report or Not to Report Offensive Comments

Several weeks ago I was a function where I was sitting next to a senior man, who was retired from industry but teaching at our university. We were eating lunch to celebrate somebody's promotion or retirement, and he and I were idly chit-chatting about nothing of importance. At some point in the conversation he said, "I'm sorry I'm having trouble hearing you. Some study came out that said older men can't hear women's voices because they are too high pitched." I was stunned. Noticing that he lacked a wedding band, I said, "That must be difficult for your wife." I turned my back and refused to talk to him the rest of the function.

Comments like this are offensive because they make me feel uncomfortable. I found no humor in the comment, and it deeply bothered me because it seemed to say that whatever I had to say couldn't (and wouldn't) be heard. This fellow is of no consequence to my career and has a year-to-year contract.

Upon telling someone higher up the food chain about the comment, they were horrified and told me that I needed to report it. Part of me thinks that reporting is the right thing to do, but another part of me doesn't want to be accusatory. I just want to go on pretending this didn't happen, even though it still bothers me. It could result in the termination of this guy's contract. I wonder if he is saying things like this to his female students? If so, then I don't have a problem reporting him.

So many times in this career have things been said that cross my line of my idea of gender bias. And time and time again, I don't report it. I just complain. I suppose if I reported all the biased things said and done, then the upper administration would get so tired of it that they wouldn't take me seriously anymore.

When I'm Too Old For Early Career Awards...

…I start to think, which is probably a bad idea.

I am approaching that academic age where I am becoming ineligible for many early career awards. For some, I only have one shot left. This alarms me because I think that my chances of getting funding from these agencies is more likely through this mechanism, rather than competing against big boys and girls in unsolicited submissions. I haven't gotten any appreciable funding in over a year, so I am beginning to worry about how to fund the new students I took on. (Why did I take two new students?? Why?).

So I find myself in that funny place where I don't yet have tenure, but my eligibility for early career awards is over or nearly over. To comfort myself, I've focused on getting my backlog of publications out the door. The chances of getting published are much higher than that of getting funded. And, publications lead to students graduating, invited talks, and perhaps -perhaps - more funding.

I was thinking about my constant unease over funding, when I realized that this problem would never go away - ever. As long as I do this job, I will constantly be writing proposals and feeding hungry graduate students. And then I thought about this in a larger context. The U.S. wants more domestic students to pursue graduate degrees in STEM disciplines. Professors use federal research grants to pay for these students' tuition and stipend. If the U.S. government remains stagnant in federal research dollars, then so does the number of graduate students we can take on. So why not just increase the federal spending on academic research? Anyways, my vote in this presidential election is going to go to whoever says they'll put the most $$$ into research.

How Late Can A Faculty Meeting Run?

Our new department head called a faculty meeting for 4 PM. In the past, these meetings have started at 3 or 3:30, which I find is just enough time to have a good meeting and then leave work to pick up the kids from day care. With this later meeting time, the faculty meeting bleeds into the last wee minutes of daycare. Any later, and social services would have to take my children so that I could attend the faculty meeting.

When faced with late meetings, the difficulty of being two-body becomes very apparent. Both of us need to attend, so who leaves early to pick up the kids? Does leaving early put one of us at a professional disadvantage? How will our colleagues perceive this? I am especially sensitive to this because I don't want to appear like a "mom" at work. I want appear like a "professor".

Mr. JP and I both separately emailed the department head, notifying him that one of us would be leaving early because of daycare. Mr. JP was the one to leave early to pick up both kids, since his agenda item was first. It was awesome. At 5:15 he stood up and announced to the whole faculty, "I now have to leave to get the kids from daycare." And he walked out. This action made me love him for bringing light to the issue to everyone. Next meeting, it's my turn to get the kids.