My cheatin' heart

I wrote this as I was preparing to leave for my conference last week. I wasn't sure whether to post it, but decided to go ahead.

Okay, so I am trying to get ready to go out of town to a conference on Saturday, and I have so much to do before I leave. I have to pick up the travel advance (the gf does not believe in loaning the Big R1 University our money for trips, which I understand), buy some shoes to go with the suits, get my haircut cleaned up, get the dry cleaning, and grade student papers so I can pass them back before I go. Oh, yeah, and I have to get something to a potential research funder by Friday, a task which will take probably six hours, at least if I do it right. Which I might not. Because I keep putting it off.

Further complicating this mess is that I am distracted. I have gotten a call about a potential job in another place... an administrative job that sounds pretty cool. And they want to talk to me at the conference. Of course, almost no one at my place knows that this first stage conversation is going to happen, including (perhaps especially) my friends. This secrecy makes the whole thing more difficult, because I am more of a verbal processor. I need to TALK about it, but I really can't. I hate to get folks here upset or angry, especially because the talk is so preliminary and I may not decide to leave, even if I get the offer. My job is pretty great right now, and I would hate to leave it for a situation that turns out to be a disaster.

And there are all the challenges of moving, leaving friends behind and trying to make new friends, and learning the culture of a new university, city, and state. Damn, it makes me tired just to write that.

I joked on Tenured Radical's website about feeling like I was having an affair on my employer and my colleagues, but really, that is how it feels. With an eye to my appearance, I am more concerned about what I will wear, trying to look good at all times for my potential suitor. I am planning clandestine meetings at the conference, trying to figure out how not to be noticed by passersby so rumors won't start. And one thing I know is how small the academic discipline is... if the people on the search committee of wooing school talk to their colleagues and friends about me, it will certainly take less than 6 degrees to link them to people at my school. And even if it might be difficult during a normal week, at the national conference, everyone will be together in the same hotel, so the degrees will be crammed together in one damn room! Sigh.

So, rather than work, I am verbally processing with you.
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Update: So, I finished the grant prep work and got it in, finished all the other tasks--small and large--other than grading, and I even graded some papers on the plane. I am having a very good time at the conference: meeting people, visiting with longtime friends, doing a well-attended presentation, interviewing people for jobs at my program, and receiving some nice compliments on my academic work.

I have had some close calls with people overhearing my discussions with faculty from the Wooing School (WS), but I don't think anyone really knows. That said, I am feeling very connected to my home school and my colleagues--most of whom are here at the conference--and can't quite imagine leaving. I am struggling with feeling guilty and even silly for even looking elsewhere, but I can't help but be intrigued by a new, more challenging position. I have never had a romantic affair, but I am sure this must feel somewhat similar (other than the fact that the gf and I talk about it every night!!). That said, I have the "informational meeting" with the WS faculty today, so we will see how it goes. I am trying to keep my options open.

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University’s first female president, was inaugurated Friday and offered a spirited defense of American higher education against demands that it quantify what it is teaching and focus primarily on training a global work force.-- New York Times, 10.13.07 (picture from NYTimes)

Okay, can I just say how much I LOVE THIS WOMAN! I am so impressed with her comments at her inauguration. Check out the New York Times interview and article for a summary, if you don't feel like reading the whole, beautifully written speech.

She is a new Shero for me, even if she is a private-school kind of woman (as opposed to my public school background and professional affiliations). Gilpin Faust supports education for the purposes of growth and development, not just for workforce preparedness, and access to education for all people.

--picture from the Boston Globe (click for story)

Drew Gilpin Faust just seems very real as well. I like her little-to-no-makeup style, her capability, and her strength. I know she grew up rich, but she also grew up outspoken, concerned about issues of race and racism, and interested in women's issues. I hope to meet her someday. With any luck, she will be as impressive in person as she is on paper.

Hurray for women in leadership positions!

Advising 2: How to love, but not REALLY love, your students

Highly Eccentric wrote in about my last post and asked me a question about the appropriate student-teacher relationship, saying:

the weird thing about our department here is that the usual undergrad/postgrad/ academic boundaries get eroded pretty quickly. Awesome Mentor takes a motherly interest in my life, to a certain extent... several of my teachers read my blog... some of us undergrads tag along to the departmental functions and end up off eating and drinking with our teachers. Which is great. I'd like to think i'm friends with some of them, including A.M.

[...] On the other hand, in the flurry of comments which have sprung up in the academic blogosphere since that First Person entry, it seems one of the common problems with supervision is students who are looking to be friends with their supervisors. I'd like to be friends with A.M. (althought that might not be feasible until i get over my hero-worshipping thing). Is that a bad way to start out on a thesis?

I may be the wrong person to ask about this, because I believe very strongly in the boundaries between student and instructor. I also think there is a vast difference between being friendly with students and being students' friends. I am certainly friendly with my students. I take an interest in their lives, their goals, their struggles, their learning, and their overall success. I make jokes with them and talk with them at school gatherings, parties, or when I am out to eat. But what my students would notice, if they really thought about it, is how little I share with them.

While I occasionally share tidbits about things that are affecting my life, like my goddaughter's hospitalization, I leave out a lot. They do not know about my relationship with my partner, who I like or don't like on faculty, my struggles to get pregnant and my decision to stop trying, my occasional forays into the job market, or my frustration with a recent article that I cannot get to work. I save these goodies for my friends, my peers, the people with whom I can and should be vulnerable. I may also flirt with my friends, get intoxicated with them, or say things I absolutely should not say publicly. I would not do these things with students.

(Okay, a caveat. I do share personal information if and only if I think the information will be useful to the student. I have told a student about my infertility when she was describing her own fertility struggles. That said, I tell it less in depth and less emotionally than I would with a friend, and I am not looking for support or help from my students.)

I draw these boundaries because I think students need to be protected and respected, and that the focus should be on them when I work with or talk to them. Students are in a vulnerable spot, and I am someone with power in their lives. I need to use my power responsibly. And as Highly says about her mentor, "I think she's the most fantastic thing since sliced bread,...And she seems to be unpertubed by my hero-worshipping at her feet, which is also good." That is not a peer friendship relationship in any way. While I have great respect and even occasional (platonic) crushes on my friends, I do not worship them in any way and we see one another's flaws and eccentricities in a more realistic light. The power balance is there, also, and that makes a huge difference.

One reason I have drawn this line is that I have seen unfortunate things happen when faculty don't draw the line very clearly. The students young Dr. A went drinking with will talk about the drunken episode with her colleagues (who later will evaluate her for tenure). (Hell, nowadays, it might end up with drunken pics on Facebook.) The student who finds herself with reknowned Dr. T who, after a few drinks, starts complaining about the problems in his marriage, how misunderstood he is, and how smart and attractive the student is. The student who hugs Dr. C when he finds her crying about how she can't get an article accepted, and soon hears that the other students are whispering about him in the halls. The student who regularly housesits for august Professor N, forgets to turn off the sprinklers, and has to face N's wrath when he returns, not only at the key exchange but during a required class that N teaches.

I am okay with advisees who want to be my friend. I take it as my role to set appropriate boundaries: friendly but not friends. And ultimately, once the student has graduated and gone on to become a professional, and our relationship has shifted out of the temporary power imbalance, we can become friends. That approach has certainly worked in my life. Many of my mentors are now friends, and some of my student mentees/advisees have become friends as well. We share more personally, and we get to know each other on a more level playing field.

So, I would tell Highly to enjoy her mentoring relationship as it is: friendly, supportive, and helpful. I am sure that the hero-worshipping is kinda fun for your mentor, and it will get even better as you become less worshipping and more comfortable with her. And perhaps, when you are done with your thesis, it will move from mentoring/maternal to a deeper and more lasting friendship.

Advising... or how to get to know (and love) your students!

Okay, so I wrote a snarky post on Profgrrrrl's website in response to her wonderful idea of fantasy academic leagues. When the gf read it, she noted that I sounded awfully negative about advising. My tone surprised her, because I have spent the last few days happily discussing my experiences with students this advising period. And I certainly don't want to come off like the pseudonymous writer in the Chronicle's First Person column, bitching about advising grad students. (Really, that girl needs a sabbatical. No one should be that negative and still work with grad students.) So, I thought I would write a little bit about what I like about undergraduate academic advising.

You get to know your students. And this is a good thing. In class, students can seem rather one-dimensional. I am focused on their learning, writing, presentation skills, and critical thinking, and little else. But in advising, I get to learn more about their lives, the many demands and challenges they are balancing (family, work, friends, health issues, legal problems, you name it), and I get to see them grow as adults in meeting these demands and overcoming challenges to reach their educational goals. I also get to see some of their humor, their warmth, and their self-reflection. It feels like a gift, sometimes.

You get to help a student plan his/her life. Undergraduate students are often thinking ahead--to the next semester, the summer, and life after graduation. I get to remind them about the opportunities at the university and the larger community: study abroad, community service activities, research experiences, internships, student leadership activities, and recreational activities are all things they should consider. There are so many things they can do, and as I get to know them, my recommendations get better. And there is nothing more fun than when they try something new and like it! They often will stop by later and tell me about these activities, too, which is pretty cool.

You get to remind students that someone cares about their success. One of the most shocking things for me as an undergraduate student was how solitary I felt in my learning. No one cared if I went to class, no one cared if I turned my papers in, and no one knew or cared if I was enjoying my time in school. My educational successes and failures were things I discussed with friends and hid from family, but they were pretty much mine to bear. During advising, I try to address this feeling in my students by letting them know that I care about how they are doing. I check in with students and ask them about their performance in their classes. I challenge them about poor grades last semester (or this semester, if I get a warning notice), asking "What was that about?" with some frequency. I problem-solve with them about how to succeed in the future. While the responsibility for their performance always rests with the students, I feel that part of my job as advisor is to remind them that someone else is paying attention to and invested in their work.

You get to remember why your discipline is exciting and interesting. The newly-admitted students who come to see me are pretty excited about being in the major. I have had students cry when they are told they have been admitted, so pleased are they to become part of our profession. During our advising times, they talk about questions that are arising for them about our discipline, how much they are learning in their classes, and what they hope to do with the degree when they graduate. It is gratifying to know that these students will be out in the community using their degrees to make a difference in the world.


There are certainly some drawbacks of advising: students missing appointments, coming unprepared for advising, taking up time with revelations that are inappropriate or gossipy, and so on. However, those are few and far between, and they pale in comparison to the good experiences. While the advising is designed to help my students, I think it also helps me remember why I am here in the first place.

The challenges of identity

There is an interesting First Person column in the Chronicle that really speaks to me. The author, Jerald Walker, is a Black American scholar who has been struggling with the expectations of some other Black faculty members in his College. He is expected to share their understandings of race and the role of Black faculty members in a predominantly white institution. This is a problem for Dr. Walker because he does not identify as an African American--to wit, a Black American with historical and cultural ties to Africa. He is clear that he sees more connections to Black Americans throughout American history, and he prefers not to attend Afro-centric celebrations or other events that point to Blackness as difference or as historic or current oppression.

As a White Jewish lesbian, I obviously am not connecting with the author based on any shared race-based experience. Instead, the column resonates with my experiences as a lesbian scholar who is in a department where there are other lesbian and gay scholars **for the first time**!! I too have had to grapple with philosophical, professional, and personal disagreements with others who share an important identity characteristic--some of whom had tenure when I did not.

I spent the first 5 years of my teaching as the ONLY queer faculty member in my first small (5-person) department and the ONLY tenure-track queer in my second large (20+) faculty. Being the ONLY queer got kind of old, though as others who are the ONLY one of their type can attest, I got a lot of great invites to present in classes and I was afforded room and legitimacy to speak because of my unique "queer perspective."

In my current department, however, a full one third of the 20+ faculty were gay and lesbian when I was hired. I was very excited about this opportunity to have other GL scholars as colleagues within my own field. And yet, it has offered some unexpected challenges.

Early in my time here, I hosted a gathering of several of the lesbian faculty members and their partners at our home. While it started as a great party, it fell apart when we started to disagree about whether queer professors should be out in the classroom.

A VERY-OUT contingent argued strongly that all queer faculty should disclose their sexual orientation, as it provided an opportunity to educate heterosexual students, challenge homophobic students, and support queer students (assuming, wrongly, that these are mutually exclusive categories). Those who didn't come out were cowardly and not truly invested in the education of our students.

The WHO-US? folks argued that such a standard was oppressive; they saw their sexual orientation as tangential to their identity as a professor. They felt that they could educate, challenge, and support all students quite well without coming out themselves.

The GUESS-ME folks felt they were identifiable enough for the queers to find them without mentioning it in class. They would confirm their identities for those students who asked, but they would not reference these issues in a classroom setting.

Sometimes, these positions seemed to relate to individuals' levels of comfort with people knowing their sexual orientation. At other points in our discussion, people reflected on their own internalized homophobia, which did not necessarily break down cleanly into one or another of the groups. Other times, it seemed to be a basic disagreement over how much personal information anyone should share with our students. As we tried to understand and negotiate our different approaches, the gathering grew tense and people got defensive.

Where did I fall, you ask? My position was somewhere in the middle, yet strongly argued (imagine!) and deeply felt. I don't need to control the behavior of others and require that they make the same decision as I do, so I am fine for each of us to choose as we feel led. For myself, though, I certainly wanted to argue for my right to come out, and my belief that it is helpful and important to straight and queer students alike.

I went further, though. I wanted some respect and an assurance of support from those who do not disclose for my choices to disclose to students, to speak out on queer-related institutional issues, and to do queer-related research. I feel like I stick my neck out for all of us when I come out and speak out and, while I am okay with that role, I want my props. I tried to be clear that I find these actions risky, and I take them not because it is easy for me, but because I feel led to do so. Perhaps it is easier for me than it is for some of them--due to some experiential, personality, and age differences--but it is often scary, troubling, and painful.

Responding to this request was hard and upsetting, I learned, for those who do not come out, speak out, or do queer-related research to agree to. Some of these folks like to tell themselves that their decisions and (in)actions don't matter to anyone but themselves, and therefore, they have to believe the same about my decisions and actions. If my actions do make a difference in our institution and do help students, then they have to face that they themselves are choosing not to make these decisions and that this can have negative consequences for all queers and straights alike.

I tried to give them a pass, saying that our different approaches actually model for queer students the many different ways one can be lesbian/gay, which is not such a bad thing. We pretended that we could agree to this, but the gathering ended on a sour note... one that took months, and perhaps years, to abate. I have to say, even for myself, that the refusal of others to say that my being out is important or beneficial was challenging to hear.

In the intervening years, other problems have arisen: a tenured queer colleague who didn't find LGBT-related research particularly compelling and suggested an expansion of my research area to strengthen my tenure bid; tension with another queer colleague about who got to teach the one queer class; consistent prodding from a queer colleague to get others to attend queer community functions; loss of a treasured colleague to a school that offered domestic partner benefits.

Like Dr. Walker and the Black colleagues he describes, we academic queers don't agree on any number of issues: the usefulness of identity politics; the need for same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, or Lavender Graduation ceremonies (modeled on the African American graduations of which Walker writes); the appropriateness of lesbian-only spaces; and many more. Hell, academic lesbians can't all agree on whether we should be feminists, and what kind of feminism we ought to embrace if we do claim that identity. These kinds of divisions and disagreements are unavoidable among identity groups, even among a small group of faculty who share an identity on a large, predominantly other-identity campus.

A quick glance at the Factbook at Bridgewater College's website shows that Dr. Walker is 0ne of 34 tenured or tenure-track faculty of color (13%) and one of only 11 Black faculty at his school. I can't even tell you how many lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men there are at my university; no one gathers those numbers, and even if they did, it is hard to know if they would be accurate, given the stigma around queer identity.

As I see it, the issue for faculty who are in the numerical minority in our colleges and universities is whether we can count members of our group, and other allies, to support us in what can sometimes be a hostile climate. We don't need to be judging or pillorying one another for "being overly identity-identified" or "not being identity-identified enough." My hope for Dr. Walker is my hope for myself: to forge an academic community that welcomes diversity in all its forms, a community that supports our decisions and facilitates our successes. But I am resigned to the hard work that that goal represents--the divisions, disappointments, and challenges of within-group disagreements, and the necessity of choosing for myself what kind of "identitied" person I will be.

Cheers to Dr. Walker.

Academics on my nerves...

Okay, so I feel like being a bit snarky today. Perhaps it is because I am sick. Perhaps I have had too many meetings recently. Perhaps I am grumpy that the weekend is basically over. Whatever the cause, this is fair warning that the post below is definitely pointed and snarky.

I love the "School is Hell" cartoon books. In one section, Matt Groening does a great job delineating types of professors/instructors. I want to do something similar about the types of academics who get on my nerves. These archetypes are compilations of an assortment pf people from different schools and programs. [Of course, there are no representatives from my current school, where I always love everyone. :0) ] Here goes...

The Hard Worker

The Hard Worker works harder than anyone else. You know it because s/he always reminds you of how hard s/he is working. S/he is quick to let you know the 5 projects s/he is juggling and the endless hours s/he has spent on each. The Hard Worker usually shares this information when s/he is explaining why s/he cannot attend your committee meeting, take on any responsibility for committee work, or offer student advising. Hir work is vastly more important than yours, as is hir tenure. And s/he will get tenure and make you look lazy.

The Parent

The Parent is a senior faculty member who has decided that all junior faculty members will benefit from hir wisdom, whether s/he is asked for it or not. S/he routinely asks questions that are overly personal, while sharing little about hir own life. S/he insinuates hirself into the personal lives of all junior faculty members, quickly becoming a confidante. The Parent gossips constantly even while s/he promises confidentiality to the listener. S/he portrays hirself as the only person who really cares about the junior faculty members.

The Cynic

Most academics are critical about aspects of academe from time to time, but the Cynic has raised it to an art form. Everything is a conspiracy, usually designed to hurt the Cynic, waste hir time, and steal hir resources. No idea is good enough to pursue, in hir opinion, but something must be done to change the flawed current situation. The Cynic is suspicious of all overarching theoretical or philosophical approaches, and s/he constantly questions the purposes of administrators' decisions. The whole enterprise is fucked, s/he notes constantly, often to the coterie of grad students who tend to follow hir around.

The Team Player

The Team Player is a junior faculty member who is basically the polar opposite of the cynic. While the Cynic is critical of everything, especially administrators, the Team Player is a cheerleader for the administration. With hir head in the clouds and rose-colored glasses on her eyes, she believes that everything is going pretty well, changes are always thoughtfully designed and will make a department better, and that just a little bit of effort from everyone can get us to the promised land. The Team Player has a hard time hearing criticism and cannot stand to spend much time with the cynic. S/he has been wooed by the parent, has great admiration for the hard worker, and believes very strongly in meritocracy. Over time, s/he is bound to become the Parent or the Cynic.

The Slug

The Slug is a senior faculty member who stopped working and caring decades ago. S/he has taught the same courses forever, still from the same set of yellowed, handwritten notes. S/he avoids technology and any other teaching innovations, finding them faddish and crowd-pleasing. The Slug has not done interesting research in years, choosing instead to consistently "update" editions of hir one book. S/he will occasionally serve on committees, at least in name, though s/he rarely makes the meetings and is never prepared. Everyone is waiting for the Slug to retire, but no one can really imagine it happening.

The PC Police

{Okay, so I write this one pretty carefully, because I think our language and curriculum choices are important.} The PC Police approach every encounter in the department as a way to test faculty and administrators on their ability to navigate difficult issues of difference: race, gender, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, physical and mental ability, you name it. No one can ever pass the test, and the PC Police change the rules (and the appropriate labels) fairly quickly. The goal for the PC Police is not improvement or change in those people, policies, or practices that they find offensive; instead, it is merely a game of "gotcha," a chance to embarrass others and prove oneself superior. Both the Cynic and the Team Player can't stand the PC Police, though the Cynic is more likely to be dismissive and the Team Player is more likely to cry.

The life of the party (TLOTP)

TLOTP is the hub of department partying. S/he always hosts lunches, dinners, pub crawls, and other gatherings. S/he is usually found lingering in office doors, chatting away, even if the person s/he is talking to is clearly working. If s/he is a junior faculty member, you may find hir at night at the bars with the graduate students. If s/he is a senior faculty member, you can count on a hidden flask somewhere in the office. TLOTP is most likely to have a drug hookup in the community; oftentimes, this hookup is a student.

The Master Delegator

The Master Delegator gets as much work done as the Hard Worker; s/he just doesn't do any of it hirself. No project is too big or too small to be broken down into pieces and delegated to others, especially junior faculty and doctoral students. S/he often volunteers to lead committees and chair dissertations, but s/he never takes on a task for the committee and s/he is never available to meet with the doc students. S/he is good at following up with others to see if they did what they were tasked to do, but easily overlooks that s/he hirself has no tasks. S/he is quite likely to be nominated for awards, however, because hir CV has so many impressive projects listed on it.

The STAR

The STAR is famous--in the school, the community, the discipline, and perhaps the whole world. The STAR could show up on the cover of a major news magazine, where s/he is often quoted. Hir classes are overflowing, usually with a waiting list. Every student or faculty member you encounter, when they find out you work at the STAR's school/department, asks if you know hir and what s/he is really like. S/he is too busy to participate on committees, grade hir students' work, hold office hours, or show up at faculty meetings. In fact, the STAR often misses classes as well, even with hir reduced courseload. Instead, you will find the STAR at national conferences, award ceremonies, named lectures, and other important settings, usually being recognized for hir work. While the STAR makes an ungodly salary, other schools are constantly wooing the STAR with bigger and better offers. While some faculty would be glad to see the STAR go, especially the Slug and the Cynic, s/he usually brings in enough money and recognition to the department that faculty would rather s/he stayed on.

Okay, those are all I can think of right now... What others can you identify?

A dirty word?

(I wrote this about a month ago, but I have been preoccupied with a family emergency and my own health issues. I thought it was interesting, so I am posting it anyway.)

You may think from the title that I am going to pontificate again on cursing. But no, that ship has sailed...and I still love to curse. As Mo'Nique said, those curse words "just taste good in my mouth."

No, I want to talk about the word "ambitious."

I spoke to a very wonderful friend from one of my former schools, and we discussed our plans for the future. She asked me whether I wanted to become a Dean someday, and I told her that I did. I also discussed how I have been laying the groundwork to get to that position. She replied, "That is what I love about you, Lesboprof. You are so ambitious!"

That got me to reflecting on a lot of the posts I have been reading recently. Dean Dad, BitchPhD, New Kid, and especially Oso Raro have made me feel like both a commiserator and a collaborator. (These are some of my favorite academic bloggers, so the internal conflict in my own response has been pretty bothersome for me.)

Their posts and the related discussions have centered on several related topics: not doing what your grad school instructors expected you to do with your degree, being underemployed or alternately employed as an academic, going against the expectations of others, whether those who do succeed deserve it (and can sustain it!), and whether the achievement of tenure is just a bunch of bullshit that is all political anyway.

Here is my dilemma: I am...

• an oppositional (read: out lesbian feminist) scholar who does work that is not mainstream, but that makes a difference in the world and interests me personally (so I get some props from my fella and sista bloggers)


• a scholar who has "succeeded" as per the rather traditional and rigid standards of my R1 grad schools' faculty by (1) getting the first R1 job; (2) getting a second and third R1 job, each one higher up the rankings ladder; (3) publishing in the "right places"; (4) getting tenure at the current R1 and moving into administration here.

Okay, well, I have not gotten big NIH/NSF/CDC/other-federal-acronym multimillion dollar grant, but otherwise I have done what needs doing, as they described it in my doc program.

I achieved this "success"--if tenure at an R1 is the success story, as I was told in my grad program--in my own inimitable fashion, as I described in another post on tenure that got published in Inside Higher Ed. But it was planful, purposive, and strategic. I made my choices, some of them against advice of mentors, but I knew it was a game I would play to win. But even when I look back at my IHE post on my tenure reflections, I wonder why it was so much less offensive to readers than the Chronicle "tenure prep as exercise" first person piece by George Farmer that New Kid just skewers. (Though several folks did make comments about how "depressing" my piece was, for some of the same reasons, I think, that New Kid and others hated Farmer's piece.)

Farmer and I have in common is that we both think we know something about how to get tenure, though I am clearer that I think there are many ways to do it that can reflect your personal style and choices. More to the point, really, is that both of us have chosen to play the game, thus the depressing bit, and we are clear about our intention to win--which for me is to have the resources, supports, and teaching load of an R1, specifically in a big public state school that serves all kinds of residents. Does that immediately make us sellouts?

Is ambition a dirty word?

(God, even as I type this, I realize that I sound like Carrie on "Sex and the City." Time to cut to commercial break, while I sit back from my keyboard and draw on my lit cigarette!)

(Coughs noisily, as I don't smoke!)

Seriously, though, it makes me sad to think about someone googling me and being snarky about what I have or have not done right, whether I have truly earned my place or not, and whether I still get to think about myself as oppositional, occasionally embattled, and--dare I say, in theory-speak--counter-hegemonic?! Maybe all I can claim to be is just a guerilla in the bureaucracy (see Needleman and Needleman 1974 book of the same name for the reference)?

It is strange to talk to other academics who don't have a big post-tenure plan. I do, and I always have. I like administration, and I am attracted by the opportunities and challenges that would await me in future positions higher up the administrative ladder. And I can't lie: the lure of being called Dean/Provost/President Lesboprof is part of the attraction (right, Dean Dad?)...

I guess I can only hope to keep my own values front and center, and try not to get caught up in the hype about assessing one's worth by looking at the types of colleges at which one teaches, the roles or positions one takes there, the kinds of research one does, where one publishes, the grants one receives, or the granting or denial of tenure (beyond its ability to provide job security and freedom of speech/research). I truly do believe that our academic system needs all of us, as we are, and that our diversity helps us serve students with diverse needs by doing the research, teaching, service, and administrative tasks we each select, and living the lives we want, as we are led and able. And I have to admit, I guess, that I am led to be ambitious.