So I read my annual review by my chair and, as with the one he gave last year, the damn thing actually made me cry. I mean, it's so fucking nice. I don't mean that it says I'm the best thing since sliced bread or merely extols my virtues--though it is, objectively, a mostly flattering portrait. It just reads like there's an actual human being behind the letter, unlike the ones given out by Previous Chair. It recognizes the flaws in the major program to which I am a contributing faculty. It recognizes that scholarship can be on fun things (like TV!). It recognizes how difficult it can be to be a junior faculty member in this department. And yet...
it still has me turning around in circles trying to decode the single sentence of bureaucrat-ese. How much do I *really* need to do for tenure? What would happen if I didn't keep going at what is, I think, a break-neck speed? Will he still think I'm in a good place, professionally, if I do decide to have another child? Should I have another child because my chair has mostly indicated that if I keep doing what I'm doing I will, in all likelihood, get tenure? Why is it that my department--even with a kindly human as Current Chair--cultivates anxiety in those who don't need to be anxious and supports those who are generally fuck-ups who don't get their work done? What is that about?
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