The File is Returned

The file has been in my possession now for about 2 weeks. I have not looked at it yet, but I have about a month to look at it and revise it. The chair of the tenure committee met with me a few weeks ago and we went over the file and the committee’s suggestions for changes. I have to make some changes to my CV (mostly grammatical) and add some more “evidence” of my work in the area of collections. I think the recommended changes were reasonable, but I think someone on the committee went a bit overboard with suggestions for periods and other punctuation marks (LOL)! In my opinion, the experience of having your file criticized (albeit constructively) wasn’t as terrifying as it seem a few months ago. Time has really flown by and I honestly don’t believe that I can put the same amount of energy in revising the file as I did originally in the summer. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit resentful of the deadline being in the middle of the busiest time of the year, but this forces me not to take the process too seriously. In theory, I don’t have to revise my file at all since it is only a “suggestion” from the committee, but knowing me I will be spending another Saturday in my office long after the reference desk is closed, to work on this. In the meanwhile, the file is lying on a stack of papers beckoning me to look at it. While I am working at my computer, I can feel its presence bearing down on me and silently calling me to it. I try to ignore it and so far, I’ve succeeded, but I will try to resist opening up that can of worm until I have hours upon hours of time to devote to it. I give myself one more week to ignore it and then I’m toast!

The T & P File: File Advisor #2

So I met with file advisor #2 and, putting my bruised ego aside, the result of this meeting was very insightful and productive. File advisor #2 was a great choice because of her intimate knowledge of the workings of the T & P committee (she chaired the committee not too long ago!). It is interesting that file advisor #2 picked up on things that file advisor #1 did not. File advisor #1 took a top down approach to the file. That is, looking at my my personal statement to guide the development of the file. On the other hand, file advisor #2 had a bottom up approach. She focused on looking at the individual documents and evidence to help form/shape my descriptions and statements (particularly my teaching statement). This is just an example as to why it is important to have different individuals consult your draft file.

I got some very valuable feedback from file advisor #2. Some include:

• CV: moving some things from my CV to the actual file (as evidence); be consistent with my tenses
• References: consider using a tenured librarian as a reference as opposed to another tenure-tracked librarian (I was a bit surprised by this as I didn’t see why it would make a difference, but I will incorporate this change, because file advisor #2 is very knowledgeable and I trust her candor)
• Information Literacy section: to include a separate page for each sample class I chose and in bullet form (to make it easier for the T& P evaluators) address the specific techniques or methods I used for that class
• for documents created with others or documents which are modified, I should include detail description of what I did
• for each section of the file, include the most recent examples first

The end looks like it is sight. I will be tackling all these issues and pray to complete the finalized draft of my file by the end of the week. I need a vacation!

T & P=Triumph and Perseverance

It has been a month since my last message. In between posts I have been working on 2 research studies simultaneously, starting several new highly involved projects and trying to assemble my file for promotion and tenure file.

I’ve created a table of contents to organize the information and I am slowly plucking information from my files (going as far back as 2004) for the file. I must admit that when you dig up material that you’ve designed, classes you’ve taught and projects that you’ve completed, there is a deep sense of just how much you have accomplished. This is why I think that instead of T & P being a process of “tremble and puke” it should now be one of “triumph and perseverance”! One of the librarians on the T & P committee mentioned that there is no room for modesty when preparing your file. It is your turn to shine and tout your accomplishments. The items that I am assembling for the file, I believe, speak for themselves! I can’t believe that I’ve taught that many classes or accomplished so much in 3 years!

On a more bitter-sweet note, I’ve learned an excellent lesson about being extremely organized. I was working on the section about the IL classes that I’ve taught and wanted to select some classes to list in my file. I wanted to look at all email messages from instructors thanking me for teaching a particular class. To my horror my email folders for “Classes Taught” from 2004-2006 were deleted! How could this be?  Apparently, I did not notice that I hadn’t copied them from my local drive to the server before deleting the email messages from my hard drive. I’m not too sure what happened there as I was pretty sure that they were transferred over. Anyhow, I was fortunate that I had printed out all email correspondence regarding each IL class taught and placed the print-outs in a folder! What luck! I’m a paper person through and through and this time it helped. It would have been extremely difficult to select the courses to add to my file without these print-outs! But I learned my lesson and I am now being extremely careful with organization of work-related files.

The Successful Academic Librarian

I’m currently reading “The Successful Academic Librarian: Winning Strategies from Library Leaders” edited by Gwen Meyer Gregory. As an unsure junior librarian, I’m constantly devouring books or articles relating to professional development such as this book. This book offers tips on how to accomplish job responsibilities, collaborate with faculty members, how to pursue research/scholarly activities, how to survive the tenure and promotion process etc. It also offers “tales from the trenches” by seasoned academic librarians. There are some really great tips in here and I plan to use some of the information related to building a dossier/curriculum vitae and documenting your work for the tenure and promotion process. One particular chapter that I found refreshing is “Witches Brew or Gorumet Gumbo–Tenure in the Library” by Molly E. Molloy. It is a real honest account of the tenure and promotion process (affectionately referred to as “puke and tremble”). The author is not afraid of being brutally honest and candid about her experience both as a tenure-track librarian working her way up and as a tenured librarian serving judgement on the tenure-track librarians. One section that I thought was both interesting and frightening was:

“I sat in meetings, discussing the merits and demerits of the people with whom I spent so many hours of my life. I closed my eyes at the meeting table and suddenly I could see little demons swirling around the room and landing on our heads with spidery sharp talons. They peered at us with hot yellow eyes, leaned their slimy green tongues close to our ears and spewed out raspy chatter that then magically emerged from our own mouths, sounding like our own voices, saying things like: Should these newsletter articles or book reviews be counted as publications?…What made us think that we had the right to judge people in these terms? Hadn’t we gotten beyond fraternity hazing?…Could we not stipulate that we would not judge each other so harshly, just because we can?”

My worst fears about the whole “tremble and puke” process has been confirmed, yet I was very surprised about her section on “Enforced Mediocrity”.

“The gremlins lower their voices when venturing into this territory. Professional jealousy…? Can someone really be too good to fit in at our library? Yes, they can. This is probably the most distasteful thing that promotion and tenure committees ever do or ever encounter and they will most likely never admit it…However there are always colleagues who do more than their share in all of the categories…They are most likely always busy…Maybe people who excel in this way come across as distant and prickly to others…It is hard to imagine that such super-achievers would not earn tenure…We cannot ignore or get rid of the gremlins if we refuse to see them in the first place. The only way to keep from enforcing mediocrity is to acknowledge that it happens”.

Once you are on the tenure-track you automatically have the “I must achieve, I must prove myself” mantra playing in the back of your mind. The very idea that being an overachiever is something that might be viewed as a negative by a tenure and promotion committee never crossed my mind. I’m hoping that her experience might just be an isolated one. Am I sticking my head in the sand? Perhaps…