babies! babies! babies!

i know eight women who are pregnant right now. at least. maybe there are more who haven't told yet, or don't even know themselves. one grad school friend. four colleagues. one former colleague. one neighbor. one ex-boyfriend's wife.

unlike a lot of my friends, i never went through a invited-to-ten-weddings-a-year phase of my life. now, i'm definitely smack dab in the middle of the everyone-i-know-is-having-babies phase. as much as i love an open bar and passed hors d'oeuvres (i spelled that one right on the first try!), babies are more fun.

i haven't asked any of my faculty colleagues how their students have reacted to their pregnancies. i found mine to be totally ambivalent. i think female college students, understandably, look at pregnant women and think "that can't be me. that won't be me. no. no. no. no." i know that's what i would have been thinking from ages 17-21. and the guys were probably just weirded out.

a somewhat troubling discovery

on the days that i need to feel most confident, i wear my most impractical shoes.

owning our own opinions, a la lady professor

a friend who blogs recently posted about the importance of owning up to your opinions and being brave enough to take responsibility for your perspective when discussing difficult issues with people you care about (the post title is borrowed from her). this really resonated with some thoughts that have been floating around in my head lately...

this week, i had my first pre-tenure review meeting. to prepare, i had to write a narrative statement about what i've been doing for the past three years when it comes to teaching, scholarship and service to the college. one of the things they ask you to reflect on is your student evaluations. students are encouraged to write comments on the forms in addition to filling in scantron bubbles. these forms are anonymous. in general, i'm pretty pleased with how i've fared, but i had one round of evaluations that totally threw me for a loop.

i'm sure some great minds have written about how anonymity can produce vicious and harmful responses in nameless, faceless venues like online message boards and teaching evals (if you've read anything in this vein, please let me know!), but i can only speak to my experience. here's the (edited) excerpt from my narrative where i talk about this:

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My X course evaluation scores were by far the lowest that I have received over
the past two years, and I was especially disappointed that my Rapport with Students score was so low. I was taken aback by these scores and by students written comments as I felt the class went quite well based on the fact that many students often contributed to lively in-class discussions. Clearly, students had a different perception of our classroom interactions than I did. This was my second term at X College and perhaps I got overly confident about the degree to which I could question student responses in class (especially if I had the distinct impression that they had not prepared for class). From my perspective, I was challenging them to think critically. From their perspective, I was being closed-minded and hostile to their contributions. I was thoroughly disheartened by some especially negative comments I received and, in fact, found it hard to see myself in the professor they were describing.

Most disturbing was a comment from one student that was insulting and sexually explicit. I brought this particular evaluation form to the attention of Academic Affairs through a meeting with Dean X, who has a copy of the form on file. Though I was told that I could remove this form from the evaluations on record, I have chosen to include it with all the rest in the supporting materials on file.

Though this was an isolated comment, I think it speaks to a larger and significant issue I have given much thought to since this incident. I suspect that written responses of this nature are seldom if ever received by male faculty members. My interpretation of this anonymous comment is that it was a punishment for my outspokenness and the exertion of my (misplaced, at least from this student’s perspective?) authority as a woman, especially in relation to male students. As a young, female faculty member I have found it challenging to strike a balance between being perceived as a caring person and being perceived as a competent professor * . Perhaps I have tended to put too much emphasis on the latter rather than the former. Obviously, in this section of this course, students found me too harsh and, ultimately, I failed at being either caring or competent in their eyes.

My ultimate goal as a professor is to encourage student learning. I also care deeply about my students and have developed close relationships with some of them that have continued beyond their time at X College. The obvious (it seems to me) synthesis here is caring about whether or not students are learning. I do not want to champion mediocrity in my courses by ignoring students’ lack of preparedness for class or fostering an environment where all responses are equally correct. At the same time, I do want students to feel that my classroom is a place where their input is essential and valued. In the time since this section of X course, I have paid more attention to how I respond to students in and out of class and have worked at fostering an inclusive classroom environment. In general, I think that this is reflected in my evalution scores and in student comments.

My goal in this area of my teaching is to continue to work on creating an open atmosphere in my classes where active participation is encouraged. I love it when students build on each others’ ideas in class and bring the discussion to a new and interesting place, and I want to foster these experiences through positive reinforcement.

* The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has generated interesting insights on gender in the classroom that reflect this tension between competence and caring for female faculty. Research conducted by Hall (1998--"How Big are Nonverbal Sex Differences? The Case of Smiling and Sensitivity to Nonverbal Cues." In Sex Differences and Similarities in Communication. D. J. Canary and K. Dindia, eds. pp. 155-177. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) demonstrated that students associated professors’ tendency to smile with their degree of caring for students. While students’ perceptions of male faculty members’ competence were unaffected by the amount they smiled in the classroom, they found female faculty members who smiled more (and were, therefore, perceived to be more caring) to also be less competent.
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in general, i learned some important lessons from those negative evaluations and am a better teacher because of them. that one particularly egregious comment was probably the most challenging thing i've had to deal with, on a personal level, in my (albeit short) professional life. i felt ashamed and angry, scared and sad. i was furious that one anonymous comment, one cowardly sentence, could rattle me (an otherwise strong, smart, academic woman who understands how gendered power dynamics work) so completely. if i offended this person in the classroom, at least i did it to their face. i have no idea if the student who wrote that comment intended their words to have such a stunning effect, or if they just wrote them without much consideration for how they'd be received and forgot about them minutes later. i'll never know. did that student know that those words had power, in a lot of different ways? i'll never know. the closest i've been able to get to a rebuttal, or any kind of response, was the statement i wrote for my review. it felt good to write.

i think students should be able to anonymously evaluate their teachers, but i also know that their words, which may mean very little to them, can have lasting effects. there can be both predictable and unforseen consequences when we communicate with anonymity, when deeper motivations are unknown, when there is no accountability, when we don't have to act as members of a community (writ-large or small), and when we don't have to acknowledge that words bear power.

my favorite teaching evaluation form comment of the day

"this class was wonderful, but i am glad it is over because it was hard."

thanks. i guess.

kvetch of the day

this afternoon i ran into a student who took one of my classes last term. i was teaching two different courses, one for senior majors and one mid-level course with no prerequisites. this was only the second class she had taken in the discipline and though she was originally registered for the upper-level class, i encouraged her to wait on that one and get into my other class (which fit into her schedule) instead. it didn't make any sense to me for her to take this advanced class first when the other one was more in line with her plan of study. i signed her drop and add slips and we were good to go.

or so i thought.

several weeks later, this student came in to my colleague's office as i was leaving mine. i overheard her say, "she told me to drop her one class and join the other one. it made a lot of problems for me and i lost my scholarship." what?! i felt horrible and hated to think that i might be at fault for jeopardizing a student's financial aid. after class one day, i asked if we could talk for a minute and i brought up the conversation i had overheard--i expressed my distress, but didn't back off of my initial advice, which i felt was sound. the problem seemed to come from our antiquated, paper-based drop/add system. basically, she was dropped from my upper-level course without being added to the mid-level class, subsequently went below full-time enrollment and was declared ineligible for a federal grant. she reiterated what a problem it had been to get her tuition paid.

i was frustrated on her behalf, but was still irked that she seemed to be blaming me (at least in part) for this mix-up. i told her that i'd be happy to call the financial aid office on her behalf and see if something couldn't be done. it seemed crazy for a student to lose her scholarship over a clerical error, the simple fact that someone let her drop one class before she was added to another. 

so i called. and found out that the filing error happened because she had written an incorrect course number on her add slip (her mistake, but one i probably should have caught, though faculty members sign blank drop/add slips all the time), which held it up. i also found out that the college had found supplementary funds to compensate for her lost grant and the outstanding balance she and her family had to pay was only $250. granted, in these times, i'm not saying that $250 is insignificant, but she had more or less led me to believe that thousands of dollars were at stake. 

i was irritated that she had held me responsible and had painted me as the bad guy to my colleague, and maybe to other people, too. and i was a little resentful that i had taken on so much guilt about this. i spoke to her again and indicated that i had learned of some of the details that she had left out--the incorrect course number, the college's efforts to get her money back, etc. she more or less ignored all of this and again emphasized how economically difficult this whole situation was for her and her family. i felt badly about the money, but i decided to be at content with the fact that i had at least done my best to advocate for her (though under false pretenses).

fast forward to today. i'm leaving campus and spot her heading in the same direction. i slow down to say hi...

"hey X. how's it going?" 

"good, thanks."

"how was your break?"

"it was really great..."

wait for it...

"...i went to key west!"

desperately seeking rhoda

lucy and ethel. wilma and betty. florida and willona. mary and rhoda. the sitcoms i grew up watching (and i watched a lot of them) showed me all of these examples of female best friends who were also neighbors. that physical proximity often led to zany, madcap adventures. they got jobs together and stuffed their puffy hats with chocolates. they won prize money with their upside down flint rubble bubble cake. they also endured job loss and and overbearing parents and silly husbands and disappointing boyfriends and why-can't-i-be-in-the-show-ricky. they were a part of each other's daily routines. 

maybe this is a totally unrealistic model of friendship, but it's also a really appealing one.

the reality is that i don't live any closer than a two-hour drive from my dearest friends. over the years i've gotten used to being relatively far away from my high school girlfriends since i don't live near the city where i grew up. i still do live in the town where i attended grad school but, not surprisingly, the wonderful friends i made during those years have spread out across the country to do research, get jobs, start families, etc. even my sisters-in-law are in different states. at this stage in my life, it seems that work should be the most obvious place to make new friends, but that's a bit complicated by my one-hour commute. 

happily, our social lives have been busier than they have been in years lately. we're in a dinner club with my husband's work friends and their spouses, we've been invited into a wine tasting group through one of those couples, and we have great relationships with my departmental colleagues and their families. and i do my best to keep in close contact with my best girls from coast to coast and jump at the few and far between chances to see them in person...

but i don't have an ethel, a willona, a betty, a rhoda. i have had them, but not right now. maybe part of me thought that i'd have made all of my life's close friends by now and that i wouldn't have to work (is it work?) at making new ones. but i know that i miss having those relationships in my life. so maybe the title of this post is hyperbole--i'm not desperate. but i guess i am seeking. 

professor mama

this afternoon i received an exciting e-mail from a friend i used to work with. she's 12 weeks pregnant and eagerly anticipating the arrival of baby #1. sadly (for me), she now teaches elsewhere as an adjunct. and there's the rub...

she doesn't have a contract for next year yet, and consequently, hasn't told anyone at work about her pregnancy. the year that we worked together, i was in the exact same boat. i had applied for a tenure-track job at the college where i had a one-year position and due to a long series of complicated events, i didn't find out whether or not i had a more permanent job for several months, when i was five months pregnant. i clearly remember having coffee with this same friend a few weeks before i found out that i got it. i walked up to the table, she glanced at my belly and then her eyes met mine with a look that said, "who are you kidding, girlie-girl?" we both laughed (maybe a little nervously, for me) at how ridiculous the situation had become. i was still cramming into my regular clothes (not surprisingly, nothing makes you look more pregnant than maternity clothes) and had only told a handful of friends--no one in my department, of course.

when i was finally able to tell people, it was so anti-climactic. i felt like i'd be insulting people's intelligence and basic powers of perception if i announced the news as if it were news. i was (and still am) resentful that it felt so risky to be a pregnant woman in the workplace and that i had to hide my wonderful, joyful, happy news (and belly) during most of my waking hours.

one of the senior female faculty members in my department talks (often) about how she had her baby and was back in the classroom three days later. i am (and all women/mothers are, i'd argue) deeply indebted to all of the feminist foremothers who fought the good fight and won those essential victories like maternity leave, but i also feel like the "bad old days" discussions have a tendency to cover up the fact that we have a long way to go. 

in the meantime, i hope my friend gets her contract soon... 

and in the meantime, i'm absolutely thrilled for her and for the lucky little baby who will call her mama.

leisure reading with clam juice and pickles

i consider it a small miracle that i finished some leisure reading over this break. i tend to have these inflated, unrealistic ideas about how much time i'll have to do the things i want to do before the next term starts, so i've started to move in the other direction and assume that i'll get next-to-nothing done. E's naps have been blessedly long this past week--topping out at three hours--but there's always laundry to do, a dishwasher to empty, e-mails to respond to, etc. still, i managed to read the brief wondrous life of oscar wao by junot diaz with a few days to spare (the other novel i bought recently, the children's hospital by chris adrian, is just over 600 pages. it will have to wait.). 

i do a lot of reading for work/school and the difference between that experience (even books/articles i really like) and reading just to get lost in a good story is always surprisingly and wonderfully stark. thank god for that. maybe i'm a little afraid that one day i'll lose the stay-up-late-to-finish-feeling that a satisfying novel can bring. hasn't happened yet, though... 

anyway, oscar wao was great. those pulitzer prize folks know their business. it was being considered by my college as the book that all first-year students read before starting their first term, but it was rejected. if you read it, i suspect you'll know why. still, for a few reasons i think it would have been good for our mostly suburban, white, middle-upper middle class kids--yunior, the narrator, and oscar, the protagonist, are dominican-american; the dominican republic's recent history and racial politics play out in footnotes and through the multi-generational, biographical storylines (what do we know about the DR apart from baseball?); yunior's voice is young and street, laced with sci-fi/fantasy/generally nerdy references, which makes it a really fun book. mostly, the characters are complicated and believable.   

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i'm making clam chowder for dinner tonight. i always feel a little funny about buying clam juice. i don't really know what it is (do they squeeze the clams?) and maybe i don't want to know...

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this morning when i went into E's room, she looked at the round, green flowers on my shirt and, with nuk-in-mouth, said "pickles!" it was a great way to start the day.

i'd say that i have a pretty full plate--mothering, marriage, work, commuting, old and newer friendships, yoga once a week, making meals and eating them, tidying up,  knitting. i even have another blog, too, but here i am creating a new one. 

let me explain...

ever since our daughter was born, 20 months ago, the original blog has pretty much been her turf. her adorable mug certainly deserves it. before then, it was a space for me to share stories, memories, ideas, rants, whatever was on my mind. i was reminded of how much i miss having that outlet when a college friend sent me a link to her blog, which she publishes semi-anonymously. she doesn't use her real name, but everything she writes about is real--family, kids, work, books. 

i hope that this space, lady professor (what i am, somewhat tongue-in-cheek), will be my version of that. i am using my real (first) name, but will probably try to walk a line between candid and confidential when it comes to specific people and places. 

so, again with the full plate...we'll see how often i update here. unlike a kid-centric blog, there are no photos to transfer and upload, no videos to edit and shrink, so i'm hoping that posting will be relatively quick and painless. then again, i've been nursing this little post for well over an hour (distracted by 'confessions of a dangerous mind' on hdnet). 

time to finish oscar wao...g'night!