Small Bureaucracy Inaction

I asked for it.

While shadowing a liberal arts professor as a graduate student, I attended a faculty meeting.  I don’t mean a departmental faculty meeting, I mean a meeting of the entire faculty.  At the time, the fact that these professors had a direct say in the organization of their school had a big impact on me.  Sure, faculty at big schools have a say in how their schools are run, but they don’t typically have this kind of direct influence.  This experience was one of the things that I talked about in interviews while on the job market, including the school at which I am now employed.

Now I’ve experienced a faculty meeting at my new institution and I don’t think I’d mind an indirect influence after all.  It doesn’t help that the first meeting of the semester dealt with proposed curriculum changes that a number of departments were not happy with.  Hopefully, this made the meeting more contentious than it would have otherwise been.

If there is a bright side to this experience (aside from having a direct say in the decisions that will affect my future) it is that the contentious nature of the meeting made some of the school’s stronger personalities evident, which will be helpful in future interactions.  On a small campus, it is hard to avoid these people even if they are in different departments.

I asked for it.

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The long arm of the dissertation netherworld

I am no longer ABF.  In fact, I haven’t been ABF for nearly three months.  I’ve moved, arranged my office, attended orientation, and started teaching.  Despite these things, there has never been a moment when I started feeling different.  Participating in graduation didn’t do it because I wasn’t even done with my dissertation yet.  My defense didn’t do it because I still had revisions to make, and the act of filing may have been the most anticlimactic, since the person who received my paperwork did not seem to care that I had just completed seven years of intense study at her institution.

Maybe it is the lack of some kind of symbolic passage into my career as an assistant professor or maybe it is the fact that I’ve been busy preparing for the beginning of the semester, but I still feel like a graduate student teaching a few more classes.  Maybe the realization will come with my first-ever adult-sized paycheck, but I suspect that it will actually come at some moment that isn’t particularly special.  I remember walking down the hallway of my college dorm room and being struck by the realization that I was a college student.  Maybe someday I’ll be struck by a similar realization about my new role.  Either way, it will sure be nice to get those adult-sized paychecks.

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Another lesson from an anti-mentor

In addition to being flexible, another lesson I have learned from an anti-mentor (people who have mentoring styles that cause you to vow never to mentor students in that way) is that students’ time is valuable.  As such, they deserve a professor’s full attention during meetings.  Professors should not check e-mail or answer the phone during meetings.  Finally, if a student wants to arrange a meeting, professors should do so rather than telling the student to “stop by during office hours” when there is likely to be a line of students waiting for a meeting because they were told the same thing.

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Mentor and anti-mentor

In seven years as a graduate student I’ve had a lot of time to think about what makes somebody a good mentor.  I’ve even served on committees for the purpose of awarding good mentoring.  Since I started teaching, I’ve also had a few opportunities to serve as a mentor myself, both to my own students and to incoming graduate students in my program.  I consider myself lucky to have had excellent mentors throughout my academic career, which I hope will continue when I begin as an assistant professor in the fall.  These excellent mentors have instilled in me beliefs about what mentors should do.  For example, whenever a professor and a student (graduate or undergraduate) are meeting for food or (non-alcoholic) drink, the professor should pay.  Unfortunately, my graduate student salary has prevented me from acting on this belief with my current mentees, but I plan to start doing so as soon as I get my first real check.

Even more than my mentors, however, I have developed beliefs about what mentors should do based on my anti-mentors.  Female Science Professor has discussed anti-mentors in the past, but my conception of the term is different.  While she describes anti-mentors as “people who actively try to discourage you, but not out of kindness or wisdom,” I think of them as people who have mentoring styles that cause you to vow never to mentor students in that way.  I’ve mentioned a particular experience with an anti-mentor before.  At times over the years, I’ve watched his interactions with his students and felt glad that this early experience led me to avoid him.  While his mentoring style is very hands-on, I prefer somebody who can provide advice when I ask for it along with gentle nudges to keep me on track.

In this way my dissertation advisor is a perfect match.  When I met with her on the day that an early draft of a dissertation chapter was due but had not completed the draft, she didn’t reprimand me.  We talked about a few other things and then I left, promising to send her the draft soon.  I left her office feeling like I had let her down, despite the fact that she didn’t seem let down at all.  Without saying a word, she motivated me more than a stern lecture from the professor above.

Comparing my mentor and anti-mentor, I am struck by the fact that the most important aspect of mentoring appears to be flexibility.  The anti-mentor is the type of person that you describe to incoming graduate students as “a great mentor… for those who prefer his mentoring style” while my dissertation advisor can be described as “a great mentor.”  While she uses a hands-off style with me, meeting as needed, there are other students with whom she meets every week to provide hands-on feedback and support.  Students need different forms of mentoring and, especially in a small department, professors need to work to provide what they need.  Of course, without the anti-mentor I may not have realized this.  I suppose that stern lecture did me some good after all.

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