Thinking hard

I got a promotion recently. It got me thinking. For example, it reminded me of my (crushingly failed) prior attempts at securing a full-time teaching job at the landscape architecture department a while back. I learned later, that a group of my then-students met with my then-department head and chewed him out for not hiring me full-time. One of them was the student rep on the selection committee, which is how they knew what happened. Lovely kids.

A very small number of My People supported and encouraged me through the years. I thank you; you know who you are. However, overall, my cheering section is lacking. Some assume that as I am “smart”, I will figure everything out as needed. Pressure has always been high, pats on the back few, if any. As a result of a life-long diet of appreciation deprivation, I sometimes have a tough time understanding just how good/bad I am at something. In academia, this nonsense is business-as-usual. If no one is willing to tell me “hey, you got this and this and this; you need to work on this, and this”, it’s going to be one lengthy and frustrating guessing game on my part.

I see a glimpse of how it works on my new Planet Uni: awards and honors are a huge deal. The busier your walls are with parchment, the better and more valuable you must be for the system. I am not a big fan of plaques; I prefer human-delivered, true and specific “attagirls” (just got one from a female colleague recently, and it meant a world to me). Two of my personal heroes, Dick Feynman and Herb Simon, were impatient with honors, too. Both were Nobel Prize winners, by the way… :-) Tough acts to follow! However, I may need to strive to earn such parchments as they may open doors to do what I love to do: to empower young adults through optimizing the existing higher-ed, and catalyzing change as needed.

Some people love others how they have been loved (for better or worse). Some love how they wish they were loved. Lastly, some figure out how people they care about want to be loved, and deliver just that. The last one is, of course, the hardest. It requires empathy, paying attention, and acting selflessly in ways that may not come naturally. This probably extends into non-love based work relationships. Therefore, to fully express my appreciation of my colleagues, I should probably nominate them for awards, honors, and recognitions.

…And she comes full circle.