Friday, January 27, 2006

Phew!

Phew!


Well, I was observed twice this week, once by my department chair, and once by my division chair, a person of immense power and influence on campus. I admit that I did nothing extra to prep my classes -- except that I did review my notes a bit more carefully beforehand. The first observation was good -- entirely document discussion. Today's was a bit weird, because we were finishing some documents on one period, but finished with them earlier than I would have liked, so I moved us on to the next topic via lecture. So the chair saw me in both discussion and lecture mode. Have I mentioned that I am terrified of screwing up in front of this person, because the chair really does have the power to give me the job or deny it? For those of you Ancient/Medieval folks, think major patron in the Roman Republican sense. But I think it went reasonably well, because when I got back to my office, I passed the chair in the hall and heard this:
"Very nice, ADM, very nice."

I will now commence with the breathing.

Update: No longer breathing. Looked at the Kzoo program. Senior Colleague's name is missing from our roundtable. Scarier ... a bona fide person with name recognition is the presider at my paper panel. I was not aware of this. Yeep! And finally, the scary scholar who works on very similar things to me is unfortunately not presenting across from me. So ... maybe I should see this as incentive to write a kick-ass paper rather than panicking about my impending academic embarrassing crucifixion of doom?

4 comments:

Pilgrim/Heretic said...

Rowr. :)

Anonymous said...

ADM,

Bona fide person will not actually be presiding at your session as he/she doesn't come to Kzoo on that particular day. Instead, humble nonperson will probably chair (i.e., me). But you'll write a kick-ass paper anyway.

Phlebas

Another Damned Medievalist said...

Thanks, everybody!

Thanks, Phlebas. I was just thinking about the fact that normally the kinds of methodologies I use are pretty obscure, and all of a sudden presider person (whose book using those methodologies got some criticism for not doing it very well) and scary scholar, i.e., two people whose eyes don't actually glaze over at the stuff, could possibly be there ... But Phlebas and Brilliant Anglo-Saxonist will be there, too. And they will tell me if it's not a kick-ass paper. Senior Colleague has also offered to hack it to pieces before-hand. On with the writing, off with the panicking ;-)

I actually had dinner with presider person at Medieval Academy a couple of years ago, and as a person, not scary at all, at least. And a mutual interest in fantasy novels.

Anonymous said...

Oh, you'll be great! NOTHING to worry about. And congrats on the observations going well!