Continued from Friday the 13th's post. More of Bendnotes 4.
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Some weeks ago I was at lunch up at Grandview. I sat at the buffalo's table. The president and [the instructional dean] start talking about hunting. I talk about folks I knew in Poky [Pocatello] who would use hunting season to collect their family's winter meat supply. Then I ask about how the meat is prepared. I actually asked the president if he ever sat aside any elk burgers for charming new faculty people. He said that he would if I wanted some. (I saw him again last week and he said, "I've put aside something for you.") After more chit chat, I turned back to [other faculty at the table] with a smile which I hoped told them that I understood that I had been sucking up and that the choice to do so had been a conscious one based on organizational discomfort and that they should not think that I really thought them less important as humans than [the president]. At least I hoped my smile said that.
I went to talk to the [instructional dean] about my PIP (professional improvement program.) After we went over just what my PIP needs to look like, he and I got into an argument about women's vs. men's ways of knowing and that relationship between logics and power structures. At one point I remember that I was sitting on the edge of my chair, cutting him off, and saying that I disagreed because of xx. I have forgotten what it was I was saying. But I remember (in part because I've told this story a couple of time already) that he sat back with his hand covering a big smile. . . . A few days later as I was talking with a student about communication climate, I realized that when [the instructional dean] had told me in the fall that he had thought he'd never survive his first two years at a community college, he had been helping establish a positive communication climate for me. I went in and told him what I had told my student and thanked him. Was I sucking up? I didn't experience that particular incidence as sucking up. I experienced it as a move in establishing a relationship with one of the few people on this campus with whom I can have a good argument.
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As I copied the first paragraph above I realize that for years I've remembered that conversation with the president as happening at the first Faculty/Administrator retreat. Much of what exists in the Bendnotes no longer exists in memory. Memory is an odd thing. As you can see I'm also editing out some names. Some of the stories in Bendnotes might also invite ire, even after two and a half decades so I've decided to leave them out. But one of my SO F.n YOUNG colleagues has asked for copies so he'll get the unexpurgated versions.
I only have a couple more pages of Bendnotes to share and I think I'll wait until next quarter to do so. The person who wrote them -- so self-monitoring, so terrified -- seems familiar but different from the person she became.
Tomorrow night I'll tell the story of the first teaching job I ever had which was also the first job from which I was ever fired. Then I'll go into a no-blog zone for the Holiday holiday.
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