Success = Not Failing

Stumped by that? Me, too.

I've recently gone through a discussion about my expectations in this job, which I'd hoped would make the outcome a little clearer. The way academic jobs get judged is a review process based on a portfolio you turn in of your activities for that year. Usually they're due in August for the year before, and they're broken down based on the percentages of what you were hired in to do. Because our raises are merit based and because they're decided on in the Spring for the next year, I have to turn in my evaluation package by the end of December so they'll have something to judge me on. It's extra work on me, but it's in my best interests to do so, because otherwise I won't get a potential raise for a full year. It was explained to me that I'm 80/20, with 80% being teaching responsibilities and 20% being "service" (which means committee work, basically). So, I don't have research requirements per the Higher Up Dude, in spite of the Midway Dude insinuating otherwise. I could publish, but it wouldn't count in my evaluation. So, while that's something of a load off my mind, it's still a factor for me, because that's how you prove you're better than average, and that's how you nail an even better job. Probably will still be something I have to deal with. Anyhoo.

Once the explanations of what I turn in, when, and what it looks like were out of the way, I decided to broach the topic of how long my job would stick around. On a basic level, I care about this very much. This is the most money I've ever made in my life (which is pathetic, really) and I like my job very much. It's work I want to keep doing and I want to keep making this money + benefits & retirement. But on another level, I don't really care that badly if it goes away--I got the chance to do it, and I wouldn't have done things differently even knowing beforehand that my job would go away 9 months later. My main concern is figuring out what constitutes "success" for this program.

This is an experimental project. The goal, ultimately, is to see if grouping the students from families whose parents have never been to college in the same classrooms with consistent teachers makes a difference in their retention rates. Nobody said from the outset that this was a "five year study" or something helpful like that. No one has given any percentages, like "We would like to see retention increased by 5% after this semester." No one, in fact, can tell me what the measure of success for this project is at all. When I asked point blank about it, I got a response as to what happens with most contract/experimental jobs. I was told at some point, the experiment will obviously be declared over (at what point??), the results will be looked at (what kind of results??), and then it will be determined whether it "worked" or not. If it worked, the job will be regulated into the institution as proof that we need a post like that. If it doesn't work (what does that mean??), we shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, we tried," and the job goes away. No one will come out and tell me straight what any of this means.

But I'm pretty sure he was trying to tell me this: Your measure of success is not failing. Ah, Academia.

What is failing in this situation? I think it means either maintaining the status quo or doing worse. I think it means that if I maintain the status quo, it makes no difference to have this special position. I think it means if I do worse, i.e. molest a student, rip one's head off, poop on my desk, do something to cause people to start dropping out rapidly, I fail and the job goes away. Success basically means just not fucking up.

Unfortunately, fucking up is pretty much something you don't know you've done until it's already happened.

Argh.

-- Virgil