On anxiety, career path, and personal goals for the year

Last week when I was visiting my family, I got to spend a morning with ADM, and we got to talking about being department chair, which she is and which I've talked about trying to become. She made an insightful comment that I have been thinking about ever since. She suggested that I might want to re-think -- or at least think more carefully about -- my latent ambition to be department chair since I seem to get very upset about interpersonal conflicts and to dwell on them afterward and since being a department chair inevitably involves such conflicts. And I also may not always be as politic or adept as I could be at getting other folks on board when I have ideas about how to fix what I see as problems or weaknesses, and then I get upset that other people are resistant to change. (She put these observations very tactfully and graciously!)

The more I've thought about it and reflected on the last three years at FGS with her comment in mind, the more I think she's on to something.

And I've also been thinking about why it is that I've wanted to be chair anyway, and I've come up with three reasons:

• So that I feel like I'm making career progress, that I'm going somewhere. As New Kid pointed out in a comment on an earlier post in which I was thinking about administrative possibilities, "'looking for the next thing' is a huge side effect of academia," and I've been thinking a good bit this summer about my need for external markers of doing well. Am I looking to be promoted for any reason other than that it's promotion? One of my goals for the next year is to pay more attention to my intrinsic motivation than to extrinsic rewards, and I may well find that some of my desire to move up in the world fades. The same weekend that I was chatting with ADM, my brother asked me (entirely unprompted) what my career prospects were or if I was always going to be "just a teacher"; realizing that didn't sound good, he immediately said, "well, I don't mean 'just' a teacher. But you know what I mean." And I did know what he meant, and it's the same question I've been asking myself for the last couple of years, but I want to be more intentional about WHY I'm asking myself that question.

• Because my current chair is not very competent, which I find extremely aggravating. But, if I'm honest, the cost to me of her incompetence is usually pretty low. So one of my other goals for the next year is to breathe through the frustration and, whenever she does something that I think is poorly done, to calculate in a clear-eyed way exactly what the cost of her (in)action is for me and what the cost would be of my trying to fix any resulting problem. I think that I'll often find that the cost of the latter is higher than the cost of the former warrants and that there's really no need for me to get my knickers in a twist. Maybe I could just calm down a little. Maybe I could try recognizing all of the ways in which she is doing fine instead of concentrating on her mistakes. (And maybe I could do the same thing with my own screw-ups?) On Friday I had lunch with a good friend and departmental colleague, and we had each separately made the resolution to be on better terms with our chair this year and not get so upset at her screw-ups, and so we vowed to help each other toward this goal and recognized that this means we need to avoid having bitch sessions about her. A worthy goal.

• Plus, I'm kind of bossy, and sometimes I like being in control (which often means facilitating other people's leadership, so it's not like I'm a tyrant or anything). But sometimes it's a relief not to be in charge. And it's true that my stress levels go up, sometimes considerably, when I'm in charge, and I tend to have more sleepless nights. Overall, my anxiety levels have gone way down in the past few years, and I'm only now beginning to realize how good life could be without that crippling anxiety I've carried around most of my life. And it's important for me to recognize that one of the things I'm most excited about in the coming year is that I'm teaching a course entirely on my own and thus won't need to coordinate with anyone about it; and if I'm feeling that relief about getting to be on my own and not work with other people, then maybe being chair is not what I'm called to be right at the moment. And I also decided that my anxiety has decreased enough that maybe I can finally handle re-entering therapy (which I tried and abandoned last summer) and dealing with that remaining tendency toward anxiety. Certainly it would be healthy for me to learn to manage my own anxiety and tendency toward emotional reactivity -- crucial for any type of leadership that I might someday have, but a good thing to do in and of itself for my own well-being. D has been recommending for years that I read Edwin Friedman on family systems and leadership, and I think I may finally follow that advice, not so that I'll be a better chair someday (which will maybe happen and maybe not) but so that I'll be a happier and calmer member of my department as it's currently structured. I'm not looking forward to the task of finding a therapist -- indeed, I'm pretty much dreading it -- but I think it would be a good thing to do and that it's a far worthier use of my energy than plotting to improve the department against its collective will!

Can you tell that the new school year is right around the corner? Faculty meetings begin on Tuesday, which means that my new resolutions start getting put into practice in just a few days!

Comments

[Another Damned Medievalist]

It was so much fun hanging out with you, and I'm sooo glad you got what I was trying to say (except that I think you are still putting it too harshly!). Also, remember that my department chair experience has been dogawful, so...

[meansomething]

What a great analysis! I especially like the idea of trying to recognize the ways in which your dept chair is doing OK. (If you were managing her, instead of being one of the people in her dept, what would you think of her performance, I wonder?)

Our meetings begin Tuesday, too. I'll be thinking of you!

[Nicole]

That all sounds very sensible. You would have to pay me at least 500K (well, maybe 250K) to be chair. What a thankless job that should be avoided at all costs.

A book I've been recommending to everyone who is having career path questions is one called Your Money or Your Life. (Not the one about the health care system-- the one about money and careers.) It is an amazing life changing read.

[Jackie]

Our meetings begin Wednesday, and I'm looking forward to putting some of my own goals in action, especially as far as reducing my stress levels in relation to non-essential school politics, if that makes diplomatic sense :).

My mother, a lifelong teacher, always passed up any chances for administrative work because she said she wanted to stay as close to the students as possible, and tat the more you move into administration, the further away from students you got. Now, she was in a public school, but I think a lot about what she said and what it might mean for me as I think about my own career path.

[What Now?]

Welcome, Nicole -- glad to have you here!

Here's hoping for a great school year for all of us.