It's been a full three months since I posted. This has been the most draining semester of my ETSU life. I was carrying an overload, and I went to Poland early in the semester. I supervised five student teachers and did a course online for the first time. I wrote a grant for an Ipod and began learning how to do Podcast instruction. The university assigned me to some international education committees. This was only fair, since they released me to go to Weihai last year. And to top it all off, I "went up for" tenure, which means I jammed my evaluations, credentials, grants, certificates, fan letters, and articles between the covers of a three inch ring binder and filled out dozens of forms for the reading enjoyment of my colleagues and superiors. For assistant professsors, tenure is like the holy grail. If you get it, your position in the university is more or less secure. If you don't, you're out of a job. I'll know the outcome in July.
When you apply for tenure, you also apply to become an associate professor. Tenure documents are printed out on blue paper. Promotion papers, on the other hand, are rendered in salmon. It's important to do this paperwork precisely. Otherwise, you do it over. Doing the paperwork was much harder than writing my dissertation, though it took somewhat less time. I think it helps to be organized and very neat, and I am neither. I finally hired a graduate student to assemble the three inch binder. It looked great. I should have asked her to organize the binder of blue and salmon forms, but I thought I could handle this on my own. I was wrong. I had to redo all the forms, because the holes weren't lining up right. The electric hole punch is the instrument of choice for this task, I learned. Note this for times when you're punching holes.
