The Tenure Present

As many of my readers may know, Kathy Leavitt and I have been acquaintances since elementary school and close friends since high school. After a brief hiatus in early adulthood, Kathy and I re-initiated our friendship in our mid-20s and we have been in near daily contact, primarily via email, for the past 14-15 years. Kathy has been a constant source of support for me. She has heard about all of my woes, successes, and concerns. She is almost more knowledgeable about my career and life than me. In addition to sharing dog stories and tips, gluten-free eating, and our childhood, Kathy has listened to endless stories about my profession and been a constant, positive, source of support. I suffered many failures in my four-year-long search for a tenure-track job before I landed at Bridgewater. Every time I was turned down, Kathy exclaimed, Those idiots! How could they not hire you? You don't want to work for someone who wouldn't hire you anyway, right? It's their loss, not yours! A keen eye for organization and grammar, she has read and edited my papers before submitting them for publication, chapters of my first book, grant proposals, my annual reappointment portfolio, and my 25-page, single-spaced application for tenure last fall. Here's a picture of Kathy and me in 2009, when Drake was 4 months and her dog, Bacchus, was 1.5 years old.


Kathy is also very generous with me. She constantly looks for opportunities to support my running, dog interests, gluten-free eating, and other general interests by sending me presents, magazine subscriptions and the like. I usually take every opportunity to thwart these efforts...at first because I was embarrassed for not being as generous in return, and then because a bit of Neil Boyer has rubbed off on me...I find humor in upsetting other people's plans to give me gifts. But, when my tenure letter from my provost came through this past spring, Kathy declared her intention to celebrate with a gift and I decided to move out of the way. It was a wonderful idea - a true reason to celebrate, after 10 years of laboring in the field, not including the 5 years of graduate school labor.


Neither Kathy nor I enjoy shopping, but strangely enough we both love the store, Appalachian Spring, in Union Station in Washington, DC.  This weekend I visited Kathy when I presented at a child maltreatment conference in DC and we made a bee-line for this store (after we got gluten-free pizza at the District of Pi). I love everything in this store and some of the pottery caught my eye. Kathy asked if any of these pieces could be The Tenure Gift and I obliged. I am now the owner of the beautiful new platter, shown below. I can't wait to have company, grill up some Meat House and use this wonderful serving platter. It's true that achieving tenure has been the result of my own hard work, but Kathy has supported every bit of it. Thank you, Kathy. You're the best.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Would Scam an Oboe Teacher?

Image
Apparently someone named William Clark, or someone who uses the name William Clark and whose email address is: wclark200@yahoo.com . Last week Neil mentioned to me that he had received an unusual request from "William Clark," for oboe lessons for his 13 year old daughter, Mary. He stated that they were out of the country, but would soon be coming to the United States. Mr. Clark failed to answer any of Neil's usual questions for new students, such as how long Mary had been playing, inquires about her instrument, and whether they would be taking lessons at USM or Dartmouth - the locations of his two teaching studios. Neil usually asks if the child has, in addition to playing oboe, any other tendencies toward self-injurious behavior. Silent on all of these matters.  Then Mr. Clark wanted to pay for several weeks of lessons upfront. Neil had never encountered this before, but why would a free-lance musician say no to a parent wanting to pay for lessons in advance? Then N
Read more

What Happens When a Stress Fracture Won't Heal?

Image
That's right. I have at least two stress fractures that won't heal. I've had one for about 15 weeks and a second for at least 18 months. When a fractured bone won't heal, it's called a non-union fracture . I get quite a kick out of this. Makes me think of my bones slaving away in a sweatshop or something! What do we do to try to get non-union bones to heal? First, health providers put you in a surgical boot. Say good-bye to the surgical shoe. It's all about the boot now. My boot looks just like this one. I don't really want to know how long I have to wear it. Despite it being clunky and a miserable fashion statement, it is much better than the surgical shoe -- in terms of walking. It also seems nearly impossible to re-injure oneself in this contraption! Driving a standard is definitely a no-no. Photo from Ortho Tape Second, we get a bone stimulator. I know, who knew there was such a thing?  Apparently before the days of bone stimulation, there was su
Read more

Limping All the Way to Five

Our first black Labrador Retriever, Blackberry, had health problems. He started having seizures between 6-9 months of age. We discovered that he had epilepsy and successfully treated his condition with  phenobarbital  for 9 years. The bad news is that it slowly destroyed his liver. We made that trade-off because alternative medications were much more expensive. So, we lost Blackberry when he was 9. I still think it was the right decision. Blackberry lived a happy life. He was the center of our family and even part of the community. Everyone seemed to know him. Neil was once exercising Blackberry in the Saco River in Biddeford and a school-aged girl with a fishing rod passed by them and commented to her father, "That dog's name is Blackberry." Neil had never seen that child in his life or since. When the UPS man would arrive at our house, he would hand us a package and look in through the door, saying, "Hi, Blackberry!"  Despite this condition, he had a pretty
Read more