Highs and Lows

Today I experienced one of my best experiences as a professor and also one of my worst. The best came from teaching. We're in the third week of classes now and I am enjoying it more than ever. I've always liked it, but at the same time it has been a source of great stress. Being an adjunct and then a new professor has meant that teaching was an incredible amount of work and a major source of anxiety in my life. (If I'm spending 40 hours a week prepping classes, how am I supposed to get any research done? Am I even competent to teach this material? Are they really learning anything? Am I boring them to tears? And so on ...) So far this semester I've felt very differently about teaching. There's less work because I'm repeating material that I've taught before. There's less stress because I'm more comfortable with the students here and know what to expect from them. Plus I've had enough positive evaluations to boost my confidence. After today's undergraduate class I walked away with the feeling that this is going to be a great semester. I have a great bunch of students, they seem quite interested in the subject, and I love the material. Instead of being exhausted after an hour and a half, I was exhilarated.

Unfortunately that high didn't last long before I had my worst experience so far as a professor. I can't blog about the details, but it was a situation that highlighted all of the downsides of being a female assistant professor. I've been trying to let it go for the past few hours because I have a manuscript to finish up this week, but I haven't been successful. I don't have a support network here that I can vent to like I did at my old job, so I've just been stewing over it. Even a walk in the brisk air blaring Metallica on my ipod didn't help. I'll get over it eventually and I know it won't be the last such incident so I'll have to figure out a better way of dealing with my frustration so that it doesn't affect my productivity. I think it's fair to say that the honeymoon is officially over.