hangin' at the PS

Hangin' at the Procrastination Station...

Why, oh why, am I reading blogs this evening? I need to be reading through a very large 3rd year review notebook in preparation for a report I have to write and a meeting I have to attend tomorrow. One of the joys (?!) of being tenured is that now I get drafted to do this review duty for my junior colleagues.

This was something I had fully intended to do over the holiday, but first I was having fun and then I was sick.

As always, my visits to the Procrastination Station are fueled by resentment of authority. (See Fiore for full details on 3 main causes of procrastinating.) I am feeling resentful of my service duties, because today was my last day of teaching and I should be celebrating, or at least relaxing. But noooooooo, I have to do this very dreary task. It's important, since it has to do with my colleague's future. Yet, the 3rd-year review (which is sort of a mid-way to tenure practice run -- anxiety provoking but in our dept no one gets dumped at 3rd year--they wait until tenure to do that) is not something that the chair takes very seriously, or most of the people on the P&T committee. Very mixed messages, in other words. My own personal sense of responsibility says I need to take care of my part of the report in a serious and thoughtful manner. And I have no doubt that I will. But right now I'm still feeling resentful. Resentful too, I suppose, because it calls up thoughts/feelings from my tenure year, and from my own 3rd year review, which was royally f**ed up by the then-chair and the committee. Completely worthless for me in terms of feedback, and yet stressful. So of course, I want to do a better job for my colleague. But obviously having to do this is raising my own stress/issues in deeper ways than I had hitherto realized.