Self-Evaluation

Tomorrow, my self-evaluation is due. It is an interesting exercise to sum up an entire year in a single document. On the one hand, it is a little depressing that so many hours of work takes so little space on paper. I just had an article rejected at a journal—I wish they had waited until Monday, so I could report that manuscript as under review. At the same time, it is neat to be able to point to successes in the last year. One of my division chair’s comments last year was that I needed to be more programmatic in my research. Part of the problem was that I had finished up a number of projects that were started during my PhD program and weren’t directly connected to the main line in my research. I have been much more programmatic this year. I’ve had a pretty good year teaching as well. One of my classes had final grades that were too high. My other classes were fine, so I am hoping to make the argument that the students making high grades in that class were exceptional (which is true). I have certainly had rough spots this year, but it’s nice to be able to point to some high points.