Necessary evils - Academic CVs and the world I chose

Remember the scene from Say Anything when the dude carries a Boombox over his head an plays Peter Gabriel's Your Eyes? My weekend was far less romantic. It's time to turn in my dossier again.

Future Professoriate Program at Syracuse University did their best to train doctoral students for the rigor of demonstrating our academic achievements through teaching, scholarship, and service and, as a result, I created an online portfolio. Unfortunately, the reality of higher education is that they don't know how to look at such materials and so I have had to, for the second year in a row, print out materials, label them, and get them into organized binders to prove my accomplishments throughout the last 365 days. I don't mind this because it inspires reflection, but at some point you begin to ask, "Isn't it enough that I accomplished the work that I have? Do I have to now showcase this work before my peers?"

The answer to this is a Storage Wars, yuuuuuuuuppppppp!

And I hate this. I like the doing part, but I do not like the selling part of demonstrating what I've done. The writer in me agonizes on what details to develop and the type A personality in me goes absolutely bonkers trying to fit my thinking into a binder. I'm actually thinking I may need two binders this year and I'm having hot flashes thinking about Kelly's presentation when she went up for full professorship. She actually wheeled a cart of crates that were color coded and labeled to the peer review committee - each box full of her amazing triumphs as a stellar scholar and teacher. Yikes. My brain can't even comprehend how you capture as much as that woman does. I can't even do a decent job with the limited evidence I have.

Actually, my year has been successful: several grants, five new courses, completion of my dissertation (with award), and several presentations. I think the issue for me is that the timing for the dossier is at the beginning of the semester, after I've been sick, and when my National Writing Project site profile is due. It's a bit overwhelming, but such is the beast.

I was laughing in my office today thinking that it would be so much easier to have done nothing. I could write a letter that simply said, "Dear Committee, I've accomplished null this year. In fact, this short note to you is all I've done. Attached, please find materials that demonstrate my teaching, scholarship, and service. I think you'll find these items easy to review." Then, I would turn in an empty binder. Nope. My new career requires that I collect, analyze, reflect, and interpret the volumes of paper that I've accrued throughout the year to stand as proof that I'm alive. A part of this makes me proud. Another part of it makes me very sad - it is evidence of hard work that is anyone's guess whether it will be approved or not.