Have the Games Begun?

Today I saw my evaluation report. It was good, though it could have been better. In a way, though, I'm not upset: I'm doing the best I can by my students, and most of them appreciate that. I once had an excellent evaluation when I taught one of the worst classes I taught in my life (I'm talking about my own performance, not the students.) and, at another school, I got trashed when I did a good, if not great, class.

I also received my schedule for next semester. I'm not happy with it: I really think the coordinator tried to make it as untenable as she possibly could for me. She seems to have designed it so that I have no useful blocks of time to do the extracurricular work I've been doing, sometimes in conjunction with her as well as other department members.No one else in the department has anything like it.

I haven't talked to her at length this semester, or spent any other significant amount of time around her. However, the couple of times I've seen her, it seemed that she didn't even want to look my way. She used to be rather friendly toward me, and she was happy that I participated in Women's History month events.

Maybe she's upset with me for having the operation. I haven't talked to her about it, and I never told her I was having it. But I'm sure she's heard about it from other people. And I always suspected she was an Andrea Dworkin acolyte.

It figures that there would be somebody like that. At least I was warned. But I don't understand how someone could have liked me when I was in transition, but not now.

Oh well. At least I haven't, in a long time, lived by the illusion that education makes people more tolerant or accepting. After all, I lost two friends during my transition. And both of them had PhDs--one of them in gender studies!

In a way, though, I guess I can't judge them, or anyone else, too much. I had long suspected that going through my transition and surgery would cause me to re-evaluate, or at least re-think, some things in my life. Maybe that coordinator is doing the same thing with me. I always suspected she was a feminist along the lines of Robin Morgan, who hates transgender women because, well, we have that little "M" on our birth certificates.

It's really odd, to me, that someone can like, or at least tolerate someone like me when we're in transition but not after we start living full-time or having our operations. I guess when we're in transition, they can patronize us, which is to say that instead of covering themselves in white hoods and sheets, they wear the masks of toleration.

Also, I think that coordinator liked me better when I was teaching only part-time in the department. I noticed that she cooled somewhat toward me after I became a full-timer. But I don't think she even acknowledged my existence this semester until she made up that schedule.

Things might be getting interesting right about now.

Evaluation: Moving Forward

My workday started and ended with evaluations. First I was evaluated by someone who was probably born about the time I started my undergraduate education and has a higher rank than mine. And, at the end of the day, I evaluated someone I'd never before met.

Next week, I'll find out the results of the evaluation that was done on me. No matter how often I'm evaluated or how good an instructor I become, I think I'll always worry about the evaluations. Everyone tells me not to. But they didn't know me when a vindictive (over what, I'll never know) prof at another school wrote, by far, the worst evaluation I've ever had. The thing about being an English prof is that there are no statistics you can invoke to support your contention that your evaluator was biased. And, if you say that the evaluator had it in for you, the powers-that-be tag you with all sorts of labels, none of them flattering.

Whatever comes of it, I feel good about the class. They are a very good bunch of students, and I very much enjoy working with them--not only because they make me look good! And I can honestly say that I'm doing the best I can by them.

As for the evaluator: I hope I didn't seem resentful of her. She did what you're "supposed" to do in the academic world: Go to school from the time you're four until, oh, about thirty. And she got a PhD with a specialty that the college and department were looking for at the time they hired her. Whether she did those things by design or not, they worked. Plus, she's smart and a seemingly decent person.

In other words, her path--at least professionally--bears almost no resemblance to mine. Probably the only point of intersection between our trajectories is one of the schools each of us attended: She earned her PhD where I completed my B.A. But while she went "straight through" school, I spent more than a decade doing other things between the time I finished my bachelor's and started my master's. And I left the academic world for three years when I was with Tammy.

During the class, I didn't think of the evaluation as a "first." Of course, I had one good reason not to: I've been evaluated a number of times before. But I felt that I had an energy, or at least a level of energy, to which I am only beginning to acclimate myself. Even after the evaluator left--an hour into the two-hour class session, as is standard--and even after the class ended and the students left, I felt as if I could have continued forever.

The students knew I was there for them. And I knew that I was doing what I did for myself. It became very personal; what we did in that class had everything to do with the life I've led--at least, some aspects of it, anyway--and with them. Why else did they respond, not only as intelligently, but as passionately, as they did?

Sometimes I think I'm not an intellectual because....Well, actually, I never think of myself as an intellectual. Why? Well, the only way I've ever been able to learn anything is to take it personally. I am not someone who can learn "objectively" or dispassionately. That's certainly a reason why I was drawn toward literature, writing, history and language rather than to, say, math or chemistry.

Just as I can only learn something by taking it personally, that is also the only way I can teach it. And I can only reach students through that same sense.

To tell you the truth, I don't want it any other way. It's moving me forward now.