In the office yesterday:
Me: You know, I'm going to be your first case and I don't really like that.
Mentor: Well --
Newer Colleague: Yeah, I'm glad you're going up before me. You can be the test case for him to prove that he is capable of writing a successful case.
Mentor: Hah!
Me: Well, I don't like the idea of being a test case. What if you're no good at it?
Newer Colleague: Then you'd be screwed!
Me: This sucks. You'd better be good!
Mentor, with authority: I am good.
He better be.
3 comments:
totally annoying that he said that there is so much he wishes he could tell you... it's nice to be abstractly reassured, and I'm glad that people are reassuring you, but to be told that someone has information for you and won't share would be annoying.
The thing that frustrated me with reassurance about my case was that although the reassurance was nice, I kept thinking to myself, "Okay, sure, tell me whatever you want, but at the end of the day, you all still have the power to vote however you vote, and you can change your minds about the case." So, the reassurances were difficult for me to hear, even when I appreciated them.
Regarding the chair of your committee... if he is, indeed, as good as he thinks, it seems like one thing he could do would be to run a draft of the letter by others who have written successful letters as a safeguard, to receive feedback.
But, really, it should not come down to rhetoric in a letter!
So sorry to hear that this happened to your colleague.
Yeah, the crazy thing is that everybody agrees that it really does come down to the rhetoric in the letter (which we call the case). Because the committee with all the power once we pass the dept. level is this committee of people who aren't in our fields at all. They're in business, law, economics, sociology, etc. So they have no ability to know our field or know if we're any good. Therefore the case becomes hugely important, as will be my mentor's ability to write a convincing case to people outside my field that I am awesome.
He does plan to share the case with people in the know. One nice thing is that the chair of this committee who whispered that stuff to me last night, he won't be on the committee anymore when my own case goes up. (The committee rotates each year). So that frees him up to help me, and he has indicated a willingness to look over my case, and given his knowledge base my guess is that'll be super helpful.
I'm lucky to have connections with people like him, which will hopefully help me out. At the same time, it kind of pisses me off that you could get screwed if you don't have those connections. The whole thing feels so capricious.
I have hope that you're going to be more than okay in this situation!
This process is awful in the way that it can do such a number on our minds and in the way such arbitrary configurations (who is on which committee, etc) can have such an impact on people's lives.
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