Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: When 3 male senior citizens are in charge of lunch during the faculty meeting, make sure to bring my own lunch. Because when "lunch" consists of a cold cuts tray and an 8-inch vegetable tray shared across 35 people, eating 3 broccoli florets and 5 carrots isn't going to cut it.

Lesson #2: Nobody is going to listen to me. This includes people who are generally nice to me (like Mentor) as well as people who barely know me. Nobody is going to give a shit about my opinion so by far the path of least resistance is to disengage, disengage, disengage. Don't bother speaking in faculty meetings (mission accomplished) and more importantly, don't waste my own time participating in faculty searches. Because it is truly a waste of time, even when I happen to know more about the candidate's research area than any other single individual in the entire department. They still won't listen to me.

(Maybe when I'm 50? Or full? Or 50 and full? I'm not sure how old enough or senior enough I would have to be for people to start actually listening to me. Fuck this bullshit department.)

Lesson #3: Do I care about fitting in? I need to make a choice. I can either not care, and settle in to my life here sort of disengaged from stuff that's not my own personal research and teaching, or go to a place where I fit better. It'd be best to just make a decision about that.

Lesson #4: If you're going to ask a couple of 4-year olds what they want the dinner conversation to be about, be prepared to talk about bananas eating eyeballs, going to bed, and then throwing up in their beds.