I'm in my third year as a tenure track professor. I've done all right. The teaching has been much harder than I thought, much more difficult than it was for me as a grad student at a much better school. But I've adapted.But most surprising of all is how hard getting along with colleagues has proven to be.
Big Bob, a veteran of our department, asked me to help him do a presentation to the entire faculty in our discipline. We sketched out the presentation and I started to work. Big Bob never really joined in, not until the very end when he read through my work and made some minor suggestions.
As he was the one who was asked to make the presentation, he's told me he's going to handle most of that, but that he'll save a little section of it for me.
What a prince! I want to make sure I get the credit I deserve for this project, and I don't like the idea of sharing it with Big Bob.
Q: This is really one of my first chances to be in front of a big group of people who will one day make up my T&P committee. I think the work I've done on the presentation is really good, and I want someone to know it. Do I drop some verbal clues into my tiny bit of the presentation like, "As Bob showed you from my research...."? Or do I have to settle for being along for the ride?
Verbal clues are good but don't overdue it. There's a good chance that you are not the first to see Bob act like this. A few subtle comments may get everybody up to speed with what happened.
ReplyDeletePlace your name or something to indicate you made the presentation or that it came from your computer at the bottom of the slides. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe Beaker could be right. It depends on what kind of department you're in, what kind of school you're at, and so on.
ReplyDeleteBut suppose Big Bob has been getting away with this shit for decades. Or suppose that nobody else in the department gives a shit about your pain.
Why not email the department chairman, tell him you're getting an early start on putting together your tenure portfolio, and ask him for some feedback on how to frame all this work you're doing? Better yet, ask someone you trust and then go to the chairman to get confirmation. If there's nobody you trust there, then god help you. Leave a fucking paper trail. Be polite, but document every goddamned iota of work you've done. Don't even give them the opportunity to fuck you.
Oh, never mind this. Just kill Big Bob and get it over with.
After three years, do you have a sense of whether this is Big Bob's MO? If it is, then dropping a few verbal cues may very well let everyone in the audience who cares, know what the score is. But more practically, is your name on the publicity for this event? Is it Big Bob AND Raylene from Raleigh, or just Big Bob. If it's the former, then documenting your involvement is a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteI really, REALLY like the idea of putting your name, or at least your initials, discreetly at the bottom of every slide. Small letters, but it's there. Perhaps (c) RR. And let Bob know that you'd like to include a copy of the presentation in your dossier with a note on how the work was divided up, that you put together the presentation and he did the actual presenting, you trust that's okay with him? Because, since you're coming up for tenure, it's important that people know what you actually did. You're sure he understands.
ReplyDeleteOr something.
But before you have this talk with Bob, ask yourself this: how much is this presentation actually going to matter towards tenure and promotion? Is it a big deal or is it, actually, really not going to matter? Is it really just part of the "service" check-off-the-box component? Because if, frankly, irritating as this is, it's not going to make a hell of a lot of difference, you have to pick your fights, and maybe this one isn't important enough to waste your energy on. Spend it writing another article.
If it does matter, though, then make sure you talk to every single person in the department that you trust, and the chair, about how much work you've done on this presentation and how excited you've been about it and how much fun it was, and that you're glad that Bob is doing the actual presenting because you know he'll do such a great job.
Sabotage.
ReplyDeleteA few days before the presentation, tell Bob that you'll double check the slides. He'll probably ignore it or just think that now you've been trained to help him even when he doesn't ask. That helps him to lower his guard.
Do look over the slides. Find changes. Rearrange slides and reword phrases. Move your name to first on the list or write something like, "Research by Raylene, Presentation by Bob" in that order. Add yourself to the Acknowledgements slide at the end. Don't talk with him about any of these revisions. The day of the talk, load the slides onto the computer and set things up half an hour beforehand. (Again, you're making Bob's life so much easier!) Load the modified slides and let him start performing. He'll stumble through the slides that you modified, talking about content out of sync with the slides. He'll look like an idiot as the official presenter but the content will be fine, making you look good.
Except you just made an enemy of Bob. Probably not a good idea if he's a "Veteran".
DeleteBB, I bow to you. This is truly masterful.
ReplyDeleteRaylene, you could be straight up-front about it, too. You could say to Big Bog, "I've put both of us on the acknowledgements slide and the author slide in the presentation, I trust that's okay?" Depending on how well you get on with him, you could also ask him if he would mind sending a note to your chair about how much work you did on the presentation. "I just want to add it to the 'service' file for my tenure dossier", you can tell him, perfectly truthfully. "I know it doesn't matter that much, but every little bit helps ..."
But, if you don't get on with him, don't ask.
I think I meant Big Bob, but perhaps that was Freudian.
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ReplyDeleteYou shouldn't have agreed to do the whole project in the first place. Now you're largely screwed and there's nothing you can do to fix it without looking like a credit whore or non-teamplayer. Take this one as a learning experience and don't let it happen again.
ReplyDeleteI'm the one doing 80% of our senior design project right now. The mentor knows I'm doing most of the work because I'm the one who's answering all the questions he asks. The point of this parable is that depending on what the presentation is about, you could perhaps add a Q&A section at the end where you could shine.
This is just one presentation, right? A presentation can take a fair amount of work, perhaps a few days' worth? That's enough to be annoying, but frankly not enough to put your career in jeopardy, if, say, Big Bob were to turn up on a committee that decides whether you get tenure. It's not like he's stealing credit for a book or some other project that took you months or years to write.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, you still aren't 100% sure that he is going to steal credit from you, are you? The bad will that you could easily generate from an accusation, especially if false but even if true, really is not worth a few days' worth of work. I recommend you let Bob grab the credit, if that's even what he's trying to do, and let the matter drop quietly. If he does steal the credit from you, if he asks to work with you again anytime in the future, evoke the plausible excuse that as an assistant professor you don't have time. I know this stinks, but that's life in the fast lane.
P.S. I trust Ben is joking. Don't sabotage the talk, whatever you do.