I am back in town after traveling to Our Nation's Capital to help give [Federal Agency's] money away to worthy research in the social sciences. After we weeded out the proposals that were batshit crazy, it took us two days to sort through the rest.
It's hard to describe what happens on these panels: you really have to be on one to appreciate it. While for the most part the system works fairly well, panelists can get pretty punchy by the end of the day. This panel, the biggest on which I've ever served, was completely interdisciplinary. The psychologists barely avoided getting into fistfights with the economists, the sociologists hung back with the geographers, and the political scientists formed alliances with everyone. I managed to get two or three young people in my discipline funded. A great time was had by all.
While I resisted the temptation to blog between my proposals, I noticed that many of my fellow panelists did not. I did check my email and received: (1) Still more begging for grades; (2) The written comments from my course evaluations*; (3) A new editorial assignment from my journal; (4) Many updates from Angry Baker on how the Angry Kid was doing on our very first separation (thanks, Baby).
Remind me not to do this again.
*Ouch, I shouldn't have looked. Why is it that one negative comment in a whole stack of good ones is enough to make me feel like a failure?
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
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2 comments:
Perhaps I'm really a psychologist and don't know it. I always have this overwhelming urge to beat up economists when I meet them. :-P
How does that old chestnut go? "If you took all the world's economists and put them end to end, still none of them would ever agree on anything."
I, too, feel the same way about evaluations--even when the criticism's completely stupid and unfounded. You'd better stay away from RateMyProfessor.com, if this is how regular evals make you feel.
Glad to know you survived with your sanity at least somewhat intact.
AP: Great post! I experienced my first panel review (interdisciplinary) earlier this year. It was a good experience, but I procrastinated reading proposals so was forced to take the whole stack on vacation - on a kayak trip! Never again, never again. I wasted storage space that could've been used for wine and chocolate.
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