Well, it’s been pointed out that my cathartic posts on my abysmal experiences at the UW law school might be poisoning my chances of getting interviews.
I had thought of that. So what do I do now, take them down? Rewrite them?
I should perhaps write up a summary or recapitulation of the whole experience, how it started off, how some things went really well, how the founding director left and wasn’t replaced and what happened then.
After all, the FCC field hearing on media ownership rules was a huge success and was one of the reasons this got as much media attention as it did. That whole event was mine to set up and run: Sharon Nelson, the director at that time, sent a letter to Commissioner Copps, offering to host the event, and then went on a business trip. It was up to me, and while I have my own lessons I take from it, by all accounts it was a success.
I had been there a month when that started. Not bad, I thought.
Likewise a spring awards dinner: planning, invitation design and production, mailing, menu and guest management, facility management — all things at which I had zero experience, but again, it all came together.
During this period, the director left and the “decision” was made not to replace her, instead leaving two faculty members to share the job.
(I have already shared all this information, haven’t I?)
I offered to leave at the end of the 6 month probationary period (which I passed with “meets or exceeds expectations”) to allow the new management to redefine the position while I looked for something else that was a better fit for me. But it was summer break and they decided to go ahead in the current configuration. (As one the two faculty said to me at the end of spring quarter, the three best things about working in academia are “June, July, and August.” Small wonder they weren’t interested in redefining their staffing needs with conference and guest professorship season looming . . . )
At the end of the summer the trouble really started, and rather than recount all of that, I ended up leaving voluntarily so I could find something else at the UW without my record containing anything prejudicial.
That seems not to be working. Is it because I vented my spleen about my situation? Perhaps so. If I was so disenchanted with academic politics would I be looking for another position on campus? Or would I be willing to take the chance, based on my experience and that of others (including one Vice Provost I met with), that the law school is a particularly toxic work environment? It was incompetent (see the 2nd or 3rd definitions) management and obstructive bureaucracy that frustrated me. One of the reasons the original director took a chance on me was because I knew enough to work around the technical bureaucrats. But she left me to deal with the political bureaucracy on my own, when she left.
I can’t tell people what to think, I can just relate what I know. The rest is up to them.
I understand perfectly well that my experience at one particularly dysfunctional unit of a large institution doesn’t represent the whole (and the word “dysfunctional” was one I heard repeatedly while I was there: I have never worked in any environment with such blatant disregard, bordering on open hostility, toward the institution and its administration). It seems likely I won’t be granted the same treatment.