It must be the weather, or maybe the threat of swine flu, but, between screaming at slow-moving strangers and what happened yesterday, I fear I am losing my Pollyanna touch. Gentle reader, I am cheesed off.
Yesterday, partly to burnish my “student engagement” cred, I was coordinating a project with some former and future students, and a non-teaching colleague in a faculty support role (not IT, but along those lines) agreed to help out. This colleague has worked with my students before, even wheedling a letter of recommendation out of me (alas, my letters get around), but yesterday he seemed to sabotage my students, who had gathered on a cold, rainy afternoon to work on their project. After an hour of condescending gibberish, I intervened, prompting him to show them what we had agreed he would show them.
That I had to intervene cheesed me off, but something much more trivial has me simmering like Velveeta in “queso” dip. See, throughout the afternoon, I had wanted to model respect to non-teaching professional faculty, so I consistently addressed and referred to my colleague as “Mr. McGillicuddy.” He neither addressed nor referred to me until the last ten minutes or so, and then he was directing my former and future students to “Listen to Jane” and “Look at what Jane is showing you.” That was strange: if he used to address me by my first name in front of students in the past, I didn’t notice.
I had planned to correct him after the students had left, as well as to inquire into the bizarre decision not to show students how to do what he had explicitly agreed to show them how to do. The latter he had already acknowledged, but does he need to be told that women—especially younger, petite women—have enough problems maintaining authority without their colleagues undermining them? I kept mum, however, because students had lingered after: some of us hadn’t seen each other since April.
Or did Mr. McGillicuddy, however unconsciously, set out to undermine me? I call him my colleague, but not all colleagues are equal. I outrank, have more degrees than, and am a well-regarded member of a more powerful department than that of Mr. Melchizedek McGillicuddy—to such an extent that he depends upon me to speak well of him to his superiors. But no, men would never behave passive aggressively! Never.
In fact, yesterday evening he sent a gushing email thanking me for trusting my student group with him. And would I put in a good word with the Big Cheese?
Well, that cheesed me off. I didn’t delete it then and there, but I don’t want to reply. Am I overreacting? Would making some “queso” and chilling out with some beer at 9 in the morning mellow me out, make me less of an insecure, screamy-meamy beeyotch? Or is my collegial irreparably harshed?

