Aaaand she's back!

(again).

It is with great joy, pride, and relief that I'm able to inform you that my four inch promotion and tenure portfolio was turned in yesterday at approximately 9:25am. Three weeks minutes six hours in the making, with every free hour spent on compiling all the work I've done in the past five years, lots of nightmares about lost letters, misplaced tabs, and random natural disasters destroying my binder, and I still managed to turn it in a day early. Take that, leaders who told me I wasn't up until 2013. You might make me cry, but that won't stop me from turning in a beautifully labeled, militarily organized, and narrated portfolio.
Yes, I'm a nerd.

For those of you who missed the drama: I was always under the impression I wasn't up for promotion and tenure until 2013. Until I, in all of my anal-retentive-type-A awesomeness, decided to attend the p&t prep meeting a year early, and found out, that, guess what! Not only was I up in 2012, but the application, i.e., a portfolio with all my work from the past five years organized into the four categories of teaching, achievement, research, and service, was due three weeks from that day. Today. In case you were wondering why I was absent for three weeks, that's why.

What was most amazing about putting together my portfolio (aside from the fact that I was able to get it done at all) is that I had no idea I had done this much stuff since 2007. No idea at all. Every time I couldn't immediately think of something to fit a specific category (such as "Service: National and International"), it would take just one dive into my filing cabinet for me to realize that hey! I've actually served as a consultant for a Dutch university on the formation of their IRB...cool! Or, oh yeah! I did go to that workshop in DC, I remember now. I had to grade online homework on the breaks. You get the idea.
At any rate, it does finally explain why I'm so tired all the time.

The second amazing finding is that I've finally realized that being a triple-type-A personality with a slight case of OCD is actually really, freaking awesome. From now on, I'm going to no longer mock myself for creating to-do lists for everything, organizing the children's closets based on color, season, and usage, or any of the other things that most people find slightly peculiar. I might even declare September 7 national-love-your-quirks day, in fact. And why? Well, because without my tendency to worry about things years in advance, and organize everything I can get my hands on, I would have not already had a folder labeled "promotion and tenure stuff". A folder in which, for the past two years, I have been tossing everything that might, someday (like, oh, in 2013) be relevant for my portfolio. A folder which, on Thursday night, after I used all of my self-control to not break down during the promotion and tenure prep meeting (known in the DixieChick house as The Meeting), I picked up out of my drawer, took home, and which became the backbone for all the work I did over the next three weeks. I had certificates in there for things I had forgotten all about ("oh, wow, the Air Force gave me this volunteer appreciation certificate. Oh yeah, for working with the airmen. I got a certificate. Honey! Did I ever tell you I got a certificate from the base?").

So now that the blessed thing is out of my hands, the waiting game begins. Officially, we won't hear anything until early January. Unless we're denied, in which case I'll hear something in either September (if the Chair denies me), October (if the Promotion and Tenure committee denies me), or November (if the Dean or Provost denies me). But unofficially, the grapevine around our college works very well, and I should know something within the next month or two.

With the type-A/anal retentive/OCD personality outlined in the previous paragraph, you would think I am on pins and needles to find out the results of the process. Heck, I  would expect me to be on pins and needles. But strangely enough, I'm not. (well, not yet, anyway). I actually feel pretty confident right now. Not only was my confidence boosted by the fact that apparently a lot of people on campus really like me, if judged by the ease and speed with which everyone I asked wrote these glowing letters of recommendation for me, and by the sheer volume of the stuff I was able to put in the portfolio, but also by the fact that if the committee sticks to the rubric they give to candidates, I should get somewhere around a 108%.

I'm sure that within the next few weeks and days (heck, even hours, knowing me), I'll change my mind, and convince myself that there is NO way any one is ever going to give me tenure, let alone promotion. But for now, I'm feeling pretty OK.

So with that thought (and the promise of lots of stories about bathroom rhymes to come this week), I'll wish you all a very awesome weekend!