Lunch with the Prez and VP

Image via WikipediaAs typical with how fate weaves her ironic web in my life, I attended a couple of faculty functions in the past two weeks and ended up with some prime seating. First was a new faculty shindig to introduce us newbies to the various power players in the university and to see what some of the faculty support departments have to offer. Now this was an all day event with the new faculty being introduced and faculty speakers and all that jazz. We had assigned tables like a wedding and were fed pretty nicely, which is why I am sure some people made it a case of being there, free eats.

It figures that the table I am assigned to is the table the president of the university is assigned to as well and not only that, he decides to sit next to me. To my credit, I only managed to embarrass myself once which is quite a surprise for anyone that knows me. He asked where I was coming from and I went on about how the traffic was pretty light coming from Babylon. Of course that is not what he meant and he was asking from what institution I was coming to LIU from. I fairly quickly recovered and continued to schmooze with the prez and hear all about his time as a faculty member at Michigan before I was born. Now he's my new bff. Ok, not really but I like to tell people that.

The next function/opportunity to embarrass myself was at a brown bag lunch that the VP of Academic Affairs held for non-tenured faculty to bring up with him any concerns, issues or questions we may have about pretty much anything. A couple of us junior faculty from the library went together which makes sense since the library got the shaft in the contract negotiations. And just like the function with the President, and Academic VP sits next to me for lunch. Now I have to be extra careful not to eat like an animal and have bits of food and spittle hit the VP in the face, though I am sure that would have scored all sorts of brownie points with some of the senior faculty but screw that, they have tenure already and I don't. Luckily with this pow wow I didn't embarrass myself at all, and I think I acquitted myself rather well. I went on and on about the library and the road blocks we face all without the spittle and stammering then I shut my trap when some of the others chimed in after I broke the ice a bit.

All in all (I like that term in case you hadn't guessed by now), I actually came away liking those poor sods. And I call them that because almost no one likes them. I get the spin that was going on and see through it, though maybe not through it a lot if I liked them, but I come in with a clean slate and I am going to afford them that courtesy.

My two cents.

LL