This year marks the 25th anniversary with my current main employer. Hard to believe it's been a quarter century!
After all that time, one can't help but look back on one's career. I know there will be a faculty appreciation luncheon in May that I should probably attend--because someone who reaches such a milestone will receive, I'm guessing, some sort of tangible recognition of that longevity. And I suppose it will be nice to get a knick-knack to commemorate the milestone.
Still, I'd trade any knick-knack for some sincere, specific, and informal "good words." It's taken me a long time to realize this, but I work in a place where benign neglect is standard operating procedure. And in some ways, that's truly great: I don't spend time looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone is monitoring me or is about to terminate me, and that is a tremendous benefit--one that I never take for granted. Nonetheless, I yearn for an environment where people--especially administrative people--say the little things, face-to-face, that make all the difference. For after a quarter century in the same place, I'm still not sure what people think of me, or what they value in me, or even (to some degree) what they don't like. Whatever feedback I get from "higher ups" is inevitably formal and brief and is normally delivered every 10 years or so--if that. At best, I'm left to conclude that "no news is good news."
As George Herbert Mead proposed a century ago, our self-concept is largely derived by what the world tells us about ourselves. And what my world has told me is: basically nothing. From time to time, I get incredibly rewarding feedback from students, but that feedback is sporadic. What's missing in all this is a sense that I've done more than simply hang around for 25 years--that someone in a position of authority knows who I am and values what I do.
