Someone to watch over me

This time last year, Adam and I attended an orientation for new faculty. While in the campus museum, the tour guide offered up a wildly incorrect date as the year of a significant (but obscure) court trial. I whispered the correct date to Adam. At that exact moment, another of the new faculty — one brought on as a senior hire — offered the correction out loud. She wasn't being obnoxious. She simply knew the right date, and offered it. I watched her across the room and decided that I had found a kindred spirit — albeit one far more confident than I.

It turns out that the "Trial Woman," as I dubbed her, had been hired in our department. Not only that, but she had spent years as the director of a program in my specialty. The more I get to know this woman, the more I admire her. Sure, I'm apt to idealize her a bit. But I can't help poring over her emails, which are always clever and wise. And I marvel at how she always knows exactly what to say — and how to say it — in contentious faculty meetings.

Here's the scary new development: Trial Woman is going to observe one of my classes next Monday, so she can then write a teaching recommendation. She just sent an email to confirm the date. For about three seconds, I was pleased as can be. Then I dissolved into a puddle of anxiety.

SHE is coming to watch ME?

Normally, I'm a very confident teacher. I've been observed maybe three or four times before. It's not easy, but, apart from a few minutes of drymouth at the outset, I usually do just fine. But right now I'm having a physical reaction — one of those "just-had-a-near-death-experience" body shivers — at the thought of Trial Woman sitting in the back of my classroom.