From the Chair

I've often heard people say that being chair is a thankless position.  One failed applicant for the Geography chair put it to me bluntly:  "I see it as my time in the barrel."  (If you are unfamiliar with that old schoolyard joke [in its many variations], come by and I’ll share it with you.)  During my twelve years as a chair I've never felt that mine was a thankless task.  A week never goes by that I am not thanked by someone for something: adjusting a schedule for relative care or finding time to write, or coming up with some extra money for a new laptop for someone.  I could go on and on.  But the fact is that I've found this job to be very rewarding.  If I hadn’t, I would not have kept doing it for so long.  And I certainly would never have agreed to come to English.

It didn't take me long once I arrived in Bate to feel appreciated and supported.  Over the past twenty months I received a great deal of encouragement and repeated thanks.  I have never felt that I was wasting my time.

And then came April Fool's Day 2009.  I admit that I went home that evening feeling sullen and beaten. "Was it all for naught?”  ”Had I been a fool to agree to take on this Department?”  I wondered.  But later that night the e-mails began to arrive.  Messages sent directly to me, or copies of messages going to “higher authority.”  The next day when I arrived in Bate, I had a steady stream of visitors.  And as we spoke, the e-mails kept coming.  And I suspect that the Dean and Provost are likely receiving large numbers of e-mails, along with innumerable requests for meetings.  It’s been like that for the past month, capped off by the remarks made at the faculty meeting.

I've been here eighteen years and not only have I never experienced anything like this, but I have also never witnessed such a reaction, nor heard of anything comparable.  I've seen chairs quit, be fired, and move away, and there’s been nothing like this.  After all, I'm only an interim chair.  Most of you had never even heard of me twenty months ago.  I never would have guessed (and I suspect I'm not alone in this) that my removal would have sparked such an outpouring of vocal support.

Over the last week the reality of that support has washed over me like a wave  -- a wave that has swept away the angst.  I am experiencing something that I never thought I'd know in my professional life.  And the irony is that if I had not been chair, I never would have had a clue about just how appreciated I have been in this unit.  This experience has been the professional equivalent of the thrill you have watching as your children are born.  The emotions I've shared these last few months have completely overshadowed the disappointment of being replaced by another interim chair.

Many of you have been saddened to see me leave the department and have sympathized with me.  But as Lou Gehrig said at his farewell at Yankee Stadium on 4 July 1939: "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."  He died of ALS, the same disease that took Gay Wilentz from us, whose portrait hangs outside my office.

Thanks to you all.

                                                                                                                        Mike Palmer