Rave Reviews

Okay, so that's not entirely accurate. I had my "observation follow-up" (aka "evaluation") today. Actually, it was a much more pleasant experience than I had expected. I prefaced my boss' comments with a qualifier that had to do with my usual level of perfectionism vs. my performance this semester and some of the reasons for the difference, the greatest of which has obviously been having to be my own contractor. I probably wouldn't have said anything at all about it, but I never re-wrote my syllabi as I was asked to do in the second week of classes. She cut me a break on that because she was impressed with my teaching, both the style and content. My overall rating was "meets standards" in all areas. Usually I would be unhappy with anything less than "exceeds standards" (an option for only about a third of the areas of evaluation); this semester, given the number of classes I'm teaching and the house situation, I'm fine with it -- which is weird! In the past, I've freaked out when I received anything less than "exemplary" (different institutions use different language), but I truly don't care right now. It's liberating, this whole not-needing-to-be-perfect thing, and at the same time confusing. Maybe I'm just too tired to give a shit, or maybe sometimes good enough really is good enough.