Free The Realm of Last Chances by Steve Yarbrough Page B

first year turned into the second and she and Kristin’s mother began to do their grocery shopping together and even took a trip to New York City to see
Jesus Christ Superstar
, she became a lot more verbal. Occasionally, though neither of Kristin’s parents ever commented on it, at least not in her presence, Mrs. Connulty messed up her grammar. “They gave it to Tom and I,” she might remark, instead of “Tom and me.” Or she might ask, “Where was you?” She sometimes slipped and put an
r
on the end of a word like “Alabama.” During Kristin’s grad school days in North Carolina, she frequently noted similar verbal mannerisms in shops and convenience stores, and each time she remembered Sarah Connulty.
    In perhaps the first adult-level assessment she’d ever offered of another person, she told Patty, “Your mother is the kindest, most
decent
person I know.”
    Assessment—the drawing of distinctions between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the accomplished and the inept, the useful and the expendable—was the main thing on her mind when she walked into the office that morning to find Donna waiting, her laptop bagged for the Power Point presentation, her gaze flitting toward the wall clock. They had a tenure and promotion workshop scheduled for nine a.m., and it wasalready three minutes past. “We’d better hurry,” her assistant said. “It’s a good five-minute walk to the Olsen Center.”
    “They can’t start without us, can they?”
    “No. But there’s such a thing as punctuality.”
    “I know there is. There’s also such a thing as traffic, and my bus proved it this morning.”
    Heading across campus she made an effort, as she had each day, to engage the older woman in small talk. “How’d your husband’s checkup go?”
    “Fine.”
    “Was his blood pressure lower?”
    “A little.”
    “And the problem with your grandson’s teacher—did that get resolved?”
    “They moved him to another class.”
    Finally, she gave up, and they covered the last hundred yards in silence.
    The auditorium was an institutionally grim bowl with tiered seating for around eighty people. They walked in to find no more than eighteen or twenty faculty members there, most of them sitting by themselves, as if in implicit acknowledgment that going up for tenure was like dying. It could only be done alone.
    While Donna connected her laptop, Kristin welcomed everyone and reminded them that she’d just arrived and was still learning the ropes. “I’m sure I’ll make some mistakes along the way,” she said, “but I’ll do my best to correct them. If at any point you have a problem with that, I hope you’ll first discuss it with me rather than someone else. I promise to do the same.” Then she introduced her assistant, and judging from the looks on the faces of those assembled Donna hadn’t made many friends in this crowd.
    Kristin began her presentation with a list of dates on which probationary files were due to departments and deans. For tenor fifteen minutes she covered the role of mentors, stressing the importance of maintaining constant communication with them, and then she went over the three areas in which tenure-seeking faculty would be evaluated, pointing out that accomplishments in teaching, research and service must be properly documented. “A good file is thorough,” she said. “At the same time, padding obscures real achievement. If you attend a conference in D.C., you don’t need to include a napkin from the Mayflower Hotel to prove you were really there. A program listing your subject or topic will do nicely.” She enumerated recent changes to the tenure and promotion guidelines, noting that the publication requirement had been raised from two juried articles to three and that the service requirement had also been raised from one committee to two.
    When she’d finished, she asked if there were any questions. People fidgeted as they looked around the room to see if anyone else was going