I wrote this when I couldn't get to the Internet and then forgot about it. Ooops. That's why this is out of order. But it's going to get worse before it gets better. I'm waaaaay behind in posting. So much has been happening. :-) So just believe the dates you see in the Title or in the posting and not what the date is that I wrote it. And there's no guarantee that everything will be in chronological order. Sorry!
April 2, 3, and 4 was the beginning of the 48-hour marathon on-campus interview. I've been teaching the classes this semester for Mike Muir who is on sabbatical. He has also been approved for a 3 year leave of absence (well, technically a 2 year leave of absence with a 1 year extension) starting in fall 2007. They announced the 3 year position and I applied for it. (They did a national search.) I made it to the first round and had a phone interview. Now I made it to the next round. I'm one of two candidates who were invited to campus for further interviewing. I'm very impressed with how hard they work to make sure that an internal candidate has no advantage over an external candidate. Our schedules were exactly the same including a campus tour (I actually wanted to have that since I've never had an official one) and an orientation visit with the committee chair when you first arrive on campus. I had to give 3 presentations, eat 6 meals with search committee members and others, and have 6 half-hour interviews with various folks. It was exhilarating and exhausting simultaneously.
Sunday night, MRM, RBF, and Creston came to the Education Center and let me practice my first presentation on them. My schedule said, "Make Your Vita Come Alive." Eeek! On Monday night I was to meet with the search committee and present my vita. (If a resume is the highlights of your education and work experience, a vita is the opposite. It's the comprehensive list of everything you've ever done.)
Having been on several these search committees, I know how brilliant this plan is. Typically, some committee members read vitas thoroughly and some don't, and different people read different sections they like best, and on top of that, by the time you're down to campus visits, all the vitas you've looked at start to blend together. So by having each candidate present their vita, everyone's on the same page. It's a great idea . . . for the committee. But for the candidate . . . it's daunting.
I was making a Keynote presentation (Keynote is a presentation software like PowerPoint only better), and found myself continually going back to my theresaoverall.org website to find out dates and URL's and other info. So I finally thought, "Why don't I just present from my own website?" So that's what I did. And what was fun about that was that the time invested in the presentation was actually also an investment in something that I wanted to do anyway! I could've ended up with a presentation that I would only use once in my life. Instead, I got to play with my website. :-)
Anyway, MRM, RBF, and Creston brought a pizza and I had a chance to make sure I could get the presentation technology to work and to see if it was possible to talk about myself without sounding conceited. I gave the three of them a copy of the ad that appeared on higheredjobs.com and said, "Let me know when I'm done if I addressed all the qualifications they're looking for." On top of that, I was so glad to have someone time it 'cuz I really didn't know how long it was going to take. I encouraged them to ask questions along the way and they did. It was actually very fun!
And when it was time to do it for real on Monday night, it was a breeze. And it was also fun all over again. :-)
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