“It’s Not You, It’s Us”

In a recent First Person column, Melanie S. Mock, an associate professor of writing and literature at George Fox University, describes the difficult process of hiring a replacement for a beloved colleague who passed away:

While I thought our committee appeared friendly to candidates, perhaps I could not perceive how strange we really were. Would candidates be frustrated by the way department members referred to certain medieval courses as “Colleen’s classes,” or some advisees as “Colleen’s students,” or the office reserved for the position as “Colleen’s office”? Did candidates notice that during quiet moments at dinner, one or two members of the committee wiped tears from their eyes?

Mock hopes that job seekers will keep in mind that the “committees themselves are made up of human beings, and that their humanity will always diminish any chance that a search will be entirely objective.”

Understandably, the search “committee’s work was complicated by grief and the difficulty of letting go” and, as a result, it was hard to avoid setting an unfair standard for applicants to live up to, Mock realizes.

But considering the circumstances, Mock writes, the search committee did the best it could to remain fair an impartial and, fortunately, in the end, it was able to hire not a replacement, but a new colleague:

I know that, while my new colleague will have Colleen’s office and classes, she will not be Colleen. And one day soon, I hope I will be OK with that.