Nerves

I'm a little nervous about a meeting I have this afternoon. Along with a colleague from another department, I'm co-chairing a committee to plan and oversee a big college initiative. And today is the committee's FIRST MEETING. I've served on a ton of committees during my career and have chaired a few, but I've never chaired a college-wide committee before.

My co-chair and I have been working with our provost for months to get this whole thing ready to go. Co-chair and I have all our handouts--mainly proposals and other documents we've been writing--copied and collated and stapled. We've got an agenda that seems appropriate, interesting, and do-able within our time frame. We've got a PowerPoint cued up. We've got an expert from another school visiting and sitting in on the meeting. I've got an hour or so blocked off after lunch to go over my notes.

But I'm still jittery. For one thing: the committee members were all appointed by their respective deans, and I can tell (through emails and phone calls) that some of the appointees are excited, even honored. But others of them...well, not so much.

And then there's the fact that I'm just not entirely comfortable with administrative kinds of things, and I'm very much still figuring out my own "leadership" style.

And, to *really* complicate things: there's gonna be a huge elephant sitting in the room with us, and I doubt that any of us will actually acknowledge that elephant. (I'm not comfortable blogging about the elephant, though I wish I were.)

So all of this is just a way of saying: Blog friends, wish me luck. And, if you've got any tips, send 'em my way!