Discouraing development

 For the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department: 

I volunteered to attend an online conference in March. I was impressed with a workshop about teaching faculty and graduate students how to cope with anti-science and the misuse of science. I contacted the presenter, who happens to be the new(ish) Social Science librarian at SU (!) We chatted about presenting the workshop at UND and presenting at ACRL in 2023 (in Pittsburgh).

I was at a grad student event about a month later and mentioned the workshop to the workshop coordinator, who expressed a lot of enthusiasm. The Grad School Dean was at the event and the coordinator encouraged me to tell him about it. I did, and we had a great conversation about anti-science, COVID, etc.

At the first CFL meeting about fall workshops, I mentioned the workshop and the ACRL presentation, and the coordinator said the grad school was interested in some new workshop topics and it seemed like this was great timing. I was super excited, everything was falling into place.

Then, at the next meeting about workshops, I heard that we are doing the same workshops as last year. I contacted the grad school workshop coordinator to confirm this and she said they (her and the CFL liaison) didn't know what the "learning objectives" of the workshop were. Huh? So why didn't they ask me? Why are they deciding that my workshop is off the table without involving me at all? I can't believe both these women just KICKED ME TO THE CURB, knowing how invested I was in this.

Now it's awkward because I have tell the SU guy that we can only teach the workshop through the library, not the grad school.

But wait, there's more.  

The SU guy had sent me a draft of the ACRL proposal for me to review. In it, he said something about teaching the course at a religious university, so of course I was confused, and I said UND is a public school. When I heard back from him, a couple weeks later, he said he thought I was at Notre Dame. What? And he took me (and my crap school) out of the proposal and submitted it. He said we can add me back in later, but it seems like he's happy to move on without me and UND. I can't believe he also KICKED ME TO THE CURB without the slightest concern for how I might feel about it.

I'm so upset about this whole process. Yet again, my enthusiasm and effort is for nothing. Though I guess the silver lining is I don't have to figure out how to force this workshop into the lineup and I don't have to let down the SU guy. #win-win