Feeling Like a Loser

I received a poor evaluation from my department chair. I've been teaching on and off for 20 years, and it seems I'm no good at it.

This is all very strange to me. I put in so many hours every week, grading papers, creating hand-outs, writing tests and practice tests, on and on, to the point that I'm only making about $15 an hour when every task is accounted for. I keep my office hours, and I am forever telling students that if they can't make these hours, let me know and I'll meet them at some other time.

Often students smile at me, tell me thank you, let me know how much the class has meant to them.

But then I hear from the department chair that more students come to him with complaints than come to him from all the other professors combined. How can that be? Am I really so awful and yet the students smile to my face but then stab me in the back?

This is just one more area of my life in which I really don't understand what's going on. Why aren't things working out, given my positive attitude and my hard work? What's missing?

If I'm a flop at teaching, in what other arenas am I a loser? Let me count the ways.

* Relationships--In the past year, I have had four dates.
* Money--Always a struggle, though I work my tail off.
* Health--Some days the chest pain and shortness of breath are so bad, I think I'm going to fall over and die.
* Friends--Mostly, they're busy. I had a great time last weekend at the ninth annual chick cabin getaway weekend in Green Valley Lake, but that's just once a year.
* Career--See above. I want so badly to make it to May of 2008, so that I can leave Cal State and have health insurance for the rest of my life, but the chair seems hell-bent on canning me. How tragic that would be--after teaching here for 20 years, I'd be one semester away from leaving and he'd kick me out the door, with nothing.

So, folks, I'm feeling a little down today. And I've been feeling a little down the last couple of days.

I know I'm not a loser. I know I have a lot of wonderful things to offer the world. It's just that the world doesn't seem much interested.