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I am not a touchy-feely type, and when someone says they believe the universe is sending them messages, I am likely to question their sanity. Nonetheless, I kept facing the same issue today over and over again in every imaginable context: how should I set my expectations--for my students, my colleagues, faculty candidates, my children, and myself--so that they are high but not unrealistically so? I will spare you the full rundown of my day. Let me just present a few examples. Let us say hypothetically that you are in the market to hire a new entry-level faculty member and that this prospective faculty member has written an article or the draft of an article. How should you judge her work? Should you judge it the way you would judge an untenured colleague's first tenure piece, or should you set a lower standard on the theory that the person's scholarship will improve when they join your faculty and receive mentoring? How harshly should you judge the candidate's writing style? If the article or draft indicates that the candidate is a mediocre writer, should you overlook that if he seems to have good ideas (perhaps on the theory that editors can be found to improve the problem)? Is it fair to criticize an article written while in practice for not surveying the secondary literature or at least showing thorough familiarity with it? I tend to be quite critical of mediocre writing, but I am often willing to forgive a mediocre presentation. Are these the right standards to apply? Let me give another example. I believe that you insult the intelligence and abilities of your students if you don't set high expectations for them. I expect my students to be prepared, but I don't browbeat them if they're not. I just promise to call on them the next class period, and I try to remember to always follow through. Am I setting my expectations too low by not having more severe consequences? Or am I being unduly punitive by potentially causing embarrassment for the student who hasn't read? Have I struck the right balance with my policy? You never know what is going on in the personal lives of any of your students. Perhaps you just called on a student whose spouse just asked for a divorce, whose child was in the hospital all weekend, or who is simply terrified of speaking in class when put on the spot. Or perhaps you called on a perennial slacker who was out drinking the night before. Should it matter to you that it could be the former rather than the latter? I can hear you saying it will not matter to the judge, but the point is that we are not judges. The classroom is not the courtroom: the stakes simply are not that high, at least not yet. Moreover, I am trying to set a tone where students feel safe to experiment with ideas and arguments and to make the inevitable mistakes that go with that experimentation. Should I demand more? With regard to the standards I set for myself, I had an uncomfortable realization today. I try hard to never miss a deadline set by a co-author or a publisher. I also try hard to have an open door policy and to see students who drop by when they drop by if at all possible. But I realized that, although my door is open, I sometimes am not evincing the open door attitude I'm striving for because i'm feeling the pressure of conflicting obligations. Maybe I would actually be more welcoming if I restricted students to my office hours, and if the ordinary scheduled amount of hours seem too meager, I could add more. I could go on. [Did I mention that my three sons just got their report cards?]

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