The most bizarre meeting of my life has really unsettled me. Belay, our new Programme Manager, visited us from the VSO office. After chatting with him the two of us then had a meeting with my line manager, one of the Vice Deans. He was very pleased with the work I have done, but what I expected to be a formality of a meeting plunged rapidly downhill when I started to raise some very innocent and appropriate questions about how the cluster unit might work next year. He became very defensive and then quite aggressive. He seemed to misinterpret everything I said and resorted to his usual tactic of not listening. I couldn’t believe how defensive, aggressive and outright rude he became. Belay looked a bit stunned. It seems to me that he simply did not like somebody raising questions and I think he interpreted questioning as criticism. I was simply seeking clarification of various points, but I think he interpreted questioning as insubordination. After an hour of this we ended on a sour note. Belay was astonished at his attitude and rudeness, and was very good at calming me down afterwards as I was furious. I’m pleased with how I handled myself during the meeting as I do try and seek to understand rather than jumping to conclusions, but there was a point where I wanted to walk out shouting at him where he could stick his placement.

So now I’m left with a horrible sickly feeling. I can deal with confrontation but I’m mystified about what happened and why. He’s a difficult and abrasive person to get along with who seems to have a very black and white view of how things should be. Maybe I will not be here afterall until Feb if I have to deal with his obnoxious behaviour.