Choice?

It was somewhere in the Fall; I had just begun my position as assistant professor at a new Dutch university. My youngest was still in his diapers. The prospect that there was actual chance for a steady anthropology career had not entirely dawned upon me yet. Everything was new and exciting. When the Head of Department notified that it was our turn for a research audit, I felt privileged being invited. Not that I had lots of confidence in the increasing audit culture in academia, but that my new colleagues considered my opinion about research valuable enough for on-the-record assessment was a new experience I had not had at my previous university.