So I'm at the half way point in my TT position. Submitted my third year review material and am waiting for feedback from the higher ups. I'm curious to see what they say, I've heard this is the only time you really get to see what your colleagues think of you and your work and see if you have any enemies in the department before going up for tenure. Annual reviews evaluate productivity and don't really provide feedback at my place. Also, we don't go external for third year reviews, so I don't have any knowledge of what people in my field think of me, which will count for a lot when I go up for tenure.
Unofficially, I've done things right so far and am "on the right track," but that means very little to me. Similar to stocks, past performance is not indicative of future results. Yeah, I got some funding and some papers published, that doesn't mean that I'll ever do either again. The papers will probably happen, but I have less confidence in funding, especially now with this sequestration crap.
I'm not sure if I'm happy with my career choice. I've pulled multiple all nighters last month. I'm annoyed that I get paid less than I would in industry, have to work ridiculous amounts of hours, and have undergrads tell me that I only covered the material that was in their textbook. I can work on whatever I want, but really I can only work on things that have trending buzzwords in the engineering communittee, since those are the only things that have a chance of getting funded. That isn't too bad, I'm pretty good at repackaging research, but I'm constantly worried that my trainees can't do what I'm proposing. They are not me and I can't predict what they are capable of accomplishing. They definitely won't do whatever it takes. I'm at a place where the students will simply walk away if you start to push them hard. I'm debating about jumping ship. The funny part is that my colleagues are telling me that I'm doing well. There's no one I can really talk with about options and potential exit strategies. My mentor works like crazy and I've never heard them say that they enjoy what they are doing. I also don't feel like I can have a really heart to heart discussion with anyone in my college without hurting my prospects at getting tenure. Even outside the university, everyone I know is academic and can't imagine doing anything else. I also equate leaving with failure and can't really see myself leaving before I get tenure, since that is the prize in my mind right now.
The mix of teaching, research, and service is frustrating and exhausting. I only have a small sample size, but the TT folks at tier 1 places I talk to seam to be allowed to focus almost all of their time on research. My place says they want to be a top tier research university, but they put equal emphasis on all three. I'm chairing committees and picking up the slack for tenured faculty in other committees that I'm on. Not because they're lazy, our tenured folks are spread thin with even more committee assignments. I think individual faculty should be allowed to focus on one or two of these pillars and to have a department with professors that have strengths in each of these three areas. Why can't someone that likes teaching undergrads be valued for doing that and letting the people that like research work mostly on that? Anyway, that's where I'm at.
Unofficially, I've done things right so far and am "on the right track," but that means very little to me. Similar to stocks, past performance is not indicative of future results. Yeah, I got some funding and some papers published, that doesn't mean that I'll ever do either again. The papers will probably happen, but I have less confidence in funding, especially now with this sequestration crap.
I'm not sure if I'm happy with my career choice. I've pulled multiple all nighters last month. I'm annoyed that I get paid less than I would in industry, have to work ridiculous amounts of hours, and have undergrads tell me that I only covered the material that was in their textbook. I can work on whatever I want, but really I can only work on things that have trending buzzwords in the engineering communittee, since those are the only things that have a chance of getting funded. That isn't too bad, I'm pretty good at repackaging research, but I'm constantly worried that my trainees can't do what I'm proposing. They are not me and I can't predict what they are capable of accomplishing. They definitely won't do whatever it takes. I'm at a place where the students will simply walk away if you start to push them hard. I'm debating about jumping ship. The funny part is that my colleagues are telling me that I'm doing well. There's no one I can really talk with about options and potential exit strategies. My mentor works like crazy and I've never heard them say that they enjoy what they are doing. I also don't feel like I can have a really heart to heart discussion with anyone in my college without hurting my prospects at getting tenure. Even outside the university, everyone I know is academic and can't imagine doing anything else. I also equate leaving with failure and can't really see myself leaving before I get tenure, since that is the prize in my mind right now.
The mix of teaching, research, and service is frustrating and exhausting. I only have a small sample size, but the TT folks at tier 1 places I talk to seam to be allowed to focus almost all of their time on research. My place says they want to be a top tier research university, but they put equal emphasis on all three. I'm chairing committees and picking up the slack for tenured faculty in other committees that I'm on. Not because they're lazy, our tenured folks are spread thin with even more committee assignments. I think individual faculty should be allowed to focus on one or two of these pillars and to have a department with professors that have strengths in each of these three areas. Why can't someone that likes teaching undergrads be valued for doing that and letting the people that like research work mostly on that? Anyway, that's where I'm at.
I'm constantly worried that my trainees can't do what I'm proposing. They are not me and I can't predict what they are capable of accomplishing.
ReplyDeleteWhat does this mean? Are you suggesting that your trainees are not capable of implementing exactly what you want them to implement?
There have been a few times when my advisor suggested ideas that I didn't like very much. It's somewhat hard to say, "there's no chance in hell that this will work" to a person much smarter and wiser than you. My strategy has been to (perhaps a little half-heartedly) implement enough of these ideas to convince him that this really is a dead end. I'm now wondering whether those really were dead ends or whether I just wasn't smart enough. :-/
But coming back to your point, I slightly dislike being told exactly what to do. I'd rather my advisor just propose a problem or an area and be available for me to bounce ideas off.
The mix of teaching, research, and service is frustrating and exhausting.
I've heard this sentiment from a few different people. Even my advisor seemed to be discouraging me from opting from an academic career and yet I also heard from him that they had 400 applicants for one faculty position! What's going on here?! It's either not as frustrating as I'm being told or these 400 people are not as smart as their CVs suggest!
Anyway, I enjoy reading your blog and so I'd like to thank you for writing it and give you my best wishes for your upcoming review.
Hi Anonymous, Your comments got me thinking about a whole slew of things. I'll address the main points here and try to get posts up in the future for the other thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIn my field, our experiments don't work most of the time. Demonstrating that something can be done is often an endpoint for a portion of the project. This means that even if I know the approach or strategy to employ, it could take months of trouble shooting or fine tuning to get a process or experiment to work. I have to trust that my trainees try each variation without making a mistake or at least realize when they do make a mistake. The scariest thing I can have a trainee tell me is that they tried everything and that nothing worked. Did they really try everything without doing anything wrong? The work requires perseverance and extreme attention to detail, which I know from experience not everyone has. On more than one occassion already, I've had different trainees come to me and say that something fairly basic didn't work and I've then gone into lab with them and gotten it to work on the first or second try.
I can't wait to have trainees that don't want me to tell them exactly what to do. This is part of the challenge of starting a new research group. I almost have two at the point where they can figure things out and attempt them on their own. The others want still want/need every last step spelled out and explained.
As for the 400 applications, I know many people that work 80 hours a week and their job is their life and they are completely happy with that. I'm not. The other explanation you often get is that they love the science/research so much they are willing to put up with almost anything. I don't love anything that much. Also, there are some nice benefits to the job that I try to remind myself about, such as not having a boss. I do an annual report of what I've done, but that's it. I'll stroll in to my office around 10:30 tomorrow and no one will say a word (but I do that because I'm up at 3 AM working). Also, having grown up lower middle class, where jobs are scarce and layoffs frequent, tenure for me is very appealing.
I also don't feel like I can have a really heart to heart discussion with anyone in my college without hurting my prospects at getting tenure. Even outside the university, everyone I know is academic and can't imagine doing anything else. I also equate leaving with failure and can't really see myself leaving before I get tenure, since that is the prize in my mind right now.
ReplyDeleteIf you want, I am happy to talk offline. Email me at geekmommyprof@gmail.com
Perhaps I can offer some perspective or at least lend an ear. You can bitch and moan to me as much as you like and 1) I promise not to judge (because I am a big whiner myself), 2) I have been where you are now, and 3) I have zero influence on your tenure case.