My department executive committee has voted. I have been awarded tenure and a promotion to associate professor.
Now comes the vote by my campus. Then the dean, the provost, the chancellor, and the Board of Regents have to approve it. But the hardest part is done--I made it through the department EC. My campus colleagues have been behind me the whole time--they will be happy to hear this news.
To say that I am relieved is an understatement.
Celebration will come later. Tonight I plan to sleep well for the first time in a very long time.
Tomorrow, my department's Executive Committee meets to consider applications for tenure. There are three of us going up. I am reasonably certain the other two will make it, as they were asked to go up a year early.
I, on the other hand, am suffering through the worst anxiety dreams I've ever had in my life. Night after night, terrible things keep happening, and the only positive take-away is that I'm surviving them (both the dreams and the things in them).
For instance, last night I dreamt of my childhood home in Ohio (built in 1845). My mom and I stood on the steps to the patio. So far, so good. Except when a loop of a dream I'd had some months ago intruded: a jumbo jet trying to stay aloft, obviously about to crash. Except that this time, it's headed right for my house. It somehow misses my mom and me, but blows up my house. All around are injured, screaming people, and I can't help them. I'm frozen. Then, mercifully, I wake up.
Except that it's not really merciful, because I can't get back to sleep. This cycle of weird/uncomfortable dreaming and waking continued all night long.
I functioned well enough for a chunk of the day--got the Things off to school, did a bit of work in my office prior to the day's Campus Opening Meeting.
Cue the parietal headache. I clench my jaw in my sleep (but don't grind my teeth like I did when I was a kid), and I'm apparently doing it harder than ever, because I've never had headaches like this. Migraines, yes--always on the right, always starting in my right eye. This one, on the left, feels like someone punched me hard in the head, just above my ear. With brass knuckles. My surgeon, whom I saw back in December when this type of headache started interfering with my ability to work and eat, acknowledged that this is likely stress-based (ya think?) and that we could try amitriptyline.
So far, fewer headaches. But obviously not today. I had to leave the meeting two hours early to come home and curl up in bed with my head on a heating pad. I want very much to relax, and I'm very tired but not tired enough to sleep. Ugh.
In happier news, two colleagues in other departments have gotten positive votes from their respective departments, and it was good to be relieved on their behalf. We also got our student survey data today, and once again I had a healthy score on "overall instructor" so that should help me.
All three of my cats are staring at me from various vantage points in my living room, so I think it's time for dinner.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
I turned in my tenure and promotion dossier on Wednesday. It was 232 pages long, and chock full of examples of what makes me a great teacher, writer, and colleague. Now I await the judgment of my department's Executive Committee: 11 people at various stages in their careers (some newly tenured, most having had it for a while).
Writing the dossier was one of the most emotionally exhausting experiences I've ever had. To condense 6 years' worth of teaching experience into the document was almost more than I could do--knowing that it means the difference between continued employment at a school and in a department that I have come to love, and a terminal year to look for another job. My self-assessment section was limited to 10 single-space pages, and I used all of that space. Perhaps I'll post it here.
In any case, it's done--and I am satisfied. I have flirted with burn-out in previous years due to over-extending myself in service (and frankly, I wasn't that unhappy with doing the service because it made a big difference in the quality of life on my campus). My department forced me to step back and focus on my writing, and I have been less crazed as a result, but I have some doubt that it will be enough for some members of the department. My creative output has increased exponentially, yet the simple fact of the matter is that I can send out work, but I have to wait to hear back as to whether or not it's acceptable for the particular publication to which I've submitted it. And there's the rub.
It's out of my hands. In all senses of the phrase--it's out of my hands. And no matter what, I know in my soul that I'm meant to be a teacher. I will teach.
I am writing this from my "office" in the basement of the tiny house I share with my husband, Thing One and Thing Two, and three cats. Beside me is an oil radiator valiantly attempting to dispel the chill, as the basement is uninsulated and it's 9 degrees outside. In the next room roars the water heater as it works to heat yet another tank (I took a leisurely shower before coming down here--not smart, as my wet hair provides me with a nice chill). The washer and dryer hum and tumble, and I am feeling not unlike the jeans swirling through the heated air--jumbled and rumbled and in desperate need of someone or something to help me get straightened out.
My tenure promotion dossier is nearly complete. What I call my "back brain" (the part that continues to work on problems even when I am not conscious) has been busily organizing my ideas for the article/presentation I am writing on William Gibson's "Bigend" trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History). It has also been working on my self-assessment (limit of 10 pages, single-spaced). While I was in the shower, it was processing the New Yorker article on CD Wright's latest book of poetry, and started suggesting controlling ideas for chapbooks (at the forefront is a series about my father, with whom I have not spoken in nearly 10 years). There is so much going on in my head that I am having trouble just getting started. I suppose just writing this all down is as good a way to start as any.
I want to write about how I'm starting this year with a renewed sense of purpose, and I'm sure at some level it's true, but what I really feel most clearly right now is a deep and abiding Dread. And yes, that's Dread in the Existential sense. Not quite the Kierkegaardian sense--that I fear failing my responsibilities to God--although I suppose were I to substitute "Department Executive Committee" for "God" that would be something approximating the truth. It's more along the lines of a sense that if I fail at this--an endeavor that has lasted for more 15 years--what am I?
I am still a mother. I am still a wife. I am still a daughter and sister and cousin and friend. No matter what--even in death (and may that be a long way off), I will be all these things.
I have defined myself for two decades as an academic--even at my corporate job, one of the Managing Directors nicknamed me (affectionately) "Professor". I have known that I was meant to teach. My students can sense it--even the ones who don't like my subject--and probably the most common comment out of 8 years' worth of student surveys is some variation of "She's so enthusiastic!"
I love this life, and the thought that I might lose it fills me with a very strong desire to curl up in a fetal ball under my desk.
To date I have resisted that urge--I have been sending work out into the World and I have worked hard to keep doing it despite consistently being rejected (which is partly the reason I didn't send my work out in previous years: like most people, I fear rejection). I wasted $25 to have an editor read my chapbook and tell me "I can't use your ms" and nothing else--nothing that might have helped me understand what she thought was wrong with it. I have spent more money entering chapbook contests only to get form rejections back. I have entered contests with high hopes for my best work, only to get a form rejection, then read the "winning" entries and be unable (not unwilling) to see what made them winners and mine the losers. I have spent hours and hours on my "professional development" Fridays looking for likely markets--and have sent work that matches what those markets are looking for--only to have to sit and wait and wait to hear...nothing. And all the time adding things to my list of PD in the hope that it will be sufficient for the Executive Committee. All the while thinking of my colleague who published and presented and still perished not long after I started on the tenure track. When I asked what happened, I was told that the colleague's teaching hadn't been focused on enough to suit the department.
Up through the last 5 of the 6 years I've been on the TT, I have focused on teaching and service--to the near-exclusion of all else, and to my detriment in the eyes of my department (but not my campus)--and here I am in the last stage of my tenure bid panicking that I haven't done enough. That I'm not good enough.
Does everyone go through this?
Now that this seemingly never-ending semester is over and finals are done and Christmas has been celebrated, comes the existential dread: my tenure dossier.
After 15 years of teaching, I am finally in the last stage of my attempt to remain gainfully employed without having to worry about a semester-to-semester contract, as I did when I was an adjunct. My office is the only one occupied in my building; the rest of my colleagues are a) tenured, b)working from home, or c) adjunct and as such exempt from this exercise. It's so quiet that hours pass unnoticed as I toggle back and forth between documents, collecting evidence from my 6 years on this campus that will show my department colleagues that I am worthy to remain one of them. The material is there--but the process of getting it in order is very time-consuming. I'd say I'm a little more than halfway done, and the thing is due next week.
The Executive Committee of my department meets during the third weekend in January to make its retention and promotion decisions. If the vote is positive, it is then up to my campus Tenure Retention and Promotion committee to vote. If the vote from the department is negative (and this is a possibility), I will have a "terminal year" during which to look for other jobs; I will also get a chance to appeal the decision.
This whole process has taught me a lot about myself. It's taught me that I have more energy and enthusiasm than I thought possible, even while dealing with first one, then a second child. It's taught me that I am just as dogged now [at nearly 40] as I was in my early 20s when I pursued a double major in philosophy and English and darn near had a minor in writing before I graduated (while also on work/study and as an athlete all 3 quarters of an academic year: water polo in Fall and Spring, and swim team in Winter).
Twenty years ago as an undergrad at Hiram College, I told my mentor, Hale Chatfield, that I wanted to become an English professor. I honestly could think of no better life than one in which I would spend my time reading, thinking, and talking to students (I hadn't really thought about grading papers...). Though he died 10 years ago, I have thought of him often as I've moved along this path. He was a poet who was interested in computers and technology, and he probably would have loved the explosion of writing that has taken place on the interwebs. In some ways I think of my reaching tenure as a way of repaying the faith that he and my other professors have had in me and in my abilities. Their knowledge continues to be passed along--because every day, I use what I learned as student to help my own students learn. I am thankful to have had wonderful professors, and it has been my honor to follow in their footsteps.
Found out about the Wisconsin Arts Board's biennial fellowship awards on Sunday. Night. Deadline: 3:00pm today. Have spent every spare minute at work gathering, winnowing, and writing. Finished at 12:30, submitted the e-Grant application and put the manuscript copies in the outgoing campus mail. The fellowships are $8000 each (7 are awarded to poets). That money would go a long way toward buying me some freedom. Childcare during the summer. Funds toward some trips. Also, winning one would really help me get tenure. I've sent in my best new work.
Now for the waiting.
The panel meets in October. Notification is in December. Tenure promotion file is due Jan. 4th. Decision made by the Executive Committee the last weekend in January.
The waaaaiiiiting is the haaaarrrrdest part....
So my previous daycare closed on May 21st after more than thirty years of being in business. The tech school to which it was attached decided arbitrarily, with no input from the director or anyone else, that it could no longer afford to operate the daycare portion, though it functioned as a lab for their Early Childhood Education students. The teachers were great, and the kids were supremely well-cared for, which is all you can hope for when you leave your child in someone else's care. It's a long sad story, perhaps for another post.
It's also the second time in two years I've had to find another daycare.
After my initial panic, and a look at the list of "accredited" daycares in my area, inertia set in. I just could not force myself to try to find a place to put Thing Two. My options in my area are severely limited due to the closing of three highly-regarded programs for "financial reasons."
Today I toured a place that is on the way to Thing One's elementary school. It seems to be OK--and was recommended by Thing One's former 4-K teacher. My only objection at the moment is to the overt "Jesus" messages on the walls. I'm not a Christian, and I'm not raising either Thing to be religious, though I will teach them both about what's out there when they're old enough to understand. In some ways, the new daycare isn't much different from the Salvation Army Child Care Center, which is where Thing One spent her days from the time she was 3 months old until the Center closed just after she finished 4K. Thing Two is too young for the messages to mean anything anyway.
The children seemed happy, the ratio is 4 to 1 (child/teacher) and the rooms were bright and clean, so I guess I will pay them $170 per week to look after Thing Two, and be grateful that they had an opening.
On a related note, I have been thinking that since a significant part of the work we're supposed to do for tenure comes during the summer, when none of us are being paid to do anything, much less work 20+ hours/week on PD, universities should make PD funds available to parents to help subsidize the cost of daycare.
I can hear the screaming from single/non-breeder TT folks now: what about us? Well, what about you? Daycare is an expense that comes out of our salary during the regular contract year--by my calculation, it's 1/6th of my take-home pay. Every month. During the summer, I do not have a contract, nor do I have an income; ergo, I do not have money to pay someone to watch my children so that I can match (or dare I say exceed) S/NBTT PDO (professional development output).[To my S/NBTT friends: I do not mean this in a derogatory way. I actually envy most of you.]
I have made the mistake of trying to get work done without help--and now that the hammer is poised to shatter my 20-year dream of being a professor, I'm forced to acknowledge that getting tenure with children is basically an impossibility--for me--without help from family.
My father-in-law retired in June, and so far the kids have gone to stay with them once for a few days so that I could make some sense out of the chaos that masquerades as my office and get a bit of research done for my article. They're going again tomorrow to stay Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday, and I'll be spending 8-10 hours in my office on campus both days scrambling to get things ready to send out prior to the August 1st deadline. Nothing quite like the pressure of waiting 'til the last minute... I'm lucky that Dad retired this year instead of sticking it out another year, because there would be no hope for me.
What do people do? How do you function in the summer with no access to childcare?
It's nearly the end of July. Woke up to more rain/fog, which has thankfully begun to burn off.
Thing One is at my feet looking through the movies I spilled onto the floor while updating my new profile. Thing Two is napping; otherwise, I would not be able to write this.
I titled the blog "This Academic Life" because I am an assistant professor in my last few months of a tenure bid. I do not know how it is going to turn out. My votes have been uncomfortably close for the past two years (not coincidentally, Thing Two was born 19 months ago, on the last day of my finals). I love my job. Well, I love most aspects of my job, which makes me way luckier than most people. I love teaching, I love meeting with students, and as sick as it may sound, I love meetings with my colleagues (not just in my department, but across my campus as well).
That last part is partly why I am in the precarious position today--I over-extended myself on committee obligations (chairing committees during a tenure bid is not something I would recommend), which left me with no time and little energy for writing.
The Inside Higher Ed blogger Kerry Ann Rockquemore has an advice column called "Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul". Some of what she has to say is common sense (but since when did anyone in academia have a surplus of that??). Some of it doesn't take into account a variety of factors. Consider this post in which she gives parameters for a 40-hour work week. Her 40-hour work week is 20 hours for research and writing; the rest divided into hours for teaching (12) and prep (she gives 4) and committee/service obligations.
Nowhere in that post does she make time for grading. I do not have a TA upon whom I can dump 66 3-5 page papers that need to be graded within 10 "working" days. So if I want to have a 40-hour week (and I SO want one), I have to "eat" hours out of something else. Can't eat them out of class time. Can't eat them out of prep, since my courses get tweaked almost every semester to make them better. Can't eat them out of service. So I guess I'll eat them out of writing time. Guess how many hours it takes to grade 66 papers? Give up?
About 21 hours, give or take.
That's right. The papers vary widely in both content and quality, and each must be carefully read (once for content, once for quality). Each must have comments written both on the paper itself, and on a rubric given back with the paper.
She also left out office hours (6 per week) but I guess since a lot of us do prep at that time, those qualify as multi-tasking hours.
What about the summer? you ask.
Great question!
I have two children under age 6, and I don't get paid over the summer. Guess what that means? It means that I'm home from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm with two small children. Have you ever tried to write anything coherent while being chattered at by a 6 yr old and a 19 month old? No? It's an exercise in futility.
Then the NY Times comes out with
And I'm sitting here...
Ah well. I'm gainfully employed (for now) and I have managed to get some writing done in the past few weeks. The kids are going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days next week, and I will have time to work on my article. I even have a place to send it, so hopefully all will be well.
