Not That Kind of Doctor - Tenure: It’s Not the Hunger Games (But It Might Feel Like It)
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09/30/2024
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In this episode of Not That Kind of Doctor, Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin break down what it takes to successfully navigate the tenure-track process. They explore strategies for using your first five years effectively, emphasizing the importance of building a clear plan, creating promotable work, and understanding institutional expectations. Nick and Guy discuss the “lore” of tenure and how to separate it from reality, crafting a narrative that showcases your work, and identifying what really counts as promotable activity.
Key Takeaways:
Tenure is a Marathon, Not a Sprint: Start planning for tenure in your first semester, not just in your fifth year.
Understand the Process: Get to know what tenure means at your institution and how it shapes your research, teaching, and service.
Strategic Planning: Develop a five-year plan that balances promotable activities, research goals, and self-care.
Create a Cohesive Narrative: Use your dossier to weave a story about who you are as a scholar and how your work contributes to your field.
Leverage Your Network: Build meaningful relationships with colleagues and mentors to support your progress and help navigate the tenure process.
Join Nick and Guy as they unpack the complexities of tenure with their usual mix of practical advice, honest reflections, and plenty of humor!
#TenureTrack #AcademicCareer #NotThatKindOfDoctor #FacultyLife
Strategies for Tenure - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin
www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
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- [00:00:01.109](upbeat groovy music)
- [00:00:10.230]Coming to you from our studio.
- [00:00:15.660]Is that what we're calling this?
- [00:00:17.490]Our study room?
- [00:00:19.680]Studio. Our fishbowl.
- [00:00:21.630]Fishbowl, I like fishbowl.
- [00:00:23.580]My favorite part is the student walking in the backgrounds
- [00:00:26.940]that you can see in the videos.
- [00:00:28.680]Yeah, it's true, it's a good background.
- [00:00:30.270]Yeah. It's much better
- [00:00:31.230]than green screen.
- [00:00:32.610]It is much better than green screen.
- [00:00:34.440]Although I did love my green screen
- [00:00:36.300]when I had it. Oh, we know,
- [00:00:37.290]we just were talking about your ESPN era
- [00:00:40.170]and we're so glad that you're out of it.
- [00:00:42.198](Guy laughs)
- [00:00:43.031]So glad. Yes.
- [00:00:44.640]So glad.
- [00:00:45.720]But today. Yes.
- [00:00:48.450]We're talking all things tenure
- [00:00:51.630]on "Not That Kind of a Doctor."
- [00:00:56.400]Oh, so I have to introduce myself, don't I?
- [00:01:00.300]You do. This is where this goes.
- [00:01:01.770]Not enough coffee this morning.
- [00:01:03.510]I'm Nick Husbye, I'm an associate professor here
- [00:01:05.970]at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- [00:01:07.980]And I'm Guy Trainin, a professor
- [00:01:09.720]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- [00:01:11.820]And we are talking about tenure.
- [00:01:14.040]We're talking about tenure. Which is something
- [00:01:15.270]we've gone through.
- [00:01:16.440]We have, and we're going to explore tenure
- [00:01:19.800]in a couple of different ways this season.
- [00:01:21.510]But in this episode, we're really gonna be thinking about,
- [00:01:25.290]for those of you who have managed to land a tenure track job
- [00:01:30.360]and you know, their congratulations, first off, mazel.
- [00:01:35.520]Yes. It's great,
- [00:01:37.350]but also, what do you do now?
- [00:01:41.340]How does that function?
- [00:01:43.230]What kinds of questions do you need to be asking?
- [00:01:46.020]What ways do you need to organize your time?
- [00:01:48.480]That's the kind of stuff that we're gonna cover
- [00:01:50.550]in this episode today, because we want you to be efficient
- [00:01:54.240]and strategic in your march towards tenure
- [00:01:59.190]and the work that you do as you get there.
- [00:02:02.610]So let's talk about tenure at large,
- [00:02:06.960]because that might be something
- [00:02:08.550]that's a little unclear to folks.
- [00:02:11.400]What is tenure?
- [00:02:13.650]Like, it's often you want a tenure track job,
- [00:02:16.800]but what does that actually mean?
- [00:02:19.380]So what it means is that within a certain period of time,
- [00:02:25.740]you've got that probationary period.
- [00:02:29.190]Sometimes it's very clearly defined
- [00:02:31.740]in how many years you're expected to get there.
- [00:02:33.990]Even then, there are ways to make it a little bit shorter,
- [00:02:36.960]or if you need extra time
- [00:02:38.220]and you have a reason for it, a little bit longer.
- [00:02:40.500]The pandemic was one of those opportunities
- [00:02:44.340]where everybody went on pause.
- [00:02:46.800]So some people could ask for an extension,
- [00:02:49.680]in many institutions, not all.
- [00:02:51.360]So you always have to look
- [00:02:53.582]at the institutions you are ending up in,
- [00:02:55.770]but you have a probationary period.
- [00:02:59.130]The most common, I think, is six to seven years.
- [00:03:02.220]By the way, seven years does not mean
- [00:03:04.230]that you have full seven years.
- [00:03:05.400]It actually means you have six
- [00:03:07.080]and in the seventh, your case, it's discussed.
- [00:03:09.870]So that's important to know as you're thinking about this.
- [00:03:14.550]And at the end of that, you get a permanent position
- [00:03:17.430]that is protected by a variety of rules and precedents
- [00:03:24.750]in law about what's allowable and what's not allowable
- [00:03:30.300]and under what conditions can you let go or not let go.
- [00:03:34.350]So you get a lot of protection.
- [00:03:36.630]So you can speak freely,
- [00:03:38.460]you can pursue your research career freely.
- [00:03:41.070]It doesn't mean that you don't get reviewed
- [00:03:43.440]and get feedback, and potentially,
- [00:03:46.163]if you're not performing, there could be consequences.
- [00:03:51.330]But the road to those consequences is considerably harder.
- [00:03:54.690]And you can't just be let go one morning.
- [00:03:57.180]You wake up in May and somebody says,
- [00:03:59.400]you're not coming back next fall.
- [00:04:01.590]Well, and so as we're talking
- [00:04:03.330]about like this notion of permanence, right?
- [00:04:05.820]As someone who spent some time in the University
- [00:04:07.440]of Wisconsin system, it's not necessarily permanent, right?
- [00:04:13.870]Yeah. But there is a process
- [00:04:17.700]that is designed once you have tenure, if something happens,
- [00:04:22.050]that they have to move through in order
- [00:04:25.800]to relieve you of your job, right?
- [00:04:27.840]Yes. So tenure's not necessarily
- [00:04:30.750]a permanent, as we think of it, position,
- [00:04:33.390]but it does give you particular rights if something happens
- [00:04:38.970]and they want to eliminate your position, right?
- [00:04:43.980]And so this gives you some sense of job security,
- [00:04:47.160]but it's not particularly as we're seeing now.
- [00:04:52.050]Yes. Get large across higher ed.
- [00:04:54.030]It's not necessarily a permanent,
- [00:04:58.080]quote, unquote, "position."
- [00:04:59.850]And I can hear you already saying,
- [00:05:02.220]so this is to the audience by the way, not you,
- [00:05:05.160]but I can hear that voice that says,
- [00:05:07.500]in some places they are canceling tenure,
- [00:05:09.870]which is happening.
- [00:05:11.070]We're not gonna talk about this today,
- [00:05:12.690]but we are gonna bring it up
- [00:05:14.940]in one of our shows down the line
- [00:05:16.680]as we discuss about the versions, what's happening.
- [00:05:19.680]We have seen very little of that in reality,
- [00:05:22.860]because that transition is very complicated
- [00:05:25.860]from a legal perspective, from a contract perspective.
- [00:05:28.650]But we do expect more of that to happen
- [00:05:32.340]as things develop over the next few years.
- [00:05:35.670]And so we will talk a little bit about this,
- [00:05:37.950]maybe bring an expert who has some ideas
- [00:05:40.470]about how that might play out to really think about this.
- [00:05:44.700]But I want to take that and put that aside
- [00:05:47.100]so we can talk about the basics of tenure first.
- [00:05:49.260]Yeah, and I think the big takeaway from this
- [00:05:51.900]is understand what tenure means at that institution
- [00:05:55.680]that you are at. Yeah.
- [00:05:57.420]What are the rights
- [00:05:59.370]that it gives you in your position?
- [00:06:02.610]They're not necessarily the same everywhere, right?
- [00:06:07.230]What you're granted at one institution under tenure
- [00:06:10.500]can be different than another institution.
- [00:06:12.017]And so you want to be aware of that.
- [00:06:16.530]You also wanna be kind of aware of,
- [00:06:19.200]so you've landed this tenure track job
- [00:06:21.600]and there are some processes, right, that happen.
- [00:06:27.660]Think about this, and we'll talk a little bit more
- [00:06:30.090]about timescale in a second.
- [00:06:31.740]Yeah. But you are
- [00:06:33.840]really thinking about this.
- [00:06:35.610]I was always told, think about it in terms of five years.
- [00:06:39.994]Yes, yeah. You really have five years
- [00:06:42.000]in order to get stuff done.
- [00:06:44.730]Because during that fifth year, toward the tail end
- [00:06:47.880]of that fifth year, depending on where you are,
- [00:06:50.280]that's when you're gonna start pulling
- [00:06:52.830]all your materials together and solidifying them.
- [00:06:57.660]And you're going to be thinking about external reviewers,
- [00:07:04.290]because you have to find people
- [00:07:05.670]from outside of your institution
- [00:07:08.580]in order to look over your materials,
- [00:07:11.490]compare that to the criteria for tenure at your institution
- [00:07:15.450]and weigh in their professional opinion.
- [00:07:19.680]At that same time, your materials are gonna go up
- [00:07:23.460]within your department, and your department will vote
- [00:07:26.160]on them, your school will vote on them
- [00:07:30.510]or your college will vote on them.
- [00:07:32.580]And then it goes up to the university
- [00:07:34.920]and ultimately to whoever's heading your institution.
- [00:07:39.030]And at that point, tenure is granted
- [00:07:42.840]or earned, or not, right?
- [00:07:45.840]And all the way along those steps,
- [00:07:48.150]you have opportunities to respond to feedback.
- [00:07:53.130]You should be getting feedback
- [00:07:54.270]at every single one of those rounds.
- [00:07:55.950]The only round you don't really see
- [00:07:57.300]are those external letters.
- [00:07:58.560]Yeah, although you can ask to see them.
- [00:08:02.130]You can ask to, yeah. It is your right.
- [00:08:03.630]But you have to do it in advance,
- [00:08:06.150]and it has certain repercussions.
- [00:08:10.950]That's something that we can talk about,
- [00:08:12.900]but that's a decision you have to make.
- [00:08:15.180]Most people that I've seen go through
- [00:08:17.430]do not ask to see them.
- [00:08:18.810]I've seen a few people that did ask,
- [00:08:20.850]and we didn't see many negative consequences.
- [00:08:24.750]The main negative consequence is somebody may refuse
- [00:08:27.630]to write a letter if it's visible.
- [00:08:29.280]That's your major concern. Right, right.
- [00:08:32.280]And we'll talk about the role
- [00:08:33.270]of networking in that. Yeah.
- [00:08:34.110]I know that's one of your favorite things.
- [00:08:37.617]Yeah. So that's kind of the width
- [00:08:42.660]of tenure as a process and how you want to be thinking
- [00:08:46.830]about that in terms of timescale.
- [00:08:49.200]Just as the rights that you get through tenure are different
- [00:08:53.670]from institution to institution, kind of the criteria.
- [00:08:57.250]Yeah. For how tenure is granted
- [00:09:00.780]or earned are also different.
- [00:09:03.060]So you wanna be aware of what are the criteria for tenure,
- [00:09:10.440]in the last few years, who has gone up for tenure?
- [00:09:14.340]What do their records look like based upon,
- [00:09:17.220]like, what the criteria are and how can you leverage
- [00:09:20.820]that data in order to begin crafting your narrative?
- [00:09:24.990]And what I want everybody to think about,
- [00:09:28.200]as Nick said that, because I think there were a few things
- [00:09:31.410]that were really important there that I want to highlight.
- [00:09:33.570]And one is that there's a huge gulf
- [00:09:36.000]between the lore of tenure and the actual facts
- [00:09:40.260]and the knowledge on the ground.
- [00:09:41.940]So you want to stick to
- [00:09:43.710]what has happened in the last few years.
- [00:09:45.930]A story from 22 years ago or 25 or 30 years ago
- [00:09:50.430]about how somebody had a problem may very well be true
- [00:09:54.300]and even traumatic to the people who went through it.
- [00:09:56.820]It doesn't mean you're going to face something
- [00:09:58.890]anywhere near that, because tenure demands tend
- [00:10:03.286]to be revised on a fairly regular basis,
- [00:10:05.850]about once between 5 to 10 years.
- [00:10:08.880]Sometimes it takes a little bit longer,
- [00:10:10.830]but you definitely can't project backwards.
- [00:10:14.160]And so when you get that information,
- [00:10:17.490]be very, very careful to stay away from the lore.
- [00:10:21.240]And when I say lore, I mean, again, things that are older,
- [00:10:24.360]stories that you're not sure are based in reality,
- [00:10:27.210]like alligators in the New York subways and all of that.
- [00:10:31.230]There are stories going around
- [00:10:32.820]that have really no connection to reality,
- [00:10:35.400]but people revel in telling them.
- [00:10:37.350]Because they get a lot of emotion going.
- [00:10:40.170]And also you want to separate what's happening
- [00:10:43.290]in other institutions from what's happening in yours,
- [00:10:46.050]because the rules might be very, very different.
- [00:10:49.260]And so the judgment has to be,
- [00:10:52.200]you always have to stick with the documents you have
- [00:10:57.240]and the processes that are in place.
- [00:10:59.460]They're your best bet.
- [00:11:02.160]Yes, and to pull on that thread of,
- [00:11:05.070]tenure can feel a bit like
- [00:11:07.230]you are Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games."
- [00:11:10.561]Yes. May the odds be ever
- [00:11:11.394]in your favor, right?
- [00:11:12.420]Like, it is a high stakes.
- [00:11:14.580]Yes, it is very high stakes.
- [00:11:16.020]It feels emotionally very high stakes.
- [00:11:20.670]However, it's important to remember
- [00:11:25.320]that you were hired for this particular job.
- [00:11:29.130]There is a level of investment at your department
- [00:11:33.630]and your college level. Yes.
- [00:11:35.340]In keeping you in that space,
- [00:11:37.620]'cause you'll hopefully had five years
- [00:11:40.620]of really developing a knowledge about your student base.
- [00:11:44.670]Your research will go well, your service will be adequate.
- [00:11:49.230]And trying to think about, you know,
- [00:11:52.950]if you don't earn tenure,
- [00:11:56.760]then typically there's a one-year contract extension.
- [00:11:59.940]Yeah. And then after that,
- [00:12:03.761]there sometimes isn't a search.
- [00:12:06.000]Yeah. But there sometimes
- [00:12:06.833]is a search, right? Yeah.
- [00:12:07.666]So like, there is a lot of investment there.
- [00:12:10.110]And so keep that in mind that the tenure process
- [00:12:14.670]is not meant to be a gotcha moment.
- [00:12:17.160]No, not at all.
- [00:12:18.260]And there should be some support
- [00:12:22.950]as you're going through that.
- [00:12:24.960]Support and regularly provided feedback,
- [00:12:27.780]whether it's at least once
- [00:12:29.850]in usually halfway through tenure, a three-year evaluation.
- [00:12:34.440]Some institutions like ours also have an annual review
- [00:12:37.350]that gives you feedback.
- [00:12:38.700]That feedback gives you a pointer where you are at,
- [00:12:42.030]what do you need to work on and something to respond to.
- [00:12:45.300]So again, these processes,
- [00:12:47.880]the more they are defined in the place you are,
- [00:12:50.370]the better you are because you can always show
- [00:12:53.280]how you've been responsive to the course direction
- [00:12:57.660]that you were given if you were given, right?
- [00:13:00.210]It could be fantastic,
- [00:13:01.380]but there's always something to work on.
- [00:13:03.720]Right, there's always something
- [00:13:06.180]to kind of work around and think about.
- [00:13:10.680]And sometimes, I'm gonna be real honest,
- [00:13:15.360]like, once a year of feedback isn't enough, right?
- [00:13:19.683]Yes. So once a year
- [00:13:20.990]of feedback is not enough.
- [00:13:23.400]The third year review, I wish there were more of it,
- [00:13:28.320]but that brings us to this idea of, you know,
- [00:13:35.370]structuring your first five years
- [00:13:37.890]as a tenure track professor around time
- [00:13:42.060]and activity that are promotable, right?
- [00:13:45.510]When you're thinking about promotion,
- [00:13:47.160]I'm thinking about that move into tenure
- [00:13:52.868]and setting up some of your own goals
- [00:13:55.980]for feedback loops that, oh, I met this goal,
- [00:13:59.040]or I didn't, is I find to be a really effective way
- [00:14:04.560]in absence of more frequent structural feedback,
- [00:14:09.870]to help yourself do that. Yeah.
- [00:14:12.540]And we did do a show about mentorship.
- [00:14:15.870]So please take a look at that one.
- [00:14:17.940]In the card somewhere.
- [00:14:19.350]And if your institution has formal mentoring,
- [00:14:24.450]lean on that for a much more regular feedback.
- [00:14:27.540]You can actually come with those goals
- [00:14:29.520]you set for yourselves.
- [00:14:30.720]Yep. And sit with your mentor
- [00:14:31.710]and say, here are the goals I set.
- [00:14:33.360]Is this reasonable?
- [00:14:34.620]Is this going to lead to a productive tenure process?
- [00:14:38.970]And get that feedback.
- [00:14:40.920]But also that's an accountability partner
- [00:14:43.980]that you can work with, that will give you some feedback
- [00:14:47.670]and give you some suggestions
- [00:14:48.750]about what you might want to think about,
- [00:14:50.670]what are good ideas or bad ideas.
- [00:14:52.290]And I love the fact that you talked about this
- [00:14:54.840]in really thinking about what is promotable activity, right?
- [00:15:01.620]Yes. And because
- [00:15:02.910]there are certain research activities
- [00:15:04.890]and networking activities that will yield you results
- [00:15:07.830]in 20 years or in 10 years or in 12 years.
- [00:15:10.890]But you have to think the first goal is getting tenure,
- [00:15:13.890]because having a great idea that will yield fruit
- [00:15:17.250]in 15 years is not helping you get tenure
- [00:15:19.650]unless you structure it in a very specific way.
- [00:15:22.260]So the promotable part of your activities,
- [00:15:24.990]it sounds very self-centered and egoistic.
- [00:15:27.390]But if you don't keep the job, that's gonna hurt,
- [00:15:30.900]everybody, including the institution, but definitely you.
- [00:15:33.660]So you've got to be focused on your path too.
- [00:15:38.010]Yes, tenure does really ask you to be of two minds
- [00:15:45.150]when you're thinking about long-term career planning,
- [00:15:47.490]the first being the micro,
- [00:15:50.250]what do I do in this next five years
- [00:15:52.290]in order to be able to go up and earn tenure.
- [00:15:55.710]And then the macro where you're thinking about
- [00:15:58.380]what are those seeds that I wanna plant early
- [00:16:00.750]that I might wanna come back to in, you know, year six.
- [00:16:04.205]Yes. Year 7, year 8,
- [00:16:05.038]year 9, year 10.
- [00:16:06.240]And one of the things that you want to be sure
- [00:16:10.950]that you're doing, and I can't stress this enough,
- [00:16:12.720]is understand your tenure process.
- [00:16:15.510]Understand what is considered promotable activity
- [00:16:20.280]and pay attention to your apportionment.
- [00:16:23.670]Yeah. There are, I don't know
- [00:16:26.040]how many times I've said it,
- [00:16:27.570]but there are only 24 hours in the day, right?
- [00:16:30.360]And you don't wanna be working all the time.
- [00:16:34.170]No. And so if you are working
- [00:16:36.660]a 40-hour week or a 48-hour week, or a 50-hour week,
- [00:16:41.850]like, how much of your time should be devoted
- [00:16:45.210]into all of these spaces?
- [00:16:46.800]And what are the promotable activities
- [00:16:50.340]you're doing within that time?
- [00:16:56.040]You always wanna be thinking through
- [00:16:59.280]within those criteria of what's promotable,
- [00:17:02.070]how are you gonna report that out?
- [00:17:04.341]Yes. We'll talk about
- [00:17:05.370]narrative next, but thinking about,
- [00:17:11.280]so you've identified those things that are promotable.
- [00:17:16.920]Yeah. Publications, research,
- [00:17:20.130]teaching, et cetera, et cetera.
- [00:17:22.770]The larger question now is,
- [00:17:27.090]part of that is a numbers game, right?
- [00:17:29.768]Yeah. Like, we love to say
- [00:17:30.601]that like, oh, it's quality.
- [00:17:32.460]Yeah. Not quantity.
- [00:17:34.200]It's both.
- [00:17:35.033]Yes. Let's be real honest.
- [00:17:37.170]Yeah. It's both.
- [00:17:39.000]And so thinking through those characteristics
- [00:17:44.820]of how much and balancing that
- [00:17:47.970]with the quality piece is important, right?
- [00:17:52.560]Thinking about what are the characteristics
- [00:18:00.750]of these pieces that you need to pay attention to
- [00:18:04.920]and thinking that through
- [00:18:06.270]is a top tier practitioner journal
- [00:18:10.530]where you are leveraging research.
- [00:18:12.960]How is that compared to, like,
- [00:18:15.150]a top tier research only journal,
- [00:18:17.940]if one of your key things as a researcher
- [00:18:20.880]is connecting with practitioners, et cetera, et cetera?
- [00:18:23.340]So thinking through what are the kinds of evidence
- [00:18:30.420]that people are going to be looking for
- [00:18:32.580]at your institution is really, really important.
- [00:18:35.460]And this, again, going back to lore,
- [00:18:38.490]you want to root that as much as possible
- [00:18:41.460]in the realities of what do the documents say.
- [00:18:45.510]Now, the documents often have a certain level of vagueness
- [00:18:49.110]to them that is potentially constructive ambiguity,
- [00:18:53.610]to borrow a phrase, because it allows
- [00:18:56.430]the different discipline to make decisions
- [00:18:59.100]about what's appropriate in their area.
- [00:19:01.080]So you want to further explore
- [00:19:03.360]and see what has been a successful talk to people.
- [00:19:07.530]But one of the best things to do, not in your first year,
- [00:19:10.860]most likely, but maybe in your second year,
- [00:19:13.110]is to look through some of these files,
- [00:19:15.510]because dean's offices usually have a stockpile
- [00:19:20.190]of the last few years of tenure.
- [00:19:23.220]So you can see what people have done in their files
- [00:19:26.280]and know who actually succeeded.
- [00:19:29.430]And that gives you very clear signals.
- [00:19:31.830]Yes. As to what was successful
- [00:19:34.110]and what wasn't successful, and what's considered enough.
- [00:19:37.590]Now sometimes people are hyper-productive
- [00:19:39.960]and that's not exactly the style you're going for.
- [00:19:42.450]Or they're in an area where, you know,
- [00:19:45.660]you publish a lot in proceedings, for example.
- [00:19:48.090]And that's a little bit easier, so they have more.
- [00:19:50.550]So you don't attach too much to the specifics of the case.
- [00:19:54.780]But if you see a few of those cases,
- [00:19:56.490]you can start also seeing what has been successful or not.
- [00:20:00.870]But again, different institutions
- [00:20:03.150]will have vastly different criteria.
- [00:20:05.460]For example, my colleagues in China have,
- [00:20:08.430]in their criteria very clearly, a ranking of journals.
- [00:20:11.850]And you have to have that many publications.
- [00:20:13.435]Yeah. In this ranking of journal,
- [00:20:15.420]and other places are a lot looser.
- [00:20:17.070]So we, for example, here at Nebraska,
- [00:20:20.640]we don't rank journals quite as strictly.
- [00:20:24.510]We do look at, you know, what venue did you use to publish?
- [00:20:29.220]And that plays a role, but it's not quite
- [00:20:32.760]as how many of them were in the top quartile
- [00:20:35.040]or the highest rank in the field or whatever it is.
- [00:20:37.800]And those are hard to define anyway,
- [00:20:39.390]because our fields are a little bit squishy
- [00:20:41.460]and they move between and all of that.
- [00:20:44.335]So it's hard, but you have to gain an understanding
- [00:20:48.870]of what is required, and make sure you meet that.
- [00:20:51.870]And you have a strategy, again, going back to time.
- [00:20:54.300]'Cause I think time is the biggest deal.
- [00:20:56.490]Yes, and I think one of the biggest things
- [00:20:59.010]that you will wanna do is create a five-year plan.
- [00:21:04.680]You want to, in that first semester
- [00:21:08.730]of being a tenure track assistant professor,
- [00:21:12.450]start preparing your dossier.
- [00:21:13.650]Like, we talk about, oh, in your fifth year,
- [00:21:15.030]you begin to pull stuff together,
- [00:21:16.590]or your third year review, you begin to pull stuff together.
- [00:21:19.080]Start with that end in mind and work backwards.
- [00:21:23.520]Like, once you have a sense of,
- [00:21:26.490]okay, this is what tenure is here.
- [00:21:31.950]Now five years from now, how do I get there?
- [00:21:35.520]Because year six will be pulling everything together
- [00:21:39.540]and sending it out.
- [00:21:41.070]How do you do that work?
- [00:21:44.850]So if you want that process to feel
- [00:21:49.500]a little less hunger gamesy, right, build up that plan.
- [00:21:54.330]Like, this is what your target is every single semester
- [00:21:58.200]for the next 10 semesters, particularly if you want, like,
- [00:22:03.240]we've talked about this, particularly if you want
- [00:22:05.490]a break during the summer, this is exhausting.
- [00:22:08.280]Yeah. Right?
- [00:22:10.590]Make sure you have that planned out,
- [00:22:14.370]and then there's always the creation of the plan
- [00:22:17.790]and then there's the living of the plan.
- [00:22:20.880]Like, planning is not the doing.
- [00:22:23.550]And so you wanna make sure
- [00:22:25.530]that you are doing that work, right?
- [00:22:32.130]That once you make that five-year plan,
- [00:22:35.040]that you are checking some of that stuff off.
- [00:22:38.520]That you're making progress every day,
- [00:22:41.070]every week on those things.
- [00:22:43.920]Yeah, and the every day, every week,
- [00:22:45.420]this is where I wanna pick up.
- [00:22:46.560]We talked a lot about time planning.
- [00:22:48.450]And in previous episodes, again, we'll put them down there.
- [00:22:51.360]But it is really, really important
- [00:22:54.630]to think about not pushing it off.
- [00:22:58.530]So we talked about procrastination,
- [00:23:00.240]we talked about perfectionism and we talked about anxiety.
- [00:23:03.360]And you have to figure that emotional
- [00:23:06.300]and disabling stuff early
- [00:23:10.080]and think about how do you work throughout,
- [00:23:14.640]think about time management.
- [00:23:15.810]But at the same time, because these emotions are real
- [00:23:18.630]and some of us are more anxious than others,
- [00:23:20.910]for example, when I got here many years ago
- [00:23:24.420]and people started and we had support groups,
- [00:23:26.580]I think I've mentioned this story,
- [00:23:27.990]people had support groups for tenure.
- [00:23:29.850]I found the support group entirely filling me with anxiety
- [00:23:34.770]and not necessarily moving me to action.
- [00:23:37.530]There was a lot of talking, but not a lot of concrete steps,
- [00:23:40.560]this is what you can do.
- [00:23:41.700]And I thought to myself, you know,
- [00:23:43.290]the best thing that I can do with my time
- [00:23:44.940]is actually use that time instead of sitting
- [00:23:47.190]and meeting on a regular basis is just get the work done.
- [00:23:51.540]And that was productive to a degree
- [00:23:54.420]to the situation at the time.
- [00:23:55.980]This is not something I would recommend.
- [00:23:57.690]These groups are there to support you,
- [00:23:59.490]but at the same time,
- [00:24:00.960]you do have to think about these emotional responses.
- [00:24:03.840]And what is the network of support that you have around you,
- [00:24:07.830]that can help you through that process.
- [00:24:10.170]Whether it's an accountability partner
- [00:24:12.720]that helps you work through,
- [00:24:13.980]is it somebody that you sit with, again,
- [00:24:18.102]my accountability partner very for a very long time
- [00:24:20.370]was my dear spouse, Sarah,
- [00:24:22.140]who would sit with me once a semester
- [00:24:24.750]and we would kind of, I would just say,
- [00:24:26.700]here's everything I'm doing, it's too much.
- [00:24:29.310]Let's think together.
- [00:24:30.450]And really, she just listened to me and ate the breakfast.
- [00:24:34.110]But once in a while she would say something
- [00:24:35.970]and I'd listen to her very often,
- [00:24:37.980]because she can see it from the outside in the way
- [00:24:40.890]that I'm in, and one of the mistakes I made early
- [00:24:44.850]that I tried to correct was investing in the long-term
- [00:24:48.090]while not taking enough care of the short-term.
- [00:24:50.550]So that's a mistake I made.
- [00:24:51.720]And I was able to debrief that.
- [00:24:54.480]I also had internal mentors.
- [00:24:56.400]So it's not without that,
- [00:24:57.720]but you have to have also these external people therapy,
- [00:25:01.260]especially if you're starting to feel that anxiety,
- [00:25:04.770]having a therapist that can work with you.
- [00:25:06.630]I was really lucky.
- [00:25:10.325]And that I had a therapist that was also an academic,
- [00:25:14.040]and so he knew the system.
- [00:25:15.750]So he was able to also help me work through
- [00:25:18.210]some of that emotion, because he's gone through it.
- [00:25:20.690]He was actually department chair and other things.
- [00:25:23.820]But find your network around you
- [00:25:26.610]that can support that emotional piece,
- [00:25:28.410]because we can prepare you and people can support you
- [00:25:31.950]throughout the active steps,
- [00:25:34.080]but the emotions are still there, they're not gone.
- [00:25:36.570]Oh yeah, and one of the ways,
- [00:25:39.870]I mean, I sound like a broken record at this point.
- [00:25:42.330]Know your process, right? Yes.
- [00:25:44.640]Part of what creates that anxiety,
- [00:25:46.350]part of what creates that sense of, oh my gosh,
- [00:25:48.690]what is going on, is not knowing the process.
- [00:25:51.750]Yes. And so once you know
- [00:25:55.230]kind of what is expected of you in order to earn tenure
- [00:25:59.880]and once you can break that down into,
- [00:26:03.120]I think, actionable items, and this is I think
- [00:26:06.570]where that five-year plan is really important.
- [00:26:08.550]Absolutely. Because if you need
- [00:26:10.800]two publications a year, that's 10 publications.
- [00:26:15.300]That's a very different checkbox.
- [00:26:18.060]10 publications check versus I need to work on 600 words
- [00:26:23.310]for my literature review this week.
- [00:26:25.350]Like, that's a really different.
- [00:26:27.300]Timescale. Timescale.
- [00:26:28.800]That's also a different actionable item.
- [00:26:31.860]And I think when I know for myself,
- [00:26:35.850]when I'm perseverating and I'm feeling some anxiety
- [00:26:39.810]because of a problem I'm facing, breaking it down
- [00:26:42.390]into what can I actually do
- [00:26:45.630]that will help me relieve this anxiety that I'm feeling.
- [00:26:50.790]Yeah. Is super helpful.
- [00:26:52.350]But part of it is really thinking through
- [00:26:55.440]that actionable item.
- [00:27:00.201]So also as you're doing this, if something happens,
- [00:27:04.500]we alluded to this earlier, if something happens,
- [00:27:07.350]you have a medical emergency, you have a family emergency,
- [00:27:10.140]you have something going on, ask for an extension.
- [00:27:13.860]This is not the time to be like,
- [00:27:18.000]oh, they're gonna see this as weakness.
- [00:27:19.107]No. No, they're gonna see
- [00:27:19.950]you as human. Yeah.
- [00:27:22.140]They're gonna see you as human.
- [00:27:23.220]And in most systems, it is actually rooted
- [00:27:26.940]in their process, the rules for the process.
- [00:27:30.600]We've had faculty members who had a child during that period
- [00:27:34.740]and said, you know, this is too much.
- [00:27:36.750]Illness, pandemic, we did that
- [00:27:39.120]for almost anybody that asked.
- [00:27:42.347]And there are serious circumstances in our lives.
- [00:27:45.810]And the idea is, especially if it's about something
- [00:27:49.020]that's connected to health in any way, shape or form,
- [00:27:52.350]having extra stress on you
- [00:27:53.910]is not gonna help you heal faster.
- [00:27:56.040]So the idea is we want to take that off of you,
- [00:27:58.800]give you that space, and then make sure
- [00:28:00.720]that you can successful. Yes.
- [00:28:02.520]This is not the time to be like, I can do it all.
- [00:28:06.000]Stop, stop, why?
- [00:28:09.060]Why would you even add that additional pressure?
- [00:28:10.883]Yeah. Onto yourself
- [00:28:12.690]when there are pressure release levers, right?
- [00:28:17.171]That you can leverage.
- [00:28:19.620]So that's not the time to be super person.
- [00:28:23.370]Yes. Don't do it.
- [00:28:24.960]I beg of you.
- [00:28:26.850]If you had to do your tenure process all over,
- [00:28:28.500]if you had to start as a new assistant professor.
- [00:28:31.860]Yeah. Breathe.
- [00:28:33.163](Guy laughs)
- [00:28:34.710]What would you do differently?
- [00:28:35.760]Just out of curiosity.
- [00:28:45.300]But it's a little bit unfair.
- [00:28:47.430]I think being considerably more strategic
- [00:28:52.770]especially about writing.
- [00:28:54.690]I mean, this was my biggest challenge,
- [00:28:57.840]was getting the stuff written.
- [00:28:59.850]Collecting data, doing the research I loved, I did.
- [00:29:03.540]I had more data than I could actually get to
- [00:29:09.240]at that early stage, but the writing,
- [00:29:13.050]I mean, that's where paralysis and all of that came in.
- [00:29:16.590]And having a strategy and having a clear vision
- [00:29:19.590]of what the outlets are, how do you get there?
- [00:29:21.660]How much do you need to write?
- [00:29:22.920]And then that time management for writing.
- [00:29:27.030]Well, there was a lot of procrastination
- [00:29:29.160]over my first few years.
- [00:29:31.200]I was obviously successful enough,
- [00:29:33.750]but knowing what I know now,
- [00:29:35.490]but it's hard for me to know
- [00:29:38.280]what I know now as an assistant.
- [00:29:39.930]I mean, this is why we're talking to you.
- [00:29:41.520]We want to give you some of that
- [00:29:43.740]so you have some tools to do it better
- [00:29:47.160]and not to be in that position
- [00:29:49.380]where nobody's telling you how this can be successful.
- [00:29:52.440]We want you to be successful, your institution does too.
- [00:29:55.320]It just doesn't always put all the resources
- [00:29:57.805]where they need to go to support you in that way
- [00:30:00.660]to give you the tools.
- [00:30:01.493]And sometimes, they simply don't know
- [00:30:03.540]what works in your discipline.
- [00:30:05.160]Because you might be like, many people in our program
- [00:30:08.670]are one or two people in a program.
- [00:30:11.160]And if you have two fairly young academics,
- [00:30:14.640]you just don't have that depth of knowledge of,
- [00:30:18.030]you know, I've been doing this for 25 years
- [00:30:20.220]and here are some things you can do quickly
- [00:30:22.350]to get some publications out.
- [00:30:24.120]And here's a way to collect data
- [00:30:26.250]that can reach market really, really effectively
- [00:30:28.620]while you're working on bigger
- [00:30:30.030]and deeper and more quality pieces.
- [00:30:32.370]Because there is that exchange.
- [00:30:33.840]You can do some things really fast.
- [00:30:35.760]And some things take longer time,
- [00:30:37.980]and you should be doing both at the same time.
- [00:30:40.260]Yes. And that's where.
- [00:30:41.430]Thinking about
- [00:30:42.263]publication pipeline Yeah, yes.
- [00:30:43.470]Card somewhere.
- [00:30:45.325]So all of our shows really pour into this thing.
- [00:30:48.322]They're coming together, they're coming together.
- [00:30:49.770]We've got some cohesion.
- [00:30:51.240]Yes, yeah. You know?
- [00:30:53.250]I wish I would've pulled on my dissertation more.
- [00:30:56.520]I wish I would have. Yeah, true to the-
- [00:31:00.159]I, as a beginning assistant professor,
- [00:31:03.420]allowed myself to get pulled
- [00:31:04.350]into a lot of other projects right away.
- [00:31:06.540]Yeah.
- [00:31:10.410]I took a couple of easy wins,
- [00:31:12.330]quote, unquote. Yeah.
- [00:31:13.320]With my dissertation,
- [00:31:14.550]but I wish I would've done more of that.
- [00:31:20.400]Obviously was successful enough,
- [00:31:22.110]and that enough is a big, it's a big thing.
- [00:31:24.390]Yes. Right?
- [00:31:25.223]Like, enough, I've done enough to earn tenure,
- [00:31:30.810]but I wish that I would've been more strategic in that way.
- [00:31:34.410]Sorry, Karen Wohlwend,
- [00:31:36.660]you mentored me so well and I failed you.
- [00:31:41.946]Did you though? I mean, I did enough,
- [00:31:45.120]but I was not as strategic as she would have liked me to be.
- [00:31:48.480]And so that is not a reflection on her mentorship ability.
- [00:31:52.380]It's a reflection on my general
- [00:31:56.940]levels of excitement. Yes.
- [00:31:58.710]So learn from that.
- [00:32:01.590]Also in terms of things to help you with,
- [00:32:05.340]thinking about that five-year plan
- [00:32:06.780]and what it could look like,
- [00:32:09.000]we've got a new blog at notthatkindofdoctor.net.
- [00:32:13.230]Yes. Did I get that right?
- [00:32:14.193]Yes. 'Cause it's new to me.
- [00:32:15.540]Great, written out. Written out,
- [00:32:17.070]so not that kind of doctor.
- [00:32:18.920]Notthatkindofdoctor.net, link in the description,
- [00:32:22.410]where I've pulled together kind of a mini workbook
- [00:32:25.530]for you on crafting your five-year plan.
- [00:32:30.240]Ooh, I need to do that.
- [00:32:31.620]When you're moving into tenure,
- [00:32:33.060]you're not moving into tenure.
- [00:32:34.230]No. No, we're trying
- [00:32:35.670]to get retired, Guy. Not anytime soon, but good.
- [00:32:39.390]I mean, look, my financial advisor keeps telling me
- [00:32:41.910]it's not anytime soon and I keep going, but how soon?
- [00:32:45.397](both laugh)
- [00:32:46.740]I love my job. We will not do
- [00:32:48.390]an episode on retirement planning, I promise.
- [00:32:52.590]I promise, no retirement planning.
- [00:32:57.375]Did not discuss.
- [00:32:58.519]There was no production meeting around that.
- [00:33:00.090]So there might be, I'm just saying,
- [00:33:02.370]because some of the things that I've learned.
- [00:33:04.560]Yes. I feel would be good.
- [00:33:06.960]So go to the blog, it's there, mini workbook,
- [00:33:11.760]to get at some of the more in depth stuff
- [00:33:13.920]that we've been talking about here
- [00:33:15.630]and give you some action items
- [00:33:17.850]as you're sitting down and doing that work.
- [00:33:20.880]So I think the last thing
- [00:33:22.860]that we probably wanna talk about today
- [00:33:24.300]is how you talk about your career.
- [00:33:27.540]How you talk about your activity,
- [00:33:30.802]your promotable activity and package them into a narrative.
- [00:33:37.380]Yeah, and for me, I mean,
- [00:33:39.270]we talked about my personal history
- [00:33:41.880]and I've talked about this.
- [00:33:43.350]Before, this was one of my biggest struggles,
- [00:33:46.200]is to create a narrative that says this is who I am
- [00:33:53.220]and this is how it all fits together.
- [00:33:56.370]So the intentionality needs to be even earlier
- [00:34:01.200]in that five-year plan.
- [00:34:02.970]How do all of these elements come together?
- [00:34:05.670]Because if it looks like you're here and here and here,
- [00:34:09.420]it gets harder to tell that story.
- [00:34:11.760]That being said, obviously again, going back,
- [00:34:14.730]I did just enough to make it through,
- [00:34:17.910]but there were some comments about the fact
- [00:34:20.670]that my work seems to be somewhat decentralized
- [00:34:25.050]and it was harder for people to see
- [00:34:28.410]how all of these trends connect.
- [00:34:30.060]So if you are a little bit wider, which is perfectly fine,
- [00:34:33.600]you still need to find that narrative.
- [00:34:35.970]Yeah, well, and you don't necessarily need
- [00:34:39.960]to find that narrative.
- [00:34:42.346]Yeah How are you living
- [00:34:43.179]those connections, right?
- [00:34:44.190]Like, that was a similar piece of feedback
- [00:34:46.560]that I received early in my process was,
- [00:34:50.100]oh, it looks like you're doing this and you're doing this
- [00:34:51.660]and you're doing this, and how are they connecting?
- [00:34:56.400]And so then by the time I presented things for tenure,
- [00:35:00.690]I was really trying to think through
- [00:35:03.150]and about why am I doing these projects?
- [00:35:07.650]How do they, like, link up?
- [00:35:09.300]It's not because, ooh, shiny.
- [00:35:11.580]Yeah. Oh, glitter.
- [00:35:16.860]They contribute to this larger notion
- [00:35:19.920]of what I want my work to be about.
- [00:35:22.620]And part of crafting that narrative
- [00:35:25.530]was getting whoever was reading my documents
- [00:35:31.442]to care about the work that I was trying to do in the world
- [00:35:34.500]through these various projects as much as I did
- [00:35:37.980]and building up those connections.
- [00:35:40.080]It wasn't just because I was flitting
- [00:35:43.560]from activity to activity to activity,
- [00:35:45.840]it was because I was really invested in a larger goal.
- [00:35:49.980]And let me pull that all together for you, right?
- [00:35:54.480]You want there to be some level of cohesion
- [00:36:00.090]to the work that you do.
- [00:36:01.800]And sometimes that's not comprehensible.
- [00:36:08.880]Yes. From the outside, right?
- [00:36:10.320]It can look like. Very much so, yeah.
- [00:36:12.690]Oh, you're doing everything
- [00:36:13.860]and you're here and you're there.
- [00:36:15.150]And no, let me tell you,
- [00:36:17.490]let me tell you why this is happening.
- [00:36:18.900]And that's where that narrative
- [00:36:20.250]becomes really, really helpful.
- [00:36:24.360]I use the word narrative specifically here
- [00:36:27.390]because you're not just reporting out, right?
- [00:36:29.850]You're really building the story
- [00:36:33.060]of why you do the work that you're doing
- [00:36:35.430]and how that's been functioning, right?
- [00:36:40.359]And remembering that as part of that narrative,
- [00:36:44.250]you're also responsible for external reviewers.
- [00:36:49.440]Oftentimes in the tenure process,
- [00:36:52.470]your department or your chair is gonna choose a couple,
- [00:36:54.600]but you can also submit some names.
- [00:36:58.080]And it's often easier
- [00:37:00.030]if you know whose names you're submitting.
- [00:37:02.430]Yes. So this is where
- [00:37:04.260]one of a Guy's favorite things comes in,
- [00:37:06.990]that he's really, really good at, the networking.
- [00:37:10.050]Yes, but just to be clear,
- [00:37:13.710]this is something I've learned to do over time.
- [00:37:15.900]I wasn't very good at it very early on.
- [00:37:19.740]I did not feel very confident.
- [00:37:21.960]The cultural differences always make it really,
- [00:37:24.990]really hard to enter spaces.
- [00:37:27.120]This is where your mentors and people
- [00:37:29.850]that you're working with can expand your networking.
- [00:37:33.030]So people think about networking often in, like,
- [00:37:39.060]these business kind of ideas around networking
- [00:37:43.020]where you walk into a room,
- [00:37:44.130]where you don't know anybody and you start conversations.
- [00:37:46.560]And I don't really believe,
- [00:37:48.210]I mean, that can work sometimes.
- [00:37:50.130]And that's what conferences can serve you.
- [00:37:52.560]But really, it starts with personal relationship
- [00:37:55.110]with specific people.
- [00:37:56.250]And for that, just going to conferences
- [00:38:00.990]and then finding the people that are leading in your field
- [00:38:03.870]or are emerging in your field
- [00:38:05.790]and find opportunities to have conversations,
- [00:38:08.250]whether it's right after they present,
- [00:38:10.920]first of all, hear them, get to their demeanor,
- [00:38:13.890]then talk to them after,
- [00:38:15.450]you get a sense of the people after that.
- [00:38:18.420]Because some people are leading in your field
- [00:38:20.550]and you don't want them to look at your file,
- [00:38:22.590]because they're that kind of people
- [00:38:25.020]who are just going to be not so positive.
- [00:38:29.310]So you want to know how they are.
- [00:38:31.090]Well, and keep in mind that normally
- [00:38:32.700]it's at similar institutions, right?
- [00:38:34.793]Yes, yeah Like, when you're
- [00:38:35.626]sending out these external reviewers,
- [00:38:36.600]it's at similar institutions.
- [00:38:39.731]So if you're at, you know, a tier two.
- [00:38:43.140]Yeah. Research institution,
- [00:38:44.940]you wanna make sure that whoever you send
- [00:38:47.460]that external letter to or that request
- [00:38:49.950]for an external letter is going to understand
- [00:38:51.810]what that means.
- [00:38:53.160]Yeah. And be willing
- [00:38:55.650]to let go of what the criteria are at their institution.
- [00:39:02.700]Because that translation can sometimes be problematic.
- [00:39:05.700]Yeah. And results
- [00:39:06.533]in some awkward lettering, which is less about
- [00:39:10.620]the person the letter's being written about
- [00:39:12.090]and more about that reviewer's inability to, like.
- [00:39:15.990]To understand the task.
- [00:39:17.310]Yes, like, know your audience.
- [00:39:20.190]Yes. Well, this wouldn't work
- [00:39:21.390]at my institution, not at your institution.
- [00:39:23.280]That was never the question, yeah.
- [00:39:24.990]Like, focus, focus. Yeah.
- [00:39:28.693](Guy chuckles)
- [00:39:30.600]Yes. That was not the ask.
- [00:39:32.250]And as department chair, that was always part
- [00:39:36.720]of my conversation with people
- [00:39:38.580]who were going up for tenure.
- [00:39:40.560]It's like, choose people and choose wisely
- [00:39:43.410]and choose people that are at similar institutions.
- [00:39:46.500]So they will make that judgment.
- [00:39:48.330]Because there are some institutions
- [00:39:50.040]where people will always try to judge it
- [00:39:53.040]or will write something dismissive.
- [00:39:54.720]Like, in our institution, it wouldn't be okay,
- [00:39:57.240]but in yours, I guess it's fine.
- [00:39:59.310]Oh, yeah. That's not
- [00:40:00.143]a sentence you want.
- [00:40:01.320]I mean, yeah, there is some past this,
- [00:40:03.687]and this is where, like, the people who love the fact
- [00:40:07.800]that tenure feels like "The Hunger Games."
- [00:40:09.810]Yeah. Avoid those people.
- [00:40:11.580]Yes, exactly. Avoid them.
- [00:40:13.530]Just don't. Not your friends.
- [00:40:17.880]And that goes back to networking.
- [00:40:20.010]You learn that only through interacting with people.
- [00:40:23.490]This is not something you will learn
- [00:40:25.680]from reading their papers.
- [00:40:27.150]Their papers will give you zero clues
- [00:40:28.770]about how they will be in public.
- [00:40:31.440]So again, the most obvious places are conferences,
- [00:40:36.540]but there are service opportunities,
- [00:40:40.230]especially in larger states where there are multiple,
- [00:40:42.570]are one or are two institutions.
- [00:40:45.150]And so you get to interact with them
- [00:40:47.430]in informal ways or formal ways, but around other topics,
- [00:40:52.110]you get a sense of who they are, and that can be helpful.
- [00:40:57.210]There is that thing that in most tenure processes,
- [00:41:01.290]and this is the flip side of the networking,
- [00:41:03.510]if you actually work together,
- [00:41:06.480]they will not ask for those letters.
- [00:41:09.030]So there's a restriction if you work together
- [00:41:11.910]on a piece of writing or on research or something like that,
- [00:41:15.480]then they cannot be the people
- [00:41:18.060]who write your external letters.
- [00:41:19.230]Yes, I have professional colleague friends
- [00:41:24.240]who they introduced themselves to me as like,
- [00:41:28.050]I'm your tenure friend,
- [00:41:29.250]we are never gonna work on a project together,
- [00:41:31.260]because you're gonna put me on your list.
- [00:41:33.750]Yes, yeah. For an external letter.
- [00:41:36.600]That's lovely
- [00:41:37.735]that somebody said that. And I appreciated that.
- [00:41:38.610]Yes.
- [00:41:39.870]I appreciated that a lot. Yeah.
- [00:41:41.100]Like, just the fact that very clear,
- [00:41:43.650]like, you are gonna be delightfully supportive
- [00:41:46.350]and this is how this is functioning.
- [00:41:48.720]I really, really enjoyed that.
- [00:41:50.760]You want to be, as you're thinking about all these things,
- [00:41:54.420]like pulling these strands of your research,
- [00:41:56.820]your teaching and your service together,
- [00:41:59.100]to be really clear in that narrative construction.
- [00:42:04.800]Yeah. But you also wanna be
- [00:42:08.760]aware of your time, right? Yeah.
- [00:42:10.770]Like, again, we keep coming back to time
- [00:42:14.100]and this idea that you need to do enough.
- [00:42:17.820]You don't necessarily need to do everything, right?
- [00:42:24.210]So as you're thinking about that everything,
- [00:42:32.220]what would you do in order to, like,
- [00:42:35.160]make sure you're able to balance that?
- [00:42:36.137]'Cause you also wanna have a life, right?
- [00:42:38.730]Like, this should not be five years
- [00:42:44.501]of horrible existence. Yes, indentured servitude.
- [00:42:47.340]Yes. Yes.
- [00:42:48.630]So it is about time, and we've talked about this before,
- [00:42:53.400]it is about saying no to some things.
- [00:42:55.860]So if you think about that narrative and that five-year plan
- [00:42:58.560]and people come to you excited about it
- [00:43:00.480]with a specific project saying,
- [00:43:03.090]thinking about it and don't say yes or no immediately,
- [00:43:07.320]say, I need to think about it, go think about it.
- [00:43:09.900]Think about your goals and your plans.
- [00:43:12.090]How does it fit in there?
- [00:43:13.757]And if it doesn't, it probably needs to be no, rarely,
- [00:43:17.460]once in a while, there's an opportunity of a lifetime
- [00:43:19.800]and you're gonna say yes, and that'll be great.
- [00:43:22.230]But more often than not, if it doesn't fit within your plan,
- [00:43:26.190]it's probably extra work that's gonna take time
- [00:43:28.950]from you reaching your goals.
- [00:43:31.380]And again, goes back to time.
- [00:43:33.180]If you want to have a life or just to feel successful
- [00:43:36.630]and not constantly out of breath, you have to think about
- [00:43:40.410]that aspect of things and constantly,
- [00:43:42.960]because when you come to an institution,
- [00:43:45.150]everybody's excited about you.
- [00:43:46.440]This is why they chose you. Oh, yeah.
- [00:43:47.670]So they're going to try to rope you in
- [00:43:49.890]to as many things as possible thinking they're helping you.
- [00:43:52.890]And they might be if it's within your plan.
- [00:43:56.010]If it's in your purview, right?
- [00:43:58.530]But it might not. It might not be.
- [00:44:01.380]But sometimes it's really good intentions.
- [00:44:03.540]Yeah. Right?
- [00:44:04.373]Most of the time, beware the hallway asks.
- [00:44:09.690]Beware those, like, really quick service asks
- [00:44:14.640]that often happen in a hallway where it's,
- [00:44:18.307]"Oh, could you do this?"
- [00:44:20.340]Send me an email. Yes.
- [00:44:22.110]Let me think that through.
- [00:44:23.460]Create a buffer.
- [00:44:24.420]Yes, I'll create a buffer
- [00:44:26.460]so that it's not kind of this immediate response,
- [00:44:31.470]and then you're locked into this thing
- [00:44:33.720]that's been asked of you without, you know,
- [00:44:36.150]clear understanding of, like, what does it mean?
- [00:44:38.160]What is going on there?
- [00:44:42.060]When you're thinking about that being really thoughtful
- [00:44:46.050]about your time and how you're organizing your time,
- [00:44:48.960]it helps you think through how the activities
- [00:44:52.260]that you're engaged in add up to that narrative, right?
- [00:44:57.180]While also making space for, I don't know, a life, hobbies?
- [00:45:03.900]Yeah, and I have an example, for example.
- [00:45:06.930]An example for example? An example for example,
- [00:45:09.450]for power example, I don't know.
- [00:45:13.071]Anyway, when you get requests for journal reviews
- [00:45:19.470]or even conference reviews,
- [00:45:21.720]one of the things you have to think about,
- [00:45:23.250]you can do only a certain number a year,
- [00:45:25.590]sit with your mentor and think about
- [00:45:27.000]how many you can do a year, because it takes time.
- [00:45:29.400]And time, you've got limited of.
- [00:45:31.230]So yes, it's fantastic and you're providing service,
- [00:45:33.960]but you want to limit that and make that reasonable.
- [00:45:36.210]You will get better over time and you can do more.
- [00:45:38.220]But at the beginning, it's okay to do none
- [00:45:40.290]or to do very few.
- [00:45:41.670]The only ones you wanna do are ones that are exactly
- [00:45:44.850]in the middle of your research
- [00:45:46.050]or where your research is going,
- [00:45:47.370]because that's going to actually support you.
- [00:45:49.590]Because we ran out of time to read,
- [00:45:52.290]here's a task where you must read,
- [00:45:54.240]somebody did a decent review asking for your feedback.
- [00:45:58.752]We hope, right? We hope.
- [00:45:59.970]Or sometimes it's not very good, but A,
- [00:46:02.550]it'll be easier because it's in the middle.
- [00:46:04.380]And the second thing is you will learn something
- [00:46:07.290]in the process and it'll support you.
- [00:46:09.000]And if it's great, if it's bad writing,
- [00:46:11.010]you'll see what not to do.
- [00:46:12.540]And if it's good writing,
- [00:46:13.650]you'll learn something about writing.
- [00:46:15.450]So it's all fantastic if they ask you to do.
- [00:46:19.500]I just got a review for something around mental health
- [00:46:22.800]for students and I'm going,
- [00:46:25.957]"Well, I know something about it, but am I the best person
- [00:46:29.400]to review that and do I have time for one more manuscript?"
- [00:46:32.580]And the answer was, I would love to help you, but no.
- [00:46:35.370]No, no.
- [00:46:36.360]And so that's something to think about,
- [00:46:39.000]because in the beginning, sometimes you're just excited
- [00:46:40.890]that somebody's asking for your opinion.
- [00:46:43.200]Right, right. It feels really good.
- [00:46:45.930]But kind of the boundaries I've put around that
- [00:46:47.850]is if I can't get that review done in the next two weeks.
- [00:46:51.000]Yes, then they know. I shouldn't do it.
- [00:46:52.320]Yeah. Which, you know,
- [00:46:55.050]has worked handily sometimes, most of the time.
- [00:46:58.410]Yeah. About 80% of the time,
- [00:47:00.840]it works. All right.
- [00:47:01.800]So!
- [00:47:03.450]We've talked through the tenure.
- [00:47:05.619]A lot, a lot
- [00:47:06.690]Oh gosh. This is a long show.
- [00:47:09.270]I feel a little anxious myself.
- [00:47:11.389](Guy chuckles)
- [00:47:12.780]No, I feel good that it's behind me.
- [00:47:14.460]So this is really good, it's totally behind me, I'm good.
- [00:47:19.110]So in this episode,
- [00:47:20.670]we've tried to kind of lay bare some of the processes
- [00:47:23.580]that you might encounter if you are one of the lucky folks
- [00:47:27.390]to have landed a tenure track job at your institution,
- [00:47:31.140]thinking about how to understand those processes
- [00:47:35.340]as well as some ways to construct that narrative.
- [00:47:38.250]Yeah. I feel like
- [00:47:39.083]we did an okay job.
- [00:47:40.030]Yeah, and there's more to come.
- [00:47:41.640]There's more to come.
- [00:47:42.870]Like, the flip side of what happens when you're like,
- [00:47:45.930]eh, tenure track, not for me.
- [00:47:48.570]Maybe not, yeah. Or something else,
- [00:47:50.370]not for me, so coming soon, it's exciting.
- [00:47:53.730]So thanks for tuning in, subscribe if you haven't,
- [00:48:00.180]and we'll see you in the next one.
- [00:48:02.568](bright upbeat music)
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