flaneuse.org

There is so much I want to do — and not only not enough time in the day, but no possibility of doing it all. Someday I want to write a novel, stage a gallery show of my photography, go to cooking school in Tuscany, travel and write through Afghanistan, Iran, and the Middle East (yeah, I know. Odd choice).

But those aren’t the things I’m worrying about. The last couple of days have been laced with conversations about tenure — getting it, having the right kind of publications more than just publishing, having the freedom to do what I want. At our school, we go up on the first day of our fifth year, and this is the second term of my second year. I should feel like I have all the time in the world to build a publication history, and yet I worry about how long things take to work through the pipeline and if I have too many book chapters as opposed to peer-reviewed journal articles. These seem like crazy things to worry about — tenure is about more than doing your job well, I think it’s about going above and beyond your job to make a name for yourself in the wider academic world. Can everybody do this? Is it realistic to expect them to?

My school is no worse than many others, and is probably much fairer — given our focus on teaching as well as research, and the supports of my colleagues in my department. I have no grudge to grind in particular — just a struggle with making sense of the larger question of tenure in light of the day to day activities of my life. How do you do it all, keeping your eye on the ball in the daily game and your mind on the prize at the end of a years-long race?

I stupidly thought that when I graduated, life would get easier when what it got was different, and more complicated. But it’s the life I have, and the one I love, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything — but I also wouldn’t mind understanding it better.

Make sense? I wonder.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 12:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.