Naming Your Own Terms

This is just a short post that begins with two anecdotes from this semester:

1. Person asks me to review a book that I'm actually interesting in reading. They say "we need it in six weeks." I say, "Sounds interesting but I have a number of projects that I've already committed to over the next several months. I could do it, but only if you can wait until August." They respond, "Perfect! Where shall we send it?"

2. Person contacts me asking me to blurb a book. I respond about commitments, say "Not available till July." Response: July will be great; do you want it in hard copy or pdf?

Something that both of these have in common: they both respond to my offer to get back to them about four times longer than they want... within 15 minutes.

Lesson from midcareer: When you are doing work for free, you have a lot of power to set the conditions. You can say no, but if you want to say yes, you can say yes on your own terms.

Slink off, or face the music?

Call this a lesson of midcareer. It could apply to any stage of my career, but it seems to have gotten worse, not better, as I advance and feel both flattered and obligated to say yes to the increasing number of invitations to do stuff.


Every semester, I try to start with a fairly clean e-mail inbox. For me, this means fewer than 100 messages in the active queue. But somehow, by a month in, I'm in over my head. And somewhere around week 6, I start setting the important stuff aside with the following thought:

"This is important. It demands my attention. But I'm being pulled in three directions at once, so I can't give it the attention it warrants. So I'll set it aside and answer it tonight. Or tomorrow. Or once I'm through this stack of exams."

And of course, by the time we get to tonight, or tomorrow, or when the stack of exams is finished, there have been 200-300 more e-mails, and 3 more urgent tasks, and the thing that demanded more attention than I could give it has gotten no attention at all. And I've completely forgotten about it.

That's right: the more important something is, the less likely it is ever to get answered.

And then, the end of semester comes, and I start to dig my way out. And I discover these things, and I realize that the person on the other end has no idea what has been going on this semester; they only know that I appear to have rudely blown them off. And then I have to decide whether to slink off or face up to them and ask whether they still are interested, even though it's 6-10 weeks later.

I've done this three times in the past week. Here are the results:

1. The person in question contacted me after I'd decided that the best thing to do was assume they'd given up on me, and hope that they forget all about me so the word doesn't get around. They asked if I was still interested for submitting an abstract. And my answer was an enthusiastic YES! and an abstract that I submitted within 48 hours lest I lose track of it again. All is, apparently, well.

2. Emboldened by the forgiveness of one set of people, I reached out to another who had patiently e-mailed me twice with no response. I did this as I was getting to the bottom of my inbox: Profuse apologies; It sounds like an interesting project, but I couldn't do it on the specified deadline. Would they be interested in later? Response came right back: No thanks, and not happy with me.  gulp.

3. And then I found one even more buried, where I had actually begun a correspondence, then the whole thing had lapsed... on March 1.  Jesus. I'm a hot mess. I just tried the approach I tried with #2: profuse apologies, yes I'm interested, yes I could make the deadline, here's what I'd do.

We'll see how this goes.

External Review: The Gatekeeper vs. the Advocate

I've just finished my first external review for a tenure case. I'm pretty sure that saying that doesn't violate any sort of confidentiality, but I won't go any further to name institution, field, department, or anything, much less what the content of that review was.

So, if I'm determined not to say anything, then why the Vagueblogging? (Yes, I just made that up. Yes, it's horrible.) Well, it's because it got me thinking of what our roles as midcareer and senior faculty are.

There are lots of times that I've been part of an anonymous review process: article manuscript reviews are the most frequent, but there have also been book reviews, and now a tenure case. We've probably all had the experience of getting back a review that convinced us that the person writing it saw it as their job to shred us to bits. Rationally, I don't think that's ever the case. No one, in their heart, is Darth Vader. Ideally, we'd all like to think we come to every review a blank slate. But I've found that there is always one of two voices whispering in my ear.

One of these, I call The Gatekeeper. This entity says that it's my job as a reviewer to make sure that everything meets a certain standard, else the phrase "peer reviewed" means nothing. The Gatekeeper knows that "a certain standard" is entirely subjective, but she refuses to talk about that.

The other, I call The Advocate. This one reminds me that I never know whether my verdict is going to make or break someone's career. I should actively look for ways to say yes. The Gatekeeper sneers, pokes her in the gut, and accuses her of having no standards and watering down the profession as a whole. The Advocate tells the Gatekeeper that maybe a "no" should be a "revise and resubmit," because that, at least, lets someone improve. She speculates that the Gatekeeper gets a kick out of crushing young scholars due to her own insecurities. Voices are raised. There is an unseemly scuffle.

I would be surprised if there was anyone in a position to review (even signed book reviews!) that hadn't heard both of these voices at one time or another. And the scuffles are only going to get more frequent as we advance in our careers and come to be regarded as people with the Authority to Pronounce. We've probably encountered folks who we think are pure Advocate or Gatekeeper, yet we see ourselves as always a little of both, and constantly hope for an objectivity that we know doesn't exist this side of the grave.

So, out with it: Advocate or Gatekeeper? Or do you have totally different voices in your head?

Choosing to Change Direction (Mid-Career Malaise part III)

I've left everything hanging on this series for far too long. It's because mid-career is running me over with a steamroller, work-wise. Mid-career does this. It has no mercy.

BUT... I did promise a happy ending, or at least a hopeful one. I can't tell you what can work for you, but I can tell you what turned things around for me. I think it dovetails nicely with what some commenters on the previous post have said, even though it's different in its particulars. My thoughts on this are a bit unformed, so I hope you'll bear with me.

When we last left the discussion, we had brought up the problem of post-tenure malaise/depression/anger, and how it was compounded by the fact that nobody talked about it because... well, in a world where departments are 50% adjunct labor and tenure is not a certainty even if you do land a permanent job, it seems like we should be doing the opposite of complaining (and, of course, one or two commenters have agreed with this position -- that we've got no right to complain, that is -- fair enough).

I also told a bit of my own story: the post-tenure letdown, the frequent feeling of being overworked and underappreciated, the tears, the snappishness, the serious contemplation of walking away from it all because it seemed that my job was making me deeply unhappy. Or, at least, it wasn't making me happy.

What I did, at some point a few years back, is that I really, seriously allowed myself to look at where I was, what I wanted out of work and life, and how my job helped and/or hindered me getting there. Here are a few of the things I realized along the way. Maybe one or more of them will apply to you.

1. You always have a choice. Yes, seriously. Maybe you don't have the choices you want, and maybe the "other choice" is really, really bad. But you do have a choice. Many, actually. Start thinking about those options. Include the most ridiculous (circus) to the prosaic (I can make a good latte) to the "within the field" options (administration; part-time adjuncting) to taking a flier on something totally new. What do each of these get you in the way of better quality of life? What do you give up? Really play out the scene all the way to the end: If you took door #2, where might you be five years from now? I thought about ditching my job, looking for adjunct work + coffee shop jobs in the town I grew up in (and which I love dearly), and maybe writing books on the side. I really tried to imagine what my life would be like. I also thought about the practicalities of that decision.

2. What nourishes you? That's a really hippy-dippy way to phrase it, I know. But it's also the most accurate. Where do you feel most like yourself, both in your job and out of it? Does your work situation enable you to do that thing? Even facilitate it? Or does it get in the way?  Or, maybe a better way of putting it is: does it enable more than it obstructs? Or vice-versa? 'Cause things change from day to day. I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that I loved writing. I love the creative process, and that little moment where all of a sudden you see something that wasn't there before, and the mad, frustrating scramble to show it to other people, even while knowing that you'll always be inadequate to the task. That's what gets my middle-aged ass out of bed in the morning. And I started thinking, "Hey... my job does give me the space to do this (except when it doesn't)."

3. Realize that your job doesn't owe you anything but a paycheck. We sometimes come into academia expecting personal fulfillment from our jobs. And I think that academics get it more than people in most jobs -- from teaching, from research, from service. But that was never in the contract you signed. You agreed to do a job; they agreed to pay you. Chances are you find some parts of your job more fulfilling than others. So, if you stay, you can think about compartmentalizing your jobs. For me, everything got sorted into two columns: "Things I do with integrity, and to the best of my ability" and "Things I do because it's a joy to do them." Sometimes there's even overlap between the two. But realizing -- really acknowledging -- that my job did not owe me personal happiness... and further that the fact that I did gain personal fulfillment from a decent chunk of it (way more than, say, most food service professionals -- the other thing I'm actually qualified to do), allowed me to reframe the rest of it.

4. Don't de-prioritize those things that make your life worth living. The previous point may sound like I'm saying "Suck it up, Buttercup." I'm actually not. A decision to stay should not feel like a martyrdom. It should feel like a strategic reframing of your relationship to your job. Think about the things you love that you no longer do because you "just don't have time, what with work the way it is." Fuck that noise. If your job is just a job, then you owe it integrity and hard work... but you do not owe it every corner of your life. That, too, was not part of the contract you signed. You get to take a day or two off. You get to go for a hike, or go to a yoga class, or just sit on a park bench with a novel. Start small. Think about a day. Or a three-hour window every day. Practice saying, "My job does not get this. This is MINE." And if your job does not let you do that -- have even a little corner that it can't pre-empt... well, then maybe that job sucks. It's certainly sucking the life out of you. But then again, are we just assuming that the job won't let us have it? Have we ever tried just saying "no"? (I'll tell you: I'm better at this some weeks/semesters than others, for certain.)

5. Think about all this, then make a choice. As an academic -- a tenured academic, no less, you have so much more choice than just about anybody. But that includes the choice to walk away -- or make an internal transition to something like administration, or become "downwardly mobile" to allow yourself more time -- if 1-4 have convinced you that this is the right way to go. Do it. You can recognize that you have a great, enviable job and still realize that it's not working for you. On the flip side, if you decide to stay, make that a choice, too. "I choose to remain in this job because..." For me, it was because I could do more of what I loved in the job than in some other situation (other than "independently wealthy," but even the circus is a more likely option than that for me).

5b. ...and continue making that choice every day. When I decided to stay, one of the things (other than the conscious reframing) that helped was the knowledge that I could walk away at any time if I changed my mind. Granted, there would be consequences, some of them (mostly the financial and personal ones) quite serious. But my job would never again feel like my jailer. As long as I did my work with integrity and to the best of my ability, I could engage with it on my own terms. And let me tell you: that's fucking excellent.

Let me leave you with a little fable -- actual, that's its title: "A Little Fable," by Franz Kafka:

"Alas", said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am running into."

"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

You can choose to change direction, whether that's in your career or in your mind. Don't get eaten.

Crying in My Office (Mid-Career Malaise part II)

NB: this post is meant as a forum to discuss something that doesn't get talked about often: the depression or anger that often accompanies the year or so post-tenure. As I noted in my previous post, I write this well aware that many out there would be incredibly grateful to be in this position. Yet, like Betty Friedan's discontented suburban housewives, we do need to talk about this. So here goes:


So, here's how it is.

You work through grad school. You beat the odds and get a Tenure-Track job. Then you bust ass for six years. You teach. You develop classes. Maybe you write a book. And then: you have tenure.

Whoo-hoo! Set for life!!!

So why do so many of us spend a year or two post-tenure chronically pissed off, depressed, or both?

The commenters on my previous post (especially Curt) kind of said a lot of what I wanted to say, but it's worth bringing up a few points, and then just opening up the discussion.

The first, and most important thing to say is this: You are not alone.

It might seem like that. The reason is that we haven't been talking about it. Because frankly, it's embarrassing, right? "Oh, boo-hoo; I have a career and tenure and job security and a book and everything. My life is soooo saaaad..." I mean, who wants to be that person, right? So we bite our tongues and figure that there's just something wrong with us, some inability to be happy.

I'm basically here to advance the thesis that you're totally normal. Here's the thing: you spent half a dozen years in grad school, and another half a dozen more on the tenure track. That's most of your adult life, all pursuing one thing. You had a purpose. You knew where you were heading. There was a Big Goal.

And now you've achieved that goal. And here's the thing: Nothing is different. Well, you may have a slight bump in your paycheck. And you've certainly got more committee work. But other than that, after a few people stopping by to say "congrats!", it just all stays the same. Or maybe a little harder. And for some, this might be the first time in five to ten years when you've looked up and taken stock of your life and wondered where all the parts of your life that are Not-Work went. Remember when I had a hobby that I loved? Remember when I went out on dates or with friends? We invested so much of that for so long in The Job. And now we realize that some days would be better or worse than others, but The Job was never going to be anything more than The Job.

I know that I never thought any of this consciously, but I do recall spending a lot of time in tears, or planning to leave my job -- not to go job-hunting; just to put in my notice and pack it in. I was more impatient with students. I was easily upset by colleagues. I couldn't bear to think about my next book project. In short, I was a wreck. And yet, nothing was really wrong. Nothing. I couldn't name a single reason why I should be miserable and wanting to pack it all in when I was arguably at my most successful by any external measures. But there it was.

God, that's a grim note to end a post on. I promise that the next post will be more hopeful. After all: I'm still in my job (which is still pretty much the same as it was then -- including the exact same salary, sad to say), but I'm actually pretty content. But I did go through a very dark period, and I've seen a lot of other mid-career people go through the same thing, so what I'd like to do now is open up the comments for people to just share their own experience -- that stuff you were embarrassed to admit because intellectually you knew just how fortunate you actually were. Were you depressed post-tenure? Angry? Did you contemplate a career change? Did you check out for a while? Did you double down on the work?  Feel free to post anonymously if you want. And if you're not in this situation (and especially if you're rolling your eyes at a bunch of privileged folk talking about their high-class problems), I'm going to ask you to remember that YMMV.

And next post (Friday, I think), we'll talk about Things That Helped.

We Can't Complain, but Sometimes We Still Do (Mid-Career Malaise, part I)

After the eight-billionth conversation with friends about this, and the forty-billionth statement that "I should blog about that -- I think I will," I'm going to (hopefully) kick off a series of blog posts that are probably going to cause a bit of ridicule in some corners. But what the hell: I'm going to talk about post-tenure depression. Mid-career malaise. That approximately one to two years (and sometimes longer) after you get tenure when, all of a sudden, you're angry at everyone and everything sucks and you don't. know. why.

Because you've got it all, right? What do you have to be angry or upset about? You probably don't even have a right to complain.

But this is a Genuine Thing. I've seen it happen over and over again: to myself, to my colleagues, to almost every academic I've talked to. And the fact that nobody's talking about it makes it worse.

So: over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to take this on. I hope this will be helpful. I hope not to piss off too many untenured, unemployed, or underemployed academics by doing what amounts to validating bitching about a privileged position. I probably will offend several people anyway. And to them I say: I'm sorry. You have every right to be offended. But even though the problem here is nowhere near as grave as yours, it is still a problem, and we need to talk about it.

Stay tuned...

Putting Down that Load: Service to the Profession Edition

A few years ago, I made the mistake of voicing my doubts about how a certain Big Ongoing Project transition should be handled. Stuff along the lines of, "Hey, have we really thought these things through?"

Silly me: They put me in charge of it.

Anyway, Big Project ended up being a five-year commitment. Every fall, I'd start working on Big Project. Every fall, it would nag at me mercilessly, yet another thing to do. And because I'm a perfectionist, everything needed to be perfect.

And it was always later than I'd like. I always wanted it done by early October. And usually, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas was more like it.

Here's the thing: as of two days before Christmas this year, my five-year commitment was finished. Oddly enough, "Auld Lang Syne" was playing on my parents' radio as I sent off the last official communiqué and handed the whole thing over to my successor.

Here's the thing: when you're mid-career, your service load expands. A lot. And one of those things is "service to the profession," wherein you serve on the boards of organizations, read and review book and article manuscripts, and do other stuff. This labor is mostly uncompensated. And it's actually pretty fulfilling. And it's all voluntary. So you can't complain that you're having this foisted on you. I actually enjoyed working on Big Project -- sometimes quite a lot!

But it also felt good to put it down and move on to other things.