Advice to My Past Self: Fifth Year on the Tenure Track
November 2020: Working on a book chapter in bed while Ellie colors (and I try not to puke from morning sickness).
In my last post I shared my (mostly informal) goals from year five on the tenure track, along with whether or not I met them.
In this post I’m following up with advice I’d give to myself if I had to do year five all over again. If you want to check out my goals/advice for years 1 through 4, you can do that here:
My First Year on the Tenure Track + Advice to My Past Self: First Year Edition
My Second Year on the Tenure Track + Advice to My Past Self: Second Year Edition
My Third Year on the Tenure Track + Advice to My Past Self: Third Year Edition
My Fourth Year on the Tenure Track + Advice to My Past Self: Fourth Year Edition
Here are 5 lessons learned from my fifth year as an assistant professor…
Sometimes you don't need to plan
In previous years I'd start off the school year with a multi-day planning session. I'd figure out my goals for the year as well as fall term. Usually, I very much look forward to these sessions. They're like a mini retreat. However, this year I wasn't feeling it, so I didn't plan.
I found out I was pregnant a few weeks before the school year started and morning sickness threw a wrench in my plans. Making it through the day was hard enough and long term planning was just not something I could bring myself to do at that point in time. I did, for the most part, plan out my weeks, and to some extent my days, especially towards the end of pregnancy. But I focused a lot more on just doing what felt good in the moment (because I had many moments where I didn't feel good).
Even without a plan, the year went fine. I wasn't as productive as previous years (from a professional standpoint), but I also recognized that my capacity to produce at my previous level (again, from a professional standpoint) wasn't going to be the same.
Moral of the story, if you don't happen to get that yearly or term plan accomplished, everything will be okay! You can always pick back up at a later date. And in fact, I did do some personal planning at the start of the new year, which felt good. Also, because I'd spent so much time setting up my professional plans in previous years, it was easy to carry a lot of those things over.
Teach to your strengths, even if that means a higher teaching load
Our teaching load is high at 24 credits, which amounts to 8 3-credit classes. I decided to teach a year long seminar this past year, which was worth 12 credits, so half of my teaching load. I initially thought that the promise of only having to teach 12 additional credits would outweigh the fact that teaching seminar is not something I view as one of my strengths. In theory it should have been pretty easy, minimal prep, fewer students, students I had previously taught, etc. However, the emotional labor that went into the course was way too much for me. In hindsight, I should have taken on more classes that I'm comfortable with instead of a course that's worth a lot of credits but isn't aligned with my teaching strengths (especially while trying to navigate pregnancy during a pandemic).
Adjust your expectations to your reality
Living through a pandemic, parenting during a pandemic, being pregnant, grieving, dealing with other family emergencies... all of those things by themselves are enough to warrant needing to step back and greatly adjust your expectations for what's going to actually get done during the day. Being an extraordinary professor, on top of all the things going on during the school year was not happening for me this year. And that's okay. I focused on simply showing up to the spaces I was supposed to show up to. Anything beyond that was usually more than I could handle… if it happened, cool! If it didn’t, I wasn’t disappointed because I’d aligned my expectations with my capacity/reality.
When things are rough, focus on the finish line
During this school year I focused a lot on the fact that I'd be going on leave at some point in May and that there was a very real "break" in sight. Even when it felt far off, it was helpful to know that I would be able to close my work laptop and not look at it (for the most part) until December. While I wouldn't necessarily use this as a long term strategy, it was helpful in the moment when things felt hard.
It's okay to rest
A lot of my academic experiences have prioritized work over rest. I've spent a lot of time telling myself....
"just get through candidacy and then you can rest."
"just get through the dissertation and then you can rest."
"just get through the tenure process and then you can rest"
You're noticing the pattern, right?! Just get through the next thing and then rest will follow. Except the rest rarely comes. More work always manages to fill in the empty spaces. This year, instead of waiting to rest, I (tried to) rest as much as I possibly could, while still doing what needed to be done for my job. This looked like taking naps when I was able, shortening my work day when I could, not going to every single meeting, not going overboard on student feedback, etc. Of course I couldn’t quite shrug off the guilt that ensued for not working harder, but at least I felt rested (as much as you can during pregnancy) and guilty instead of utterly exhausted and guilty!
