Rob Knop is blogging about the difficulties in getting tenure — his difficulties in particular, not the issue in some vague degree of abstraction. Very worth reading for a candid look at the kind of thing that goes on.
On a meta level, it’s interesting to contemplate how hiring and tenuring will ultimately be effected by blogs. Scott Aaronson is blogging at least some occasional facts about his job search. The proliferation of online rumor mills has already taken a lot of what used to be quasi-private information, shared among the old-boy network but invisible to outsiders, and put it out there for everyone to see. I can imagine a similar kind of effect if we ever get to the point that a critical mass of job- and tenure-seekers are blogging about their progress.
In the short term, I worry that the most obvious effect will be a deleterious one for the bloggers. For the most part, I don’t think that hiring/tenure committees care if you have a blog, occasional anonymous scare-mongering notwithstanding. (It might even help.) But blogging about the process might be the kind of thing that makes committees nervous. Personally, I would never blog about a major occupational transition while it was going on; when it’s all set up and the ink is drying, it makes sense to let people know, but in the middle of the process I would be (with good reason) worried about stepping on people’s toes. (Same thing with getting engaged.)
So, blogging about tenure and job searches: crazy or courageous? Or is there a difference? I guess we’ll see.
I’m with Rob on the ‘bullshit’ call, I am afraid.
If the world was fair, you’d all be as handsome, funny and brilliant as me. Which you aren’t, so clearly it isn’t. In unfairWorld*, you may need a strategy that is somewhat more complicated than ‘true to yourself, do what you love, wait for rest to follow’.
*I am starting to lowerCamelCase everything, godamnit. I should take a break.
Yeah, you have to compromise what you want in order for your self and family to live securely. But is the line bullshit beyond that?
The line is bullshit partly because it directly contradicts the rest of Tim’s post.
He says first that in order to succeed, you have to learn to get good at marketing and self-promotion.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t have a taste for marketing, then in what way is following what you love going to help you succeed, according to his own criteria?
But beyond that, it’s a platitude. It’s an empty, feel-good platitude that’s just as meaningless as all those motivational posters that despair.com makes so much fun of. You should pursue what you love, but just doing that won’t get you anywhere. You have to be realistic as well. You have to recognize what is in the real world. You have to figure out what it is you really like about what you do, and then figure out what is available for you to do that captures as much of that as possible. You will have to make sacrifices. Life is complicated. Just following what you love and getting everything you want– that may be the “secret,” and it may work for a small number of lucky people (and, indeed, most of the way through I’ve been quite lucky myself), but the world doesn’t sit back and hand you success just because you’re doing what you love. Sometimes you have to make choices, and do what is feasable and palatable because it’s the best you can do.
-Rob
Not to put words in Tim’s mouth, I think that’s what he was getting at: if you know what you’re about, what’s important to you, you can roll with the punches (e.g., learn to market yourself, distasteful as it is) and not just survive, but accomplish something you feel good about.
Certainly, it’s far easier said than done. Maybe Tim left out the part about fasting and meditating at the summit of Mount Whitney to secure this perspective.
I agree with Tim Schneider that things are no better outside the scientific community. In fact, I think that things are far worse there. The stories I hear from friends about unfair work evaluations make your stomach turn.
if you know what you’re about, what’s important to you, you can roll with the punches (e.g., learn to market yourself, distasteful as it is) and not just survive, but accomplish something you feel good about.
I’m having a real hard time seeing how that translates to “Be true to yourself, do what you love, and the rest will follow.”
And perhaps that’s a big part of my problem. I’m not good at twisting and obfuscating the truth beyond recognizability in the interest of presenting an appealing package.
-Rob
What you called a contradiction in Tim’s post, I saw as a context that perhaps could have been presented better.
In any event, we agree that the reality is that to do good science in this world, you have to do a lot of crap work. My argument is that instead of seeing this as a soul-sucking trial, you can focus on the priorities — family, doing science — and let the rest roll off your back. Definitely, it’s harder to keep this perspective when you have demands heaped on you, as when you are on the tenure track, but it’s been done. As Mark writes in his post, faculty mentors are supposed to reduce the stress by helping your learn the ropes.
In the distant future, you hope society will be more amenable to your noble goals, by making research funds more available. It’s a lot better now than before industrialization 🙂
PS: If you’re seeing a therapist, hopefully (s)he just doesn’t sit there like a brick for 45 minutes and then tweak your meds. If so, find one who’ll get in your face a little bit.
You guys don’t understand Darwinian theory I guess. There is an overproduction of applicants at all levels of life–some make it, some don’t. Selections are almost always better when there are an overabundance of applicants–but that means there are losers. Those of you who are bright enough that you’ve never had to learn to lose need to learn to accept that it is always possible that you will be relegated to thetop 0.001%, rather than in the 0.0001%; there are many of us that had to learn that at a much lower level. Get out of your ego a little and look at how the world really works, make the necessary adjustments to your world picture, and get on with life. Your psychological health should not depend on whether or not you get tenure, or a teaching post, or accepted into the graduate school of your choice, or an NSA grant. It’s one thing to be disappointed–it’s another to blame the system for your personal unhappiness. Success in life is based on adjusting to the environment one is forced to exist in, and it does absolutely no good to blame the environment for one’s lack of success.
If you should be so lucky as to attain a measure of power over that environment, then change it to match your ideas as best you can, and it may help the next guy up the ladder. My bet is that if Rob Knop gains tenure his perspective will change, too, and the ladder will be very similar for those who follow him.
Of course, if you should be tied to a romantic concept like “Be true to yourself, do what you love, and the rest will follow”, then there really isn’t much hope for you. Substitute the word “may” for “will” and the concept becomes more realistic. The vast mass of men seldom get to do what they love; the trick is not to live a life of quiet desperation because of it.
Pingback: The Crossed Pond » Tenure woes
Reading some of the clear, incisive, and thoughtful prose above, it’s discouraging to know people are having such a hard time writing proposals that get funded. But as Amara said above, it seems good proposal writing is not trivial; and right now, what’s needed is excellent proposal writing to get funded. I’ve never been on a review panel, but I imagine it’s quite exhausting. I.e., if a proposal isn’t catchy and painfully clear to a reviewer at 3 Am who probably hasn’t slept for days (and has angst about her/his own proposal), it’s most likely game over for the applicant.
The following article was revealing concerning current funding/proposal issues:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5823/356
It was published recently in Science 20 April 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5823, pp. 356 – 361 re: current difficulties of NIH funding, and the impact on scientists’ careers. Apparently, many cannot recall such a stressed-out period. Now, I know NIH is supposed to be gravy compared to NSF. {Heh…I’ve tried both repeatedly, w/no luck, and my tenure, too hangs in the balance. Tick..tick..tick} But the challenges described in that article are very educational, and speak to many of the issues raised here, and may be relevant to NSF too.
I’ve gotten similar advice to just dive into solitary-confinement grant-beserk mode, mixed w/frantic data aquisition and pretty pictures (time to get a graphic designer?) Hasn’t worked yet, but nothing else to do but keep swinging and get hard-to-take but oh-so-necessary wicked criticism from someone kind enough to take time to do it.
re: tenure, even w/funding, the process seems rather capricious. I know colleagues that have had multiple federal grants, papers, and decent teaching evaluations that still somehow miss the mark.
Even as this whole funding/tenure/political miasma can sometimes get frickin’ frustrating, for me it’s also been quite nice to actually pursue some research themes that would’ve been otherwise impossible for me. Ok..back to proposal writing!
Pingback: The Tenure Process | Cosmic Variance
Pingback: Astonomer can’t get tenure « Bob Dudesky