Help, I'm trapped in an ivory tower! Or "what the fuck am i getting myself into with this academia stuff"

*Raises hand*: are there schools at which the odds are 50/50 or worse?

Yes. Harvard and Yale are pretty notorious for the very low rate at which junior faculty get tenure. My department hasn't had anyone come up for tenure in ten years and the last person who came up for it was denied tenure, so at my institution there isn't a great track record either. Trying to Keep It Positive, my book came out this spring, I've already published another article since then, and I have six book chapters or articles which have been accepted for publication and are forthcoming, so there's really no way they can make a productivity argument against my tenure. But they can always just decide that they don't like me or my work and then it's curtains.

well if they "just don't like you" then they'll have justify that, and you can appeal that etc. what's crucial there are the outside letters. how many do you need? my institutions have gotten about half a dozen, which I understand is fairly normal for R1s, but I've interviewed at a UC school that said they needed about 10 outside letters.

the outside letter part is weird, since you're not allowed to know even who wrote them. but they hold big time sway, especially with committees above your departmental one.

yeah, my chair can't tell me anything about the outside letters, I get the impression that the department solicits 5-7 and the outside ad hoc committee solicits another 5-7, so they're at 10-14 by the end of the process. I was allowed to submit some names that I *did not* want asked (i.e. people whose work I critique in my book), but I couldn't have any knowledge of who they were going to ask, for obvious reasons. If I'm honest with myself, I'm probably in pretty good shape with my colleagues (at our faculty meetings and cocktail parties and receptions everyone keeps reassuring me, over and over, that I'm going to get this). The fear of the ad hoc committee is the real killer for me, as I am going to be at the mercy of people who aren't in my field, and there are plenty of people in the sciences who really don't like critical theory-oriented work in the humanities (with good reason- some of it is junk).

yeah that's a lot of letters! it's a very mysterious thing: people who may not have heard of you are sent all of your work and asked to make a judgment on whether you'll lose your job or keep it for forever.

at my institutions departments don't send up the chain cases that they think stand a decent chance of failing.

just thinking about this stuff again gives me the willies, though. it's some comfort to know that we all go through this. but it's taken something out of me all the same. (though tbh so did grad school)

xp - why would they include scientists on the ad hoc committee? Is that standard for humanities depts?

The ad hoc folks may or may not be from the humanities. I just won't know.

As I lope towards the finish line, I gotta say I am increasingly struck by the push-pull of difference between the battle to get an academic book contract for a first book from a decent press and the battle to get tenure that comes in its wake. Post 2008 bank crisis and the new austerity that made university presses increasingly skeptical /skittish about first books, if you aren't saying something new, original, and different from the prevailing wisdom, then you aren't getting a book contract. But in order to get the approval of the older guard of senior scholars who are likely to be the sort of people approached for outside letters, you can't say something that bothers or pisses them off, repudiates their methodological commitments, re-directs the conversation away from their interests and habits and affiliations. So it seems like the very qualities that might help you get a book contract are the kind that might hurt you when it comes to getting approval from the mysterious outside letter writers. I guess the result is that it encourages a kind of "via media" of small c conservatism about the kind of arguments that you can make before you have tenure. If folks outside of academia wonder why it so often looks like people re-arranging the same intellectual furniture, this process seems to encourage that.

i think that's a very eloquent description of the double-bind faced by younger academics. i have a book manuscript in review at the moment and it's basically my only hope for landing a job.

my discipline (philo) doesn't require a book for tenure, or even for promotion to full, but we have the same issue with journal pubs, where acceptance rates in places that will count for tenure and promotion are 3%-5%. I said fuck it, I don't care about the same intellectual furniture as the bulk of my discipline, and I can do something else if this profession doesn't want me. I was warned about this from senior colleagues who are deeply sympathetic to my work, but I couldn't follow their advice and just write on what everyone else writes on; I can't do work that bores me. I'd have failed to get tenure on productivity grounds. but here I followed my nose, that what I was doing was something lots of other people *should* have considered interesting and worth promoting, and I wrote with that mission in mind.

being on outside of a job looking in, my thinking isn't much different. it's a wing and a prayer for me anyway so i figured might as well do something im passionate about and hope it's good enough and different enough that it stands out.

well re getting a job with that attitude the best thing to do is to get to know as many senior people as you can, and tell them about your work in short and crystal clear and compelling ways. when someone bites send them your work, and follow up on it. even if they don't hire you then maybe you can get a letter. junior candidates with outside letters have a leg up, especially if the outside letters provide with comparisons with other junior people, maybe even with their own students.

that's good advice, thanks! I'm definitely working on an outside letter.

i really don't know what compelled me to read through all of caek's lynx just now but christ

you're in academia too, right Lamp?

yeah that's a lot of letters! it's a very mysterious thing: people who may not have heard of you are sent all of your work and asked to make a judgment on whether you'll lose your job or keep it for forever.

how long do they typically spend doing that? cuz this would surely take a while to do properly once people have several articles, some chapters, maybe a book etc

i hope ttwp gets through successfully and with minimal agitation.....

usually a couple of weeks of devoted full-time work. it's a big deal.

My wife went through this two years ago, and since a very large % of our friends are also university faculty I've seen a whole lot of this recently. None of them really managed the fear so much as resigned themselves to the fact that once their materials were in there was nothing they could do to control the outcome so they at least stressed out in a different way, waiting for the letter to show up. Only one of these friends was denied tenure, and honestly his heart wasn't really in it anyway so it wasn't that surprising but still was pretty awful and he has since moved away which really sucks.

Now my wife's on the other side and it's kind of crazy and depressing for her to see how it all works - decisions overridden for shady reasons at very high levels, inappropriate things said at meetings that mean a of guarantee tenure or a lawsuit, etc.

power corrupts, even in academia

the american class system is unfair, even in academia

you're in academia too, right Lamp?

haha define 'in'

a series of thoughts on a friday afternoon: i wonder how many people are going to be able to get tenure spots in the next 5 years? 10 years? i wonder, somewhat desperately, about the value of my own research, abt the value of the undergraduate education students are getting, about the ways that universities serve to reinforce the growing inequality in our society and abt the values that universities (particularly elite universities) are instilling in their graduates. mostly i keep thinking about this article: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/on-quitting/

blah - hope yr tenure goes well dr3w but this thread is hella depressing for me

i really don't know what compelled me to read through all of caek's lynx just now but christ

Ha sorry man.

Tenure oh boy. Good luck USA.

Drew if its any help I am in basically the opposite discipline to you and find you writing compelling and your miserable blog radical.

aren't you in astronomy, or physics, caek? you'll find that engineering is more an opposite of the humanities than the pure sciences, in particular because the latter two domains are usually, in NA at least, lumped together in colleges or schools of arts & sciences, and thus hiring & promotion decisions for both humanities and pure sciences go through the same people at that level. whereas engineers have their own colleges/schools & their own rules. & they are as a rule friendly to neither the humanities nor the pure sciences.

tenure is a horrible system for faculty, students, staff and universities as a whole. at my place of employment the fucking librarians are tenured. which means you end up with 6-figure salaried morons who have been left behind by the past two decades of technological development and are not only unfireable but wield a disproportionately large hammer in terms of influence and power.

not to mention that the inherent inflexibility of the tenure system leads to lumbering faculty bodies capable only of noisily and unattractively blocking realistic and necessary policy changes.

the moribund atmosphere in a department due to what i assume were 80s/90s tenure decisions is precisely the reason i didn't take an otherwise good postdoc at an R1 a couple of years ago.

Yeah. It seems like the integral of productivity, total product I guess, is most important. Why not end tenure but also lower the productivity expectation a bit. Most engineers leaning toward academia seem to be trying the industry-to-tenure gambit these days, since a post doc no longer guarantees a professorship.

pretty isolated at the academic law library where i work, doing unsupported special collections stuff in tech services, no law degree just a library degree, making 15 bucks an hour (could be so much worse), at least the benefits are good. hearing word that my boss is the only non-j.d. librarian position here and she's just completely full of shit, 100% doo-doo brown, every last cell, but someone you don't want to try to push out, or at least i don't because i don't have it in me, i'm too inexperienced and raw. there's a new library director and i had some hope earlier this year because two tenured idiots are on the verge of retirement, but that's evaporated and i'm gritting my teeth covering for my boss's shitty work ethic and idiotic approach to everything. don't know how i can jump ship to something better since i feel like damaged goods, im almost 5 years past library school and still haven't had a professional-level job, my skill set seems way too skimpy for everything i see, oh yeah i hate this fucking place and all of the mormon breeders in it, doubt that good will is gonna carry me anywhere here. think it's finally time to save up for a year then get the hell out of here.

speaking of grim forecasts regarding academia today, has anybody else here checked out this book?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Faculty-Benjamin-Ginsberg/dp/0199975434

full disclosure: he's a colleague at my school, so I'm biased. I just read it last weekend. a really impassioned rant against the bloat of administration, there are some points at which he just reads schools to filth, I found it pretty addictive. That said, I wonder how it might read to someone who was not, themselves, a professor . . . The argument might simply come off as nostalgia for a lost moment of institutional dominance. But when he's on, he's on.

didn't read it yet, but it was discussed positively in this great frank piece from the latest baffler: http://thebaffler.com/past/academy_fight_song

you know when your boss has a ph.d. in communications, you're in trouble

that baffler piece is brutal and righteous

"That the people who hold the ultimate authority at our institutions of higher learning are dedicated to a notorious form of pseudo-knowledge is richly ironic, and it is also telling. The point of management theory, after all, is to establish the legitimacy of a social order and a social class who are, in fact, little more than drones."

poetic justice for humanities departments that travesty the socialism they tout by privileging privileged grad students over disadvantaged grad students

well since I barfed up all my tenure anxiety earlier in this thread, I thought I would share my good news: my department voted unanimously to support my tenure today. Now it goes up to the ad hoc committee so I will still have six months more of uncertainty and suspense, but my tenure could have simply ended today if my department had decided to deny me. The two hours of waiting around while they were at their meeting was a scary, scary time, and I was so freaked out when my chair called and started up by saying "I'm so sorry . . . " *I immediately assume he's about to tell me that I got shut down* " . . . to have taken so long to call you to tell you." Yikes!

I am really happy and really relieved. And I hope that I'm able to be mindful of the sheer luck and contingency that swaddles my "success" in the field- I think human beings are inclined to think that if they are happy and successful that it is somehow about their merit, that they deserve what they have and have earned it, even though they still know that the system as a whole is rigged and unfair and arbitrary in countless structural ways, no one wants that to apply too directly to their own case (we feel bathed in a tacit cloud of meritocracy). So, as much as I want to feel that this is the happy result of seven years of hard work in the department and beyond, I also know of so many talented and hard working people who are adjuncts who never even got the shot that I have had. Okay, gotta go to sleep so I can get up and teach my grad seminar.

congratulations

Congrats, tune!

congrats. it's a very big accomplishment, regardless of structural arbitrariness!

awesome; that's the hugest step at most places.

congratulations, inevitable contingencies aside you seem like a good work guy who's richly deserving of this.

WAY TO GO MAN

(and if your university works anything like mine, the ad hoc committee will be only humanities people)

congrats man!

huge congratulations, if your teaching is half as good as your writing your students are lucky indeed

Question for Euler, who mentioned on another thread that he was thinking of teaching a seminar on a topic he doesn't know well. How do you prepare for that? I guess re-read and perhaps read more, of course - but any particular strategies that you use to relate your reading to your teaching strategies?

it's a grad seminar, so I'll make it clear day 1 that it'll all be work in progress. that takes one edge off.

the subject will be an author I don't know well (Spinoza) on a topic I do know well (the "metaphysical" grounding of the inferential structure of mafemathiks) so I know what questions I'm looking for the text to shed light on. we'll work through the text each week knowing what our eyes should be kept upon.

I've done this a bunch of times, though, and usually in undergrad classes. my main "trick" is to make sure I'm psyched enough about the topics I choose to teach that I'll be able to base class time around what I take to be the "big questions" animating my interest, and then try to walk the students through the ways in which the text sheds light on those questions. I can never prep too long ahead of class, since so much of my prep work is getting excited about those animating questions, and that excitement can slip away if I prep a couple of days ahead of time. of course I write notes before class, but preparing those is easy if I know what I want to do.

and maybe the key thing is that I tend to teach texts, so tying class time to the texts is a requirement. I guess when I teach logic I just prepare like it's a math class, theorems, proofs, motivational questions, etc. if I didn't know ahead of time a technical topic I was teaching, I'd just write really good notes.

for me prepping for class isn't that different than prepping to give a research talk or write a paper. I'm trying to get something across to an audience and I've got to do it clearly because I only get one shot and everyone's attention is short. so it's got to be sharp and kinetic. I'm very easily bored and I assume my students are the same way.

Thanks, that's very useful and clear.

What does it mean in practice for the seminar to be 'work in progress' - that you will decide the following week's focus/trajectory based on the ideas that emerged this week? If so, does that include flexibility on picking the texts/parts of the texts themselves - 'at a minimum, we should read X, Y and Z and the rest is negotiable'? We have 'courses' rather than 'seminars', and the reading is pretty much set from the outset, although the prof might switch out readings 2-3 times if he/she finds interesting and relevant new papers.

we'll work through the text each week knowing what our eyes should be kept upon.

This is what I feel is lacking in my program. We often plough through experimental work without clear enough questions in mind. Only one course has been an exception, and that was a methods course.

yeah on the prof's part it depends on whether she wants to learn something new herself, or just communicate to others what she already knows. I have a hard time doing the latter: I get too bored. so I have to keep formulating things in terms I find interesting.

oh and on "work in progress" I just mean nothing is polished, I'm not presenting ideas that I already have under full control, and my hypotheses might be shattered by discussion. so what's being offered is def not a final product, ready for publication.

a little anxious venting: so i emailed my (potential) editor yesterday at the university press that is currently reviewing my book to check on its status. she tells me one of the reviews is in and they are simply waiting on the other one, but also that she has "a package ready to go to the board the minute the review arrives." is that a good, bad, or neutral comment?!? would an editor bother to prepare a package for a book that could still be rejected? i could probably ask her but i dont want to make any sudden movements.

It is neutral. It doesn't mean good or bad- it's just the process by which an academic book gets considered. My advice to you is to slow down, back off, and let their editorial process continue at the normal pace, because you don't want your editor thinking of you as pushy. It's fine and human to be curious, and they're used to that, but now that you've inquired, I would give them space. I know how hard that waiting time is, but you just have to do other things, work on other projects, and wait it out.

"man about town"

a close friend went to law school, routinely works 80 hour weeks, is essentially suicidally miserable at his job and regrets his career path....but i think "well at least he has a career!"

― ryan, Friday, October 25, 2019 11:12 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe im still too young or canadian but the avoiding having a career part seems like feature not bug? i tend to think, this might be less fun when it becomes more like a career

it's never really like a career, for better or for worse, though I have colleagues who wear coats and ties to convince themselves (or their parents) that it is like a career. me, I just don't wear pants and work 16 hours a day, best of all worlds

i get stressed during the intense workload stress periods (run-up to deadlines) then *really* enjoy the first couple weeks of relative chillness after a deadline passes. but then i get restless and sign myself up for another deadline. gives me an excuse to turn down social obligations

We don't do careers in Canada.

Does Canada not have the Protestant work ethic?

It seems like "don't expect to make a career out of it" may be the best advice to give someone considering getting into academia... yet apparently it is impossible (speaking as a US grad student) to get through grad school without constantly being reminded that one is being prepared for an academic career!

the opportunity cost alone makes it hard to justify as anything but career prep

Does Canada not have the Protestant work ethic?

If you're American, no, thank Christ. If you're European, very much so, yes.

what if you're quebecois

About the same tbh.

Ha, I was just kind of riffing on flopson's post tbh but maybe there is a cultural difference?

there might be some cultural difference but maybe more the employer provided health care thing

also sorry i didn’t mean to be dismissive about the adjuncting /no stable employment struggle. however i think ryans lawyer friends life stinks ass

ryans lawyer friends life stinks ass

To say the least. I'd rather be on the dole.

George Michael agrees: https://youtu.be/BsyHQgiem8c

George Michael otm.

I don't think I'm ever going to get over idealizing academia and regretting not taking that path. I know that it's to some extent a grass-is-greener thing, but it's hard not feel envious when friends from the MA years are finishing their doctorates and landing cool post-docs and jobs - basically fulfilling this future that I'd spent so much time imagining for myself and which my brain still latches onto when I'm down.

h/t j. (thread):

Can I ask academics of any level of seniority how many hours a week they reckon they work. My current estimate is over 100. I am a mug. But what is the norm in real life. ?

— mary beard (@wmarybeard) November 23, 2019

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/07/fuck-the-bread-the-bread-is-over/

Not 'academia' per se, but can anyone recommend any websites/journals/magazines accepting papers (or articles) on anything film/music/art/culture/psychoanalysis-y? Probably more casual than peer-reviewed, but possibly either.

I am unable to proceed onto a doctorate yet due to technicalities that have been compounded by these times, and feel (like many, no doubt) that I am utterly stagnating. It helps to read theory, but I find my motivation lacking when there isn't something concrete to channel it into. I'll look into different things, but just wondered if anyone has specifically heard of anything recently, or had success in different places.

Sorry to hear that the pandemic has been an impediment to your studies/research on top of everything else.

This might be too academic a suggestion, but have you considered Paragraph? Their editorial board is more open to exploring the intersection between aesthetics and psychoanalysis than most. Failing that, maybe 3:AM Magazine if you'd rather keep the ivory tower at bay?

I also came across this ongoing project a few days ago and was tempted to submit the entirety of the 'recently on ILX Dreams…' thread:

https://www.lockdowndreams.com

Thank you for these really excellent suggestions! I found some other places, but honestly none of them were as exciting as this.

Ha, coincidentally, the lockdown dreams project is hosted by the very department I am unable to begin working in! Well, the theoretical side of it anyway. I'm supposed to progress onto a clinical doctorate, but it's going to be at least 2 years before I can begin and honestly I don't know if maybe I should do a PhD while I'm waiting, or if that is mad.

Is anyone working on a PhD during lockdown, and if so, how is it?

So my workplace (not just UCSF, this is UC-wide) has done something great:

After more than two years of negotiations, UC has reached an open access agreement with Elsevier! 🥳https://t.co/b7AyUxifji

— UCSF Library (@ucsf_library) March 16, 2021

Here's the general UCOP post, though the UCSF one linked there has more specifics

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-news-uc-secures-landmark-open-access-deal-world-s-largest-scientific-publisher

well after 25 years in academia I've applied for a science writing job, no doubt way off base but a worthwhile message to self

anyone fancy applying for this?

I screamed pic.twitter.com/IR14czokLl

— Christopher DeWeese (@lighghghght) June 15, 2021

Does this thread ring true for anyone still in the game?

But I think the largest group of faculty, for a variety of reasons, aren't making big job moves. If I had to describe what the Great Resignation looks like for them, I'd call it disengagement. A general pulling back or away, a doubling down on autonomy.

— Kevin R. McClure (@kevinrmcclure) January 11, 2022

It pretty much describes how my spouse and I are operating. I always had a tenuous connection to my department (non tenure stream spousal accommodation who teaches primarily in an interdisciplinary program that is a tiny part of the overall focus) and not being around any colleagues for the past two years makes me feel zero connection at all. My wife could go up for full but what’s the point? It would be a pittance raise and more responsibility in exchange for an ego boost and the dept getting to brag about another full professor.

We’ve lost a number of tenured faculty with no hope of those lines coming back anytime soon (and we know of two who have campus visits for other jobs coming up) so all of them are on literally every grad committee because someone has to be. We’re on our third (interim) chair in the 4.5 years I’ve been here.

I could get a private sector (or university staff) IT/dev job that pays more but it would be a 12 month 9-5 office job vs being able to do whatever for three months every summer. Basically we’re at a sweet spot of time/money/workload and despite neither of us being really invested at all we can’t think of how anything could be better. So I do my best at teaching but go through the motions on everything else whiles looking forward to summers.

Feels pathetic to say it, but I have lost all hope that my academic job will improve, and at 52 I highly doubt anyone would hire me to something new, so what on earth can I do, just be miserable for 8 years until I can retire?
Being in Tasmania the number of private bioscience startups is … low.

ha ha, my promotion application bringing together 11 years of the things I've built and innovated, going the extra mile, heart and soul stuff, was met with four months of total silence, followed by "nope".

ha ha, my promotion application bringing together 11 years of the things I've built and innovated, going the extra mile, heart and soul stuff, was met with four months of total silence, followed by "nope".

I missed this. Sorry dude.

Ugh sorry

https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2023/11/exclusive-facing-budget-shortfalls-uw-system-president-privately-suggested-chancellors-shift-away-from-liberal-arts-programs-at-low-income-campuses

I work at the UW Parkside and we serve more low income students than any other school in the system. I can't adequately express how mad this makes me.

well, they are 'liberal' arts, right? I'm mean it says it right on the diploma

I peruse job ads frequently, as I'm sure many academics do. I have noticed a ton of openings in my field (Art/Design) in the US south, particularly Texas and Florida. I wounder why that is????? Far fewer desirable positions to be found in other areas. I'm not looking looking, just passive, but it seems remarkable.