You might have been able to guess from the snarky edition last week that things weren't going so well around here. This is both the complete truth and a blatant lie at the same time. It is the enigma we all know as life. Yesterday was bad (bad enough for me to start looking at job postings), today is good (NSF grant! woohoo!), and it's anyone's guess what tomorrow will hold. It's a roller coaster with the ups and downs coming faster than you can handle. Mornings can be good, one email can change it all and make you feel like the gum on the bottom of someone's shoe. I've always maintained a "c'est la vie" mostly optimistic attitude, beleiving that as long as the good outweighed the bad, I was leading a quality life and couldn't really ask for much more.
Here's the thing: What to do when the ups and downs are just about equal, or the balance starts to tip and your're feeling like you want off the ride more often than you are enjoying it? Is it just a rough patch? Does the long term average count for more? Or is it an indication that it's time to take a long hard look and figure out what's causing the imbalance?
There have been times in my life when I knew a change was required. The balance was clearly tipped and the long term average just wasn't ever going to make it ok. I've always been pretty good about knowing myself well enough to know what was right and what was wrong, for me and then taking the steps to fix it. I do beleive that to some extent our fate is in our own hands, so I rarely take the wait an see approach, preferring to be a little more pro-active in my life.
But here I am on a rollar coaster bigger, scarier and more stressful than I've been on before, and I'm not sure I like it, and I'm not sure I want to ride it until it's over. (I guess all new rollar coasters feel that way the first time you ride them, but once you survive they feel like kiddie rides in the rear-view mirror, but still...)
We are just shy of 6 months post move so I no longer consider my life to be "in transition". You see, to me the rules of self-evaluation don't apply to the transistion periods, all bets are off.
When I discuss this situation with others who have riden on the tenure track, they say the first year is just like that, give it a year before making any drastic decisions. So as difficult as it might be I'll give it the year, but I need a plan.
So, here's my plan, in a pseudo-scientific manor, I'm going to keep track, (mostly) day by day. Good, bad, ugly, ok. I'm going to keep track of why good, bad, ugly, or ok (i.e. is is my doing or someone elses that I can learn to shrug off) and I"m going to try to tell the stories behind the good, bad, ugly, and ok. I'm going to take a tally. Then we'll see where we are.
This is the roller coast we call the tenure track. My internal optimistic, hopes (and very nearly beleives) that this will be an inspirational activity for any tenure track riders just slightly behind me, but we'll see, I don't like my science to be tainted by preconceived notions, then it's not science :)
Roller coaster is an excellent description. I am at a school that (I presume) is smaller and much more teaching-oriented (as in: if you don't get grants, you're still OK tenure-wise, as long as you publish a paper or two). And even then I was scared to death as tenure drew closer. By that time I had come to like the place and the thought of going on another job search was just too scary.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I spent a lot of nights waking up in a cold sweat at 2 am. Not fun.
I think keeping track of good, bad, ugly, indifferent, whatever, will help. I also found that being able to 'zoom back' and get some perspective - get off campus once in a while and do something else - helps. (That's why I continue to do non-campus-related volunteer work, even as I gripe about the time it takes up).
I also think pencilling in an evening or even weekend (if you can) now and then as a "work free zone" where you will NOT feel guilty about just going and taking in a movie, or sitting and knitting, or cooking an elaborate dinner, helps a lot.
Is there someone who can kind of serve as a mentor to you? I have one colleague (well, actually two, but one of them was the main guy) who were kind of informal mentors to me in the first couple years and that helped a lot. I couldn't quite do the full-freak-out with them, but I could express concerns and get advice. (And later I got to turn around and do the same for another person).
I guess I also took the attitude, at least on good days, that I was a smart capable person (you are, too) and that I'd manage to make a life for myself, whatever happened.
Woohoo! on the grant....were we that focused last night that I missed this? I have no tenure track advice...not there yet...but I know in grad school they say you really need to commit to 2 years. The first is so horrible it isn't a good time to make such a decision and after the second you have a better feel! Hang in there....regardless of what you do!
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