November 25, 2003
IVIED WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE, NOR BOOKSHELVES A CAGE:
Feeling Stuck? (Chronicle of Higher Education, Career Talk, 11/21/2003)
Question: I've been at my campus for many years and I'm tenured. But I'm not happy. The job isn't what it was when I took it. Everything is different now -- standards have risen, and if my job was advertised today, I wouldn't be competitive for it. I can't see myself languishing here for years in what I've come to find a toxic environment, but I don't think I could find a job with equivalent salary and benefits, which are barely enough to sustain us as things are. [...]Mary: If you're an older faculty member in a tenured position that makes you unhappy, you may have more reason to hold back before abandoning academe.... Sometimes you are truly "stuck" and it may be the best decision to stay in your tenured job, do your best, and leave your work at the office at the end of the day. Don't take a bad work situation home and brood. Find something that will provide some joy in your life!...
Julie: If you can't move (at least for the time being), you have several options: You can start to distance yourself emotionally from your job ...
We know people in academe who are unhappy with their work but unable to leave their jobs, for a variety of reasons. We would like to end by listing some of the things those people have done to keep themselves going:
Worked to preserve a local watershed.
Raised show dogs.
Taken up aikido.
Taught aerobics and Pilates fitness programs.
Joined a rock band.
Participated in all kinds of writing.
Researched and written family histories.
They've developed other interests and taken steps on their own to enhance their lives. You can, too.
Of course, the taxpayers, the ultimate source of the salaries of tenured professors, will not object if professors devote themselves to aikido, raising show dogs, and local political activism; nor will young would-be professors, or students, mind. So just follow this career advice and everyone will be happy!
Posted by Paul Jaminet at November 25, 2003 10:49 AM
As an old hand at academe, I know it's not only the older tenured faculty that "go to sleep" once they get tenured, it happens almost immediately at whatever age.
Unless faculty go into administration, something very few are capable of doing, or are in one of the well-funded departments in a research institutions, the life of teaching faculty is much like life in socialist countries like Scandinavia. Things don't change from year to year. The students never age and the whole atmosphere around campus is that of "Alice in Wonderland." Nothing is at all like real life.
Yet faculty go from year to year saying the same thing to what seems like the exact same students year after year, and one day they realize they've reached retirement age and can't account for the passing years.
Many faculty are resentful of students, especially at the so-called selective institutions where many of the students come from affluence such as can scarcely be believed.
A government inquiry into how to make seniors happier up here released its report with much fanfare a few years ago. The main recommendations were oral history and organizing "around-the-world" team walkathons in shopping malls.
The late Mordechi Richler wrote that he shuddered at the thought of millions of determined, drooling marchers blocking every mall in Canada while trying to record those parts of their lives they could remember.
I wonder what he would have thought of rock clubs featuring aging sociology profs with their barking prize dogs out back.
Posted by: Peter B at November 25, 2003 12:15 PMWait a minute. Didn't you guys notice his complaint -- standards have risen!
There's a novelty.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 25, 2003 12:52 PMYes, Harry, it's very unpleasant when standards increase. Of course a decline in standards would also be a cause for grievance; and constancy of standards, a cause of boredom and dissatisfaction.
It's also possible that the "rise in standards" is his proferred reason for why his peers think his performance is substandard, when in actuality his own performance has slipped.
Posted by: pj at November 25, 2003 1:10 PMYes, but only as the pertain to his workday requirements - see previous post.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 25, 2003 1:10 PMHere at UTEP, the older professors in my department have Ph.D.'s from Arizona State University while the younger ones have Ph.D.'s from UC Berkeley and MIT.
I thought that's what they were referring to by "higher standards" preventing them from finding academic employment elsewhere.
Posted by: James Haney at November 26, 2003 12:22 AMIf this professor finds the environment at his university "toxic," wait until he starts showing dogs!
Posted by: Greg Hlatky at November 26, 2003 5:10 AM