In the fall of 2007, I wrote a pseudonymous essay for The Chronicle that compared seeking tenure to walking on a treadmill. We walk on a treadmill even on days when we don’t feel like it so that we can reap the long-term benefits of being in shape. In the same way, we do some things in the quest for tenure that we would rather not do —whether that be in the area of scholarship, teaching, or service —to reap the long-term benefits of tenure.
I wrote one paragraph in that essay that caught the attention of administrators at my university. Although I published it under a pseudonym, I did so because I was concerned about preserving the anonymity of a colleague I mentioned in the article (that’s no longer an issue). I was not concerned about my identity and was proud of the essay’s appearance in a national publication, so I told my department chair about it and informed her that she could share it with people above her. It turns out that the president not only read it; he had a copy of the essay on his desk when the other committee members arrived for my tenure review.
In the paragraph in question, I had focused on my life, as I envisioned it, after tenure, assuming that I got it: “I look forward to the day when I can turn down a committee appointment that will take up way too much of my time and does not interest me in the least; when I can speak freely in meetings without fear that I’ll be looking for a new job next year; and when I can go for a period of time without feeling the pressure to write something new, and I can actually dig into a long-term project and savor the research process.”
Upon reading that, a few people on the committee expressed concern that my behavior after tenure would be significantly different than it was before tenure. I did my best to allay their fears and was granted tenure in early 2008. Now that I’ve been tenured awhile, it seems a good time to see exactly how accurate my prediction was.
First, university service. I claimed that I would be able to turn down committee assignments that would take up too much time and did not interest me. That has turned out to be true. For example, after I was tenured, I was asked to attend a weeklong conference concerning undergraduate research. Given my approach to research, I did not see how the conference would help me or our students, so I turned it down, though I did suggest someone who went and enjoyed it.
Perhaps I could have gone and learned something about undergraduate research, but the goal of the conference was for participants to come up with a two-year plan that would win grant money, and then present the results at a later conference. All of that would have tied up my research, and I was happy to decline. What made my decision dicey was that the offer came from the academic vice president. Perhaps I would have turned it down anyway, even if I hadn’t been tenured, since the subject did not interest me. But having tenure certainly made it far less stressful to say no.
What about speaking up in meetings? Has tenure made me any braver? Somewhat, though not drastically. There are still times in facultywide meetings where I have refrained from contributing because of possible consequences. I know full well that tenure does not protect faculty members completely from repercussions, and that our lives can be made miserable, even if we keep our jobs. Thus, I still choose my battles wisely.
However, I do believe that my role as a tenured faculty member compels me to speak out more often, especially in defense of those who have not yet received tenure. In fact, less than a year ago, I went to talk to our department chair on behalf of an untenured faculty member, who had had one of her courses eliminated. I believed that she was treated unfairly and that she may not have had as much freedom to speak up on the subject. As a newly tenured faculty member, I spoke up on her behalf (I did ask her first if that was acceptable, and she encouraged me to do so).
Our department chair then explained to me how and why the decision had been made, information I passed along to the faculty member. Because I felt I had the freedom to speak about a possibly controversial issue, we were able to limit the amount of gossip that often passes from office to office and find out directly what had really happened.
On the scholarship front, I had predicted I would be able to work on more long-term projects at my leisure and not worry about how people would judge my productivity. I thought things would slow down. But I actually have been more productive over the months since I received tenure than at almost any other time in my career. Perhaps that change is due to the freedom I feel to publish in whatever arena I choose —from less formal essays like this one to poetry I write for pleasure to critical articles that attempt to make a contribution to the discipline. I felt that same freedom to a degree before tenure, so perhaps the change is simply a clearer dedication to writing.
The area of my work that has changed the most since I earned tenure is an area I did not even mention in my first essay —teaching. My decision to work at a teaching-oriented institution means that I already emphasize teaching. But I have found that tenure has brought with it some added freedom in teaching that I had not anticipated.
I feel able to challenge my students academically more than I have in the past, as I am less concerned that they will judge me harshly on evaluations. Perhaps it is maturity and not tenure, but I simply worry less about what they think about me and my ability to teach. I am more concerned with finding ways to make them better students and not with what they think of those ways, or of me.
Perhaps the change in my behavior comes from an unconscious decision to show the committee that I will not lessen the amount of work I do, that what I wrote was merely a rhetorical strategy I used to connect with the audience I knew would be reading the essay. But I don’t really believe that as I find myself taking much more joy in my work now, mainly because I am able to winnow my choices down to what I truly care about. My original essay was not intended to be about how much or how little work was involved in receiving tenure; instead, it was about doing work that one did not much care to do in order to earn that reward. Now I can continue working at, or above, the level I was at when I received tenure, but I can focus on work that is meaningful to me.
Many academics say that tenure is meaningless unless you don’t get it. That sentiment is easy to share, as my experiences would certainly have been different if my original essay had led to a negative result. When I received the tenure committee’s letter asking about the essay, my first thought was not, “Well, at least tenure does not mean anything,” it was, “Oh, this is not good.” Part of me believes that I made the right decision in writing the initial essay and sharing it with the committee, as it gave me the chance to honestly consider whether I wanted tenure here, and I was able to voice those concerns to the committee. However, I also realize that my life would have been much easier if I had simply waited to reveal the essay’s existence until after my tenure case was decided.
In the end, tenure has meant that I do less paperwork, which is always nice, but otherwise, it has had little effect on my life. I still come in and teach with as much enthusiasm as I always have; I do work for the university that benefits the students and fits my interests; I do research that is meaningful to me, not just to pad my vita.
People talk about a post-tenure slump, but I haven’t experienced it yet. And that’s not because I still have one more promotion to come, but because I earned tenure by being who I am as a professor. If I have learned nothing else through this process it is that you should focus on that aspect —being who you truly are as a teacher and a scholar —in the years leading up to tenure and during the review process. If you have to pretend to be someone else, you will be miserable. Instead, if you are invested in your students and your discipline, you have truly done all you can already do. No committee can ever take that away from you.
