All That I Want

A few weeks back, I was talking to my parents on the phone, and my mother asked “What do you want for Christmas?”

“Tenure,” I said. Because, well, that’s what’s been on my mind.

This is going to be the Best Christmas Ever…

110 comments

  1. (OK, technically, I’m not officially an Associate Professor until the Trustees approve it in February, but the Dean said that worrying about that is sort of like worrying that an asteroid will destroy the Earth before then…)

  3. Congratulations! That’s most excellent news. You can now sleep at night (modulo asteroids).

    All I want for Christmas is my NSF grant… but that would be more of a, I dunno, Spring Equinox present, or perhaps a Memorial Day present. Until then it’s just stress.

    -Rob

  5. Sort of a nice Christmas present– congratulations.

    I think I may bring this up to my boss and ask him what I need to do to get tenure here. (Because, you know, I don’t get enough mockery in the workplace….)

  6. Oh, awesome! Now (February’s version of now) is the time to smoke whatever you’ve got! Because they can’t get rid of you! You’ve got TENURE!!

    Please get wasted on the drug of your choice (sugar is acceptable), come the actual occasion, and then spend 45 minutes posting and attempting badly to spell the word “tenure”.

  9. Please get wasted on the drug of your choice (sugar is acceptable)

    Wait… we’re not supposed to get wasted on sugar until we have tenure?

    Oops.

    Anyway, I suspect few people are surprised that Chad got tenure. What this does also mean is that he can read all those tenure-track assistant professor applications without needing to feel threatened… 🙂

    -Rob

  12. Congratulations, best wishes, and godspeed. Today a place to stand, tomorrow a faster vacuum pump, and by next Thursday your own one-cup coffee brewer with Kopi Luwak and junior faculty in the grinder. “8^>)

  22. Waiting until February is nothing. In my tenure decision, I was told the news in early November, and then informed that it wouldn’t really be official until July. That’s many more chances of a major meteor strike, you know, and by the time the letter from the Big Guys came, I’d pretty much forgotten to care.

    So, yeah, celebrate on your time, and bugger whatever schedule the bureaucrats are on.

  38. Congratulations!!! I guess you are no longer on the tenure track.

    (Like PZ above, I will also have to wait till July for my official confirmation…)

  42. Congratulations!

    You were amongst the first of us on rasfwr-j to earn your Doctorate (and coin the now-immmortal phrase, “That’s *Dr* ____, to you, punk!”; among the first to earn a faculty position, and now among the first to earn tenure. Congrats again on yet another trailblazing moment. 🙂

  44. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you and Kate both. We’re going to be at Boskone, let us take you out to dinner to celebrate. It may even be official by then….

    MKK

  46. Blogfather Scalzi said to come over here and whup a “Congrats” upside your head. I hear and obey.

    Congratulations! Time to put that alarm clock where it really goes – the circular file.

  47. Mazel Tov! It is weird how diffuse the process is. With your doctorate, you defend, people clap, and that’s that. With tenure, you’re told that later the board will do something so that at the start of the next fiscal year…. Anyway, congratulations again!

  83. Congratulations! To pass along what a sweet old lady said at the conclusion of an acquaintance’s defense, “Congratulations, Doctor. No sonofabitch can ever do that to you again.”

  87. Many congrats, Chad!

    The day after one of my committee members got tenure, I answered the phone in his lab, thus becoming the one who took the phone call that informed him that a university vehicle had just accidentally crushed his car in the faculty parking lot. Now, this fellow could get more than a little stressed out, so I waited for him to finish giving some instructions to a new student at the bench, and then broke the news to him. Instead of blowing up, though, he just smiled and said that he knew the university was well-enough insured to handle the problem.

    That’s when I knew what a big milestone tenure was! 🙂

  88. Congratulations!!! WOOHOO!!! I’ll down a Kiltlifter for you when I’m in Arizona in a couple weeks.

  90. Congratulations.

    Brings back the memories of my horrid experience on the subject at an Ivy League university. At the beginning of the winter semester which was supposed to be my first sabbatical after six years there, I got the horrible news in the mail, even though I had two and a half years left in the contract and I did not even know that they were voting on my case.

  94. Congratulations, Chad!

    But just for safety’s sake, wait until February to start coming into work in your pyjamas and telling people you would like to be known from now on as Madame Pompadour.

  96. Woohoo!

    Tonight’s party has officially switched from a “Day That Ends in ‘Y'” party to a “Chad has tenure” party.

    Note: While the Party Purpose variable is quantized, our hypothesis is that discrete variations in P.P. will not lead to discernable variation in empirical results (i.e. degree of hangover on the OMFG scale).

  99. Is it horrible that the title of this post keeps on bringing to mind a horrrible Ace of Base song?

  103. “Is it horrible that the title of this post keeps on bringing to mind a horrrible Ace of Base song?”

    No. Being reminded of a Spice Girls song, OTOH…

  104. Is it horrible that the title of this post keeps on bringing to mind a horrrible Ace of Base song?

    For you, probably. Since I somehow managed to miss the whole Ace of Base thing, I have no problem with it.

    I had in mind the recently acquired “All I Want” by the Weepies, part of the Christmas Tunes Experiment. While the actual title lack a “that,” there’s one in the chorus.

    Many thanks to everyone who has commented. It’s a kick to have so many people chiming in. And, hey, the first triple-digit comment thread on Uncertain Principles…

  105. Congrats to you. It is quite an accomplishment. I just found out the good news about my own tenure and promotion. It will be a very nice Christmas for me too.

  109. A Big Old British Congratulations and Merry Christmas! (I was tipped off by Kevin Drum of all people).

  110. Hello. Your friend John Scalzi said to congratulate you on your tenure. So congratulations on getting your tenure!!
    I’m not particularly sure what tenure is. I know it’s pretty prestigious, I learned that from ER.
    Anyway, that just proves I watch too much TV.
    Congrats again on tenure!

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