{"id":2962,"date":"2008-09-22T09:51:50","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T09:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/09\/22\/how-to-get-tenure-stop-worryin\/"},"modified":"2008-09-22T09:51:50","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T09:51:50","slug":"how-to-get-tenure-stop-worryin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/09\/22\/how-to-get-tenure-stop-worryin\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your must-read academic link of the week is today’s Inside Higher Ed<\/cite> article by Gary Lewandoski, with the provocative title: Stop Trying to Get Tenure and Start Trying to Enjoy Yourself<\/a>. His thesis is pretty much clear from the title:<\/p>\n

\n

When I started my own tenure-track position I had the same questions. I perused published sources and quizzed colleagues to gain insight. I believed that by identifying the right steps to take, people to meet, ways to teach, scholarship to pursue, committees to seek out, and committees to avoid, I would bring clarity to the ambiguity of the tenure process. Unfortunately, my desire to cobble together a magical checklist was still plagued by a fundamental problem. My approach made getting tenure the primary goal.<\/p>\n

On the surface, this is perfectly reasonable. Tenure provides job and financial security, as well as the ability to take risks in one’s scholarship and the opportunity to help shape the future of one’s institution. Yet, I believe a superior approach is to get a tenure-track position and then immediately remove the idea of “getting tenure” from your daily (or perhaps even moment by moment) thought process. That’s right. Getting tenure should not be your primary goal (though admittedly this is secretly a “how-to get tenure” article). Instead, your goal should be to follow your interests, your passion, your curiosity, and your creativity. In other words, you should follow all of the things that got you into this field in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to justify this from both experience and psychology research, so you know it’s good.<\/p>\n

This is excellent advice, though it’s unfortunately the sort of advice that’s a lot easier to appreciate from this side of the tenure review process. Still, if you’re on the tenure track, read it, and think about whether you can apply it to your own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your must-read academic link of the week is today’s Inside Higher Ed article by Gary Lewandoski, with the provocative title: Stop Trying to Get Tenure and Start Trying to Enjoy Yourself. His thesis is pretty much clear from the title: When I started my own tenure-track position I had the same questions. I perused published… Continue reading How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}