Tenure Book

In my university promotion and tenure is celebrated by having faculty select a book for the library collection.   It is then bookplated to commemorate your accomplishment.  This book is usually one that has shaped your worldview and you are asked to write a brief statement about why you chose it.  There is also a photo of you holding the book and then a reception for all honorees for the current year.

The reception is next month and I am behind on my statement and photo.  After much consideration (asking me to pick one book that has shaped my worldview is cruel) I chose Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution.

Here is what I wrote:

I was not prepared for this book when I first read it in my early twenties. When I picked the book up I was not expecting to finish it.  I was not yet a mother and did not believe I would find much in it that was relevant to my life.  I was very wrong. I swallowed the book whole. While I had read a fair amount of critical feminist literature by that time, I had never encountered a text that so eloquently interspersed personal narrative with historical and literary analysis.  My eyes were opened to motherhood as an institution and, several years later when I became a mother, they were opened again to how that institution affected my experience of mothering and my position in the world.  However it took many more years for me to realize the ultimate influence of this book on my life and my work as a scholar.

Now I just need a picture of me holding it.  I wonder if I should use my worn and tattered copy? 

RBOC: Last Week of Classes Edition

• I taught my last class of the semester on Tuesday night. They were a great group and I'm sorry to see them go.
• I'm actually kind of sorry to see the semester go. I only had to teach one class and it was one I've taught several times before. I know I'm not going to get such a light teaching load again in a very long time.
• This semester was also chock-filled with drama and I'm not sorry to see that go.
• Unfortunately I don't think its going anywhere anytime soon.
• I was in my office with my door open for a little over 2 hours this afternoon. In that time I got 7 "visitors." Only three of them were invited. Not that I wasn't happy to see the others but really this is why I work at home or with the door closed.
• I've been using an exercise ball as a chair at work and at home the entire semester. This week my work ball sprung a slow leak.
• Students like to buy me food (and sometimes coffee). I'm not really sure why that is. Trust me I look well-fed.
• This is also the last week of my Unravelling class. It was an interesting experience and I'm glad I did it. I'm toying with the idea of another photography ecourse but once that is more focused on technique. Now that I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of taking photographs, I'd like to know more about what I'm doing.
• I'm also toying with the idea of auditing an advanced statistics course next spring. This is not as much fun but I think it may be necessary. There is a statistical technique that was not taught when I was in graduate school but is now routinely taught. The questions I want to ask can't be answered without this technique.
• Last year I thought I would take it super-easy this summer, since it would be my post-tenure summer, but now it looks like I'll be crazy busy at least until July.
• BTW, the tenure letter finally arrived.

It's All Over Except For The Certified Letter

Wednesday I got the notification that my tenure decision has sailed through the Provost and the Chancellor. All that has to happen now is for the Board of Trustees to rubber-stamp it and send me the official notification--through certified mail. That should happen sometime this month.

The tenure process is so long and drawn out that each milestone seems uneventful. I barely mustered a smile when I read the email (it didn't help that I was courting a migraine). However it seems this particular milestone is the one that "counts." The head of my department send an email to all faculty stating that both myself and my colleague are now tenured. I've been congratulated several times over--through email and in person--ever since.

Don't get me wrong, it is great to have job security (especially in today's climate) and to have the support of my colleagues. I treasure both and I love my job but the news is anti-climatic and it is hard to celebrate. My life is no different from one day to the next. It feels less like an event has happened and more like an event has been avoided. Nonevents (not losing your job) are hard to celebrate.

It will be interesting to see how much and in what ways tenure makes a difference in my life. I do believe it will, as I have seen it with others, but I don't think it affects you the way you think it will when you are working towards getting it.

In other news, Angel is supposed to be coming tomorrow to move out the last of his possessions. So April begins with me officially becoming an empty-nester with tenure. It seems like I should now have enough time to do something really remarkable. Is it wrong that all I feel like doing is lying in the sun with a Guinness and my hubby?

First Step

The first step in creating the tenure packet is done. The section that describes my entire research life is being sent out for external review this week. My chair has roped 6 professors from across the nation to provide a written review. At the moment I'm just happy it is off my desk.

And although I'm still crazy busy with the Challenge grant I've had to go on to Step 2. Pumpkin nominated me for our school's Outstanding Teacher Award. If I want my nomination to be considered I need to put together an award application. Basically it is everything I will need to have in the teaching section of my tenure packet. So its really a win-win situation. Best-case scenario is my teaching section is completed early AND I get the award--worst case scenario is my teaching section is completed early.

Did I mention I despise writing my teaching philosophy? I can talk about my teaching until the cows come home but if you ask me to describe my philosophy I look like a deer caught in the headlights. Truth be told I'm not too keen on describing my research philosophy either.

Packet Work

Twice a month I meet with one of my colleagues to work on our tenure packets. We both need to put them in next Fall. It was actually my colleague's (I'll call him Big Daddy) idea to schedule regular meetings to keep us on task. It's been working out rather nicely. Being the rule-follower that I am, I feel the need to have something done--some product--each time we meet. He, on the other hand, is never prepared. So often our meetings turn into working meetings and we hide ourselves from phones and email and work quietly (well most of the time) together for about an hour and a half. This means I'm already making considerable progress but there is still a long road ahead.

One of the things I need to do is describe my research life pre-tenure track. This means rehashing what I worked on for over seventeen years. It amazes me how much I've forgotten, like entire grants. Literally I spent years of my life working on research projects that seemed so critically important at the time and now I'm like--oh right we did do that project, didn't we? So its turning out to be a rather weird trip down memory lane. It is also interesting to see all the seedlings of the work I do now in the work I did then. It feels like I'm in an entirely new place, research agenda-wise, but all the roots are firmly in my old work.

I find this to be an aspect of aging that I enjoy--being able to look back at different versions of young Brigindo and trace the connections, all the twists and turns, to this Brigindo. With hindsight it makes so much sense but looking forward is another story completely.

The Packet

This is the year before I put my packet in. I came to my institution as an Associate Professor without tenure, which means I have a 5 year contract. I'm starting my 3rd year; need to put my packet in the beginning of my 4th year; it will take them a year to officially decide if I "pass" or not; I'll have a year to find another job if I don't.

To get this job I answered an ad that seemed like it was written specifically for me. Or at least the me I was in my old job--not the me I wanted to be. I applied as a back-up. At the end of the first interview I found out it was a targeted search. There already was another "me" that the ad was written for and they had every intention of hiring him. However they really liked me. They were also interested in the research agenda that the "new me" wanted to pursue. So our then Department Head, who is an amazing recruiter, talked the Dean into hiring both of us--him as him (or old me) and me as new me.

This made everybody happy.

Now Old Me and New Me both have to get their packets together this year. We decided to meet every other week and share the pain. Today was our first meeting and ex-Department Head sat in with us to help. He will meet with us periodically to mentor us through the process.

It's a great department and I love the people. I know everyone wants us both to succeed and--at the risk of sounding big-headed--we both rock. That is, we both have a ton of research experience and very healthy CVs and shouldn't have a lot of trouble getting through the whole process. But we're both perfectionists and ambitious and the type of people that need to do it 100% if we're going to do it at all.

Today I found out just how much work this is going to take. I need to write up and document every frickin' thing on my CV, which is A LOT (I know an embarrassment of riches but still). I've been publishing and writing grants since 1993 and now I have to narrate and document all of that. On top of that there are things I really really want to accomplish this year to move my new research agenda forward. So basically I have to document and defend my old research life so I'll be allowed to continue on my new research life. Actually it is more like I need to use my past research life to prove I'm capable of making the same progress in my new research life. It's all good...but the year was feeling busy enough before today's meeting.