I know that I have been posting a lot lately, and depending on the day it is relationship angst or career angst. Here is some more of the latter.
I just got an e-mail informing me that one of my grant proposals has not been selected for funding. Of course that's disappointing, but I have gotten so pessimistic that I almost expect that each time. But I was really hoping for this one, first because I'm actually excited about the project and I think others will be also, and also because this was the last chance for funding before I begin the tenure evaluation. I have two more proposals pending and another one that I will be writing and submitting before the end of this month, but (1) I don't feel as optimistic about those proposals as I did about this one, and (2) the funding decisions will not be made until very late in the tenure evaluation process for me, so I may already be in trouble by that point. I have been so up and down with regard to what my prospects are for getting tenure and keeping my job versus having to look for a new one and uproot myself and my wife and move to God knows where yet again, or even not being able to get a job and being out of academia forever. I was feeling a little OK this week. I am struggling with the things that I am working on, but I have been feeling cautiously positive and am chipping away at things.
The thing is, this does not feel as devastating as previous rejections have. I don't know if that's because I have just really numbed myself, or if it's because I am still maintaining some hope and positive energy despite knowing that I will not have external funding going into the tenure decision. I just finished reading the reviewers' comments on the proposal, and oddly they are the most overwhelmingly positive evaluations that I remember receiving on grant proposals. The funding agency only had enough money to fund 10% of the proposals this year, though, so even if it was good, it wasn't better than 90% of the other proposals. But still, the positive comments feel good. I hope I can use them to maintain motivation and keep pushing forward. I'm really struggling.
Disappointed and Scared
Re: Disappointed and Scared
weary, as I've mentioned there is a coming financial shitstorm coming down for higher education.
The old rules- the definitions, even!- will be going out the window, including "tenure".
Of course I hope you get tenure. Even outside of tenure life goes on.
Some people won't survive this shitstorm, and some institutions won't survive it.
Your ancestors and mine didn't make it this far by getting selected out. By definition we are fighters and survivors.
It is in our very blood!
But yeah, I feel for ya. I guess I am supposed to say "Everything is going to be okay", but a more sincere thought would be: I honor you in your struggle.
Brotherly hugs.
The old rules- the definitions, even!- will be going out the window, including "tenure".
Of course I hope you get tenure. Even outside of tenure life goes on.
Some people won't survive this shitstorm, and some institutions won't survive it.
Your ancestors and mine didn't make it this far by getting selected out. By definition we are fighters and survivors.
It is in our very blood!
But yeah, I feel for ya. I guess I am supposed to say "Everything is going to be okay", but a more sincere thought would be: I honor you in your struggle.
Brotherly hugs.
Work is love made visible. -Kahlil Gibran
A person with a "why" can endure any "how". -Viktor Frankl
Which is better: to be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? -Skyrim
A person with a "why" can endure any "how". -Viktor Frankl
Which is better: to be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? -Skyrim
Re: Disappointed and Scared
I know that I have a lot to be thankful for that other people don't. I have a job. I have a wife who loves me. But I am struggling.
I realize that my whining about my tenure anxieties may be irritating to some of you, particularly if you aren't fortunate enough to have a job. It occurred to me today that those of you outside of academia might not understand the stakes. My therapist and my non-academic friends didn't. So here goes - you get one shot at going up for tenure. If you get it, you get a promotion, a raise in salary, and essentially permanent employment as long as you meet minimum standards of professional ethics (actually show up and do your job, don't sleep with your students, etc.).
If you don't get it - it's not just like not getting a promotion and you go back into the trenches and keep slogging away at your existing position. If you get denied, you lose your job. To be gracious, you get a one-year terminal appointment to look for another job. So in case anyone is thinking that I am bitching over the possibility of not getting a promotion - it is more insidious than that. I'm worried about losing my job. And then not being able to find another one, or at least having to go through a major upheaval that will involve yet again packing up and moving to a different city, state, etc.
Here's the dirty secret. I know that I'm a smart guy. I have a great academic pedigree. But at the end of the day, I have spent the last 20 years training to do a very specific thing that there aren't a whole lot of jobs out there for. Professors of chemistry (or really, in most fields) are not really in demand right now. Historically in general, positions only open up when someone dies, retires or is denied tenure (or leaves the university for their own reasons). These days, many universities (including my own) are actually cutting the number of full-time faculty by attrition, so even those rare openings are becoming rarer.
And it's not like I can successfully compete for any open Chemistry position - there are different subspecialties in chemistry. I'm a biochemist, so I could apply for a biochemistry or possibly an organic chemistry position but not an inorganic chemistry or physical chemistry position, for example (I lack the specialized experience to teach the upper level and graduate courses in those subdisciplines, just as the people in those areas lack the credentials to teach similar classes in mine). And if it is an institution where research is important, that can add even more narrowness to the search, because if they are not looking for the right "kind" of biochemist (in terms of how my research interests either mesh or conflict with other researchers already in their department), they won't hire me.
When I got my current position five years ago, it was a painful, demoralizing job search in which I applied to over 80 open positions nationwide, got three interviews and one offer, and ended up moving halfway across the country to a state and a city I had never considered living in to work at a university I had never heard of before applying for the job. I don't look forward to having to go through that again. I would love to be able to decide where I wanted to live and move there and have some hope at finding a job there.
I realize that my whining about my tenure anxieties may be irritating to some of you, particularly if you aren't fortunate enough to have a job. It occurred to me today that those of you outside of academia might not understand the stakes. My therapist and my non-academic friends didn't. So here goes - you get one shot at going up for tenure. If you get it, you get a promotion, a raise in salary, and essentially permanent employment as long as you meet minimum standards of professional ethics (actually show up and do your job, don't sleep with your students, etc.).
If you don't get it - it's not just like not getting a promotion and you go back into the trenches and keep slogging away at your existing position. If you get denied, you lose your job. To be gracious, you get a one-year terminal appointment to look for another job. So in case anyone is thinking that I am bitching over the possibility of not getting a promotion - it is more insidious than that. I'm worried about losing my job. And then not being able to find another one, or at least having to go through a major upheaval that will involve yet again packing up and moving to a different city, state, etc.
Here's the dirty secret. I know that I'm a smart guy. I have a great academic pedigree. But at the end of the day, I have spent the last 20 years training to do a very specific thing that there aren't a whole lot of jobs out there for. Professors of chemistry (or really, in most fields) are not really in demand right now. Historically in general, positions only open up when someone dies, retires or is denied tenure (or leaves the university for their own reasons). These days, many universities (including my own) are actually cutting the number of full-time faculty by attrition, so even those rare openings are becoming rarer.
And it's not like I can successfully compete for any open Chemistry position - there are different subspecialties in chemistry. I'm a biochemist, so I could apply for a biochemistry or possibly an organic chemistry position but not an inorganic chemistry or physical chemistry position, for example (I lack the specialized experience to teach the upper level and graduate courses in those subdisciplines, just as the people in those areas lack the credentials to teach similar classes in mine). And if it is an institution where research is important, that can add even more narrowness to the search, because if they are not looking for the right "kind" of biochemist (in terms of how my research interests either mesh or conflict with other researchers already in their department), they won't hire me.
When I got my current position five years ago, it was a painful, demoralizing job search in which I applied to over 80 open positions nationwide, got three interviews and one offer, and ended up moving halfway across the country to a state and a city I had never considered living in to work at a university I had never heard of before applying for the job. I don't look forward to having to go through that again. I would love to be able to decide where I wanted to live and move there and have some hope at finding a job there.
Re: Disappointed and Scared
And right now, I am very much struggling with writing a manuscript that I need to submit for publication to a journal. This paper should have been published months ago, but it's not done. Because I've been avoiding it, and I don't want to do it. I think it is shit. My graduate and postdoctoral advisors would never have written up this result and would never publish in the journal I'm going to submit this to - but I need this paper. I have only gotten two papers published since starting this job, and neither of them were primarily based on work done in my lab - one was a collaboration and one was a review on my postdoctoral work. I have been painfully, embarassingly unproductive. And I am ashamed and scared about it. It's not for lack of work getting done. I have made mistakes. And there have been a lot of circumstances beyond my control. But I'm not going to make excuses - I have fucked up and not followed through in certain ways, right up to the continued avoidance/procrastination of just finishing and submitting this paper already.
There is a huge psychological block that I know will be released when I get this paper done. I have two more draft/outline manuscripts to follow this one that I know will be easier and take less time to write. Why is this so hard? What am I afraid of? I'm afraid that it will suck. That it won't be accepted. Or that it will be too late. I feel humiliated for being so unproductive. So many experiments that failed. Exciting results that we got scooped on by competitors because we couldn't finish them as fast as bigger, better-funded groups. So many unfunded grant proposals. Stuck in a cycle of - can't get funding to do the experiments I want to do to get the papers that I need to get the grants funded to do the experiments.... literally the biggest criticism on all of the unfunded proposals I have submitted is not the science - it is the small number of publications I have in this field and the amount of time between publications.. .and the longer the dry spell the worse it gets.
I know that I can do this. I have done it many times before. Not as the "boss", but as the person actually doing the experiments and writing the papers. Don't get me wrong, I'm writing and rewriting this one, because the draft by the student who did the work was, to be charitable, pretty bad. It feels a little scarier being the "boss" for some reason. And my confidence is shot for a lot of different reasons. I have no confidence that anything in my life will work out at this point - research, tenure, my marriage, improving my physical health.
I promised myself I would finish this paper this weekend. Of course, I have been making that promise for weeks. Will tonight be any different? Will I push myself to stay up all night to finish it just to get it done? I pulled two all-nighters last month to finish grant proposals. But in that case, it was a hard external deadline that I had to meet, that I was running up against due to procrastination, avoidance and perfectionism. I am not getting paid to work over the summer. But I still go to work every day anyway. And I work at home in the evenings. I was in my office for four hours on Saturday working on this manuscript and working on it for at least four hours at home this afternoon and tonight. What the fuck is wrong with me?
There is a huge psychological block that I know will be released when I get this paper done. I have two more draft/outline manuscripts to follow this one that I know will be easier and take less time to write. Why is this so hard? What am I afraid of? I'm afraid that it will suck. That it won't be accepted. Or that it will be too late. I feel humiliated for being so unproductive. So many experiments that failed. Exciting results that we got scooped on by competitors because we couldn't finish them as fast as bigger, better-funded groups. So many unfunded grant proposals. Stuck in a cycle of - can't get funding to do the experiments I want to do to get the papers that I need to get the grants funded to do the experiments.... literally the biggest criticism on all of the unfunded proposals I have submitted is not the science - it is the small number of publications I have in this field and the amount of time between publications.. .and the longer the dry spell the worse it gets.
I know that I can do this. I have done it many times before. Not as the "boss", but as the person actually doing the experiments and writing the papers. Don't get me wrong, I'm writing and rewriting this one, because the draft by the student who did the work was, to be charitable, pretty bad. It feels a little scarier being the "boss" for some reason. And my confidence is shot for a lot of different reasons. I have no confidence that anything in my life will work out at this point - research, tenure, my marriage, improving my physical health.
I promised myself I would finish this paper this weekend. Of course, I have been making that promise for weeks. Will tonight be any different? Will I push myself to stay up all night to finish it just to get it done? I pulled two all-nighters last month to finish grant proposals. But in that case, it was a hard external deadline that I had to meet, that I was running up against due to procrastination, avoidance and perfectionism. I am not getting paid to work over the summer. But I still go to work every day anyway. And I work at home in the evenings. I was in my office for four hours on Saturday working on this manuscript and working on it for at least four hours at home this afternoon and tonight. What the fuck is wrong with me?