I am married to an assistant professor in my field, and we spent the past academic year searching for tenure-track positions together. But I've also been searching more widely for any position, even one that takes me away from him.
I defended my dissertation last year and have worked since then as a visiting assistant professor at the major research university where my husband, T.J., is on the tenure track. The visiting job was offered to me solely because of my attachment to him, and was not renewable beyond the end of the 2005-6 academic year.
When our last column appeared, I was headed for Faraway State University for an on-campus interview. It seemed to go well, but I didn't take much comfort in that, as I had thought that other on-campus interviews in previous years had gone well, but they hadn't led to a job offer.
My research is at the periphery of a subfield at the periphery of my field. I think of my graduate work as an extended independent study, where I repeatedly rebuffed my advisers' attempts to keep me from doing things the way I wanted to. I love my research, but I had come to realize that my CV would not yield many interviews. So when the interview at Faraway State resulted in a tenure-track offer, I was dumbfounded.
My visiting appointment had required me to teach classes far beyond my expertise. At Faraway State, by contrast, I would teach courses squarely in my subfield, receive research support and a computer, and participate in the life of a department that selected me on my merit, not because I am my husband's wife. It would be the beginning of an independent career.
There is no possibility of a tenure-track line for me at T.J.'s institution: I simply don't fit his department, and, while the lack of fit doesn't distress me because I don't fit the majority of the departments in my field, it clearly bothers his department.
Likewise, Faraway State did not come up with anything for T.J., so the alternatives seemed crystal clear: Either I begin my career halfway across the country from him, leading to a commuter marriage and a windfall for the airlines, or I stay at Big Moo U and inquire politely about adjunct teaching.
While my relatives in my home country saw nothing wrong with the latter arrangement (a woman stays with her man without question), the only reason I considered staying was because it would allow us to start a family.
In the end, we decided to put that off for a couple of years, during which time we would both apply for positions at our respective institutions. T.J. would probably have to consider jobs beneath his current position in the academic hierarchy, which he claims doesn't bother him, but it does distress me.
The decision was all but made, and we had begun comparing airline rates, when the department head at Big Moo, whom we hadn't even informed yet about my offer, let me know that she had asked the dean to create a three-year lecturership for me. Pending approval, that would mean a larger teaching load than at Faraway State and no prospect of a tenure-track job, but it would increase our chances of having a family and divert large sums of money from one institution (the airlines) to another (the U.S. Department of Education, which holds T.J.'s student loans).
My four committee members, all wise middle-aged men, with and without beards, were divided 3-to-1 in favor of the tenure-track job at Faraway State.
"I watch this every year," warned a full professor in my minor field. "Women accept all sorts of temporary positions in the hope of landing a tenure-track job, which never leads anywhere. Never give up a tenure-earning line for a temporary position. I wouldn't do it."
Clear enough.
"You should go for at least a year," another committee member advised, "to have something on your CV that would tell everybody that you were able to land a tenure-track job right after you finished."
Also clear.
The only committee member who suggested taking the temporary position was my adviser, who thinks that in the current fiscal climate, the arrangement at Big Moo is as good as it gets.
While my relatives, who chime in from time to time, are worried about what T.J. thinks, he is trying hard not to influence my decision. It is nevertheless obvious which way he is leaning.
Perhaps, this once, I should follow the majority advice of my advisers. They seem logical. And their words struck a deep fear in me that if I choose anything but a tenure-track line, I am killing my career in its crib. By taking the lecturer's position, I would give a signal to T.J.'s institution, and perhaps to every institution that would ever want to look at me, that I am willing to follow him, and there is really no dual-career problem after all.
My committee members' advice lacks all sentimentality: They consider positions and institutions based on an academic hierarchy they have learned to successfully navigate. They gave me their best advice, but can I take it?
My reasons for not taking the job at Faraway State are mostly emotional, based on factors that my committee members find hard to comprehend. They understand the dual-career predicament; some of them have gone through it themselves. What they do not understand is my desire to pamper institutions more than I do myself.
In other words, even though T.J. wrote in our first column that one of our strategies is not to be sentimental, I find that I do want to make a long-term commitment to a department when I accept an offer. Why take a tenure-track position knowing that I would try to leave as soon as I could because it was not near T.J. or because my need to start a family became more urgent? Would that be fair to Faraway State?
"Who cares?" replied one my committee members, astonished that I was even raising the point. "When institutions screw you over a few times, you'll get over these ideas."
The tenure-track job is a beginning. It will get me closer to T.J. in the end than the short-term solution that keeps me close to him now but may also effectively put us on different career paths for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps, the committee in my head responds. But the timing of the temporary position and the chance to be near T.J. coincides with impending biological restrictions I face in starting a family. It did not occur to me to have children while writing my dissertation. So, if I take the Faraway offer, I have two options available: Have children on the tenure track with a long-distance marriage, or have children after I get tenure, which would put me in my 40's. While the former option decreases my chances of getting tenure (not to mention the absurdity of being a married single parent), the latter decreases my chances of ever having children.
Recently, I have been fascinated with stories of women in their 60's giving birth, which just goes to show that something in me is meticulously sorting through every alternative.
So, off to the tenure track or on to the mommy track? Even if I was prone to taking the advice of my committee members, that is a question no four-man committee can answer for me.
