It was just over a year ago that I received the final, official letter telling me that I had earned tenure. In that year, I’ve happily answered a lot of questions about the process, questions people ask in hopes that the answers will relieve some of their own anxieties about the process. The years between obtaining a job and earning tenure are stressful. No one denies that, but in talking with people about the process, I’ve realized how little discussion there is about the deeper effects of such stress on our lives, bodies, relationships, and careers.
In the summer of 2005, the summer after my second year on the job, I started seeing a therapist to help me handle the stresses of the tenure process. Before then, I was literally making myself sick every few months. My stomach would tighten and turn to stone. Soon after, I’d start vomiting. Anyone who was reading my blog at the time will remember random entries where I described getting sick. For awhile, I thought I was just getting food poisoning, but can anyone eat that much bad food so consistently? I soon realized that I was making myself sick, and I had to do something about it.
I met my partner in my second year of graduate school, and he’s been there for me from the stress of my MA exams through the dissertation and into the job. I could and can talk to him about anything, but whenever I’d start to talk about everything swirling in my head about my fears and anxieties, he would worry just as much as I would. That’s when I realized that I needed professional help. With the benefits of the health insurance that came with my job, I found a therapist easily. He had a PhD, which was important to me not because I believed someone with a different degree could not help me but because I wanted to work with someone who had been through the same educational process I had.
And we talked. About everything. I voiced every concern that ever entered my head about my job and career. I raised every question. Whether it seemed major or minor, I threw it at him so we could process it together. We meet weekly for a year and then biweekly after that. We stopped our sessions a couple of months after I received that official letter granting me tenure. Throughout that entire time and since, I never vomited once. I might have earned tenure without having gone to therapy, but the process would have been much, much more intense for me (and my partner).
I should be clear that my anxiety had nothing to do with the specifics of my particular job at my particular institution. I am sure I would have felt similar stresses wherever I had chosen to move. In the end, I still think I ended up in the best job for me, but that does not mean I have always had an easy time handling job demands and expectations.
Amidst the questions I’ve been getting over the past year about the tenure process, I’ve sometimes heard comments like, “you make it look so easy.” That is when I realized I should now be more upfront about how it was not so easy and what exactly I did to handle the difficulties I was facing. I never talked about being in therapy on my blog. I was afraid that word would get out to those who would be judging me when I applied for tenure, and they would think I could not handle the basic demands of my job. Whether that fear was realistic or not, I felt it and kept quiet. Now that I am past that judgment stage, I want to speak about it so that others living it right now might have an easier time doing what they need to do to take care of themselves.
In some ways, the subtle message I received throughout the pre-tenure years was that I just had to do it. If I just kept writing and stayed on course, I would be fine. That might be true for many people, but it was not true for me, and I know it’s not true for everyone. Don’t be ashamed if the stress is getting to you. If you need help, get it. Maybe a therapist will help. Maybe you need the assistance of anti-anxiety medications or anti-depressants. Seeing a professional for guidance is an option that just might help.
Of course, therapy won’t work for everyone like it worked for me, and there are lots of other things people can do to better handle the difficulties of the tenure process. Let us know in the comments what has worked for you or those you know. After all, very few of us can do it alone.
(Photo by Flickr user bark and licensed through creative commons)
Comments
1. Jennifer - January 25, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Good for you!!! I wonder if the stigma associated with therapy is less or worse in academia - on the one hand, an awful lot of PhDs are the kind of insecure over-achievers who may judge someone perceived as being 'weak' and asking for that kind of help, but on the other hand, many are also liberal thinkers who understand the importance of asking for help when you need it. Either way, I understand why you wouldn't want to talk about it before getting tenure but am really glad that you are being open about it now. I've had similar conversations where someone comments on how (insert positive characteristic) I am now and I try to be clear that getting to where I am has taken a lot of work. I think people are sometimes surprised when I first mention therapy but then are often curious, as if they've thought about it but haven't had the nerve to go through with it. I also often tell people, when they are stressed about issues that keep coming up over and over, that they should talk to a therapist and I try to explain that it doesn't mean I think they have deep psychological problems but that a therapist can listen to them and help them sort things out in a way that their friends simply can't, as well-intentioned as those friends might be. I just don't think the stigmas will go away until more 'normal' people start being more open about their experiences in therapy...
2. cheryl ball - January 26, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Nels, thank you so much for writing this post. I want to second everything you've said and add my own experience to support your post.
I just got my un/official letter (from the college, still has to go to the provost but that's usually just a formality) last Friday and since then, I've been trying to figure out how and where to write about how out of sorts I felt during that last semester. I was totally fine, confident.. cocky even... about my impending tenure case until the first day of last semester when I woke up and vomited. I thought it was teaching nerves. Then, when I did it two more times that week, I thought I had purchased a bad/tainted batch of coffee (cuz I would get sick immediately after drinking half a cup). I threw the coffee out, then got the flu (or something? could have just been nerves?) the next week, and then realized about four weeks into the term that I was making myself sick. My tenure portfolio was due in 6 weeks and counting, at that point. I started taking Pepcid AC for the first time in my life, and it helped tremendously with the stomach issues.
But Pepcid didn't help with the newly onset vertigo (which made me not be able to work out, a good stress reliever) or the constant feeling that I needed to vomit (it seemed like an emotional response at that point), or with -- what was worse than all the health issues -- the complete paranoia I began experiencing the moment I turned in my portfolio. At MLA, I ran into John Schilb who gave me some fantastic advice I wish I'd had two months earlier. He got this advice from his department secretary when he went up for tenure. She said, "John, when you walk down the hallway, just remember that the only person thinking about your tenure case is you." I, on the other hand, was convinced that all of my colleagues were trash talking me in the hallways, which in retrospect is absolutely the most ridiculous, unfounded, paranoid thing I could have done to myself. But that was just it: going through tenure made me go out of my head.
What also didn't help was all of my colleagues assuring me that I'd sail through the tenure process. While that may have been true, I was still under the gun to get my materials together and present them in a way that helped them read my file. (Nevermind the digital aspect to my particular materials, which, frankly, only made my paranoia a little more present.) I was an emotional and physical wreck, and I was not acting myself for the majority of the semester because of the stress. And I'm usually pretty good with stress. I spent a lot of time in December apologizing to people for stupid things I'd said and done during the previous months.
Like you said, these reactions aren't university specific. I'd spent the last 3 years telling everyone who would listen about how humane and wonderful my school's tenure guidelines are. And how much I freakin loved working at my school because our department was awesome, and they seemed to get my work and appreciate it, and they were all pretty open to conversations across disciplines (and between departments), which made me extremely happy, and lucky. All of that is true; and it always has been true for me in the three years I've been at this school. But I doubted it all during the tenure process, so much so that I considered going on the market just to get away. (Thankfully that spell only lasted about 24 hours.)
It's not the guidelines that are the problem (although I acknowledge that some school's guidelines are teh suck), it's the process that's a bitch. Regardless of how 'set' you are in your tenure case, once you turn in your materials you imagine that your colleagues are responsible for secretly judging your work, which means judging you, which is an incredibly awkward and inhumane position to be put in when your job is on the line. And that is why I now am no longer a fan of tenure, which I suspected I felt before this process but didn't have any touchstones for arguing against it until I went through it. There has to be a more humane process to ensure contractual employment and academic freedom... but that's for another post.
In the meantime, I wait covetously for the final letter, but since mid-January I've been sleeping without Excedrin PM, I haven't taken any Pepcid AC, my vertigo is subsiding, and I'm back at the gym and eating healthier than ever. I don't feel any different yet, but I'm told it'll take a few months for all the changes to settle in emotionally. I'm ready. And I'm ready to start talking about the process with others (both the digital and the emotional) because, well, like you said, none of us should do it alone.
3. Nels P. Highberg - January 26, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Cheryl, thanks for such a rich description of what you've been feeling. I kept nodding from the second paragraph on. I have to agree especially with your thoughts on how stressful it was to hear colleagues say that you'd have no problem and sail through. My thought whenever I heard that was, "But you know nothing about the specifics of my teaching or my scholarship." I appreciated the sentiment, but I will admit that it didn't help because I'd just end up focusing on what they didn't know and how what they didn't know might be interpreted. A big part of that was because someone at my school was denied tenure, and I realized that I had a complete misconception about him. I worried that people had the same misconceptions about me.
There are other posts we could write about the after-effects. I remember an incredible euphoria for a few months followed by an odd depression that others told me was somewhat common. Kind of like, "Oh, gee, now what?"
The thing about the tenure process and the job search is that the same analytical and critical skills that got us this far are the same ones that will drive us crazy as we over-scrutinize everything.
4. Nels P. Highberg - January 26, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Jennifer, I think the stigma definitely varies. Most people I told were great about it. Most of them were either also in therapy or had been. But there were a couple of people who did seem stunned and unsure how to respond, which is further proof that those of us who can talk about it should talk about it.
5. Kristin Arola - January 26, 2010 at 06:09 pm
God bless ya'll. Sometimes I feel like a middle-class whiner for bitching so much about the tenure process, but then I realize it's having material consequences on my life, relationships, ability to feel joy, etc. I hope to someday write a reflective piece on how I got tenure. For now, I'll just trust that it's supposed to be hard and try to stop imaging how joyful my life would be if I had a 9-5 job (I can chart how I'm feeling about the process with how often I visit Monster in a week) and/or lived off the land. And, yes, I have a fabulous therapist but still, my nights are filled w/ anxiety dreams. This process is a bitch.
6. Nels - January 27, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Kristin, I did that, too! I was reading job ads for the kinds of non-academic jobs I applied for when I first went on the job market. I wanted to be ready to leave if I didn't get it. The process is horrible, and you're not alone.
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.