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[drothar]

I have been adjuncting for a little over a year at a small-ish research university.  I recognize the hope of "teaching your way to a permanent position" as a fool's game have been focused on publishing and have been having my most prolific year ever (three papers in the can for the year, with time hopefully for one or two more--- for my area, this is on par with the rate of publishing done by people who get tenure at the   self-proclaimed "Top Ten departments".  I realize that area and impact mean a lot, but I publish in good venues and pub count is the first measure preferred by busy SC members.)  The teaching they give me has broadened my portfolio a bit and has included upper division and graduate courses.  My course evaluations have been excellent,  so I will solicit my teaching letter from the local Dept Chair when I do a full nationalized job search this coming year.

The trouble is----  this has largely been made possible by the financial support of my wife. Originally this was "The Plan".  But now, the wife has grown impatient and now believes that it is very unlikely for me to get a professor position, ever.  She is getting really angry about this, with frequent catty comments like "What are you writing?  Do they pay you for that?" and "why do you waste your time teaching instead of talking to so-and-so at GigantoTech?",  and big-old-nasty "you're a selfish failure in denial!!!" fights once or twice a week.

It's not like we're short on money - you could say we're scraping by on six figures a year.  It has more to do with her sincerely believing that I will never be gainfully employed and that I will always be writing papers at home, teaching part time, chasing a dream that passed long ago.  Her ideas about gender roles,  and her feeling that she can't take risks  in her career because I've taken such gigantic risks with mine play lesser but significant roles.

The thing is, I would not be adjuncting if it had not been for an unstable-solution to the two-body problem that we chose based on her well-compensated permanent position at a F500 company in this city. I feel like I took a huge risk leaving the postdoc track before my peers to come here for a research lab that didn't pan out (and possibly that job might never exist again), and now she wants me to go into "anything else" because she is "stressed out". Well, I don't want her to suffer and be stressed out. But I don't want to make a decision that I will regret for the rest of my life because she is stressed out this summer.

I've tried to make her believe in "The Plan" again, but to little avail.  If I've written a lot of papers,  well, she thinks that it's too little too late. If I point out that most of my peers took 2.5-4 years of postdocs get jobs at Top 10 departments (and I am hardly shooting so narrowly!), well,  she thinks I blew my chances early on and should move on now.

It's really quite a pain.  Any suggestions or sympathy?

[comic_book_guy]

Chocolatechip,

I actually have the opposite problem, i.e. a spouse who doesn't want me to give up, though at times I've thought I should. (Fortunately, I'm in a full-time contract faculty position now and lack of income isn't a problem.) Nonetheless, I do feel your pain, as we both want stability at this point. She's a data manager for a nonprofit arts organization, so she, at least, has portable skills and can go nearly anywhere I can land a permanent position.

My wife does, however, understand the toughness and (on occasion) seeming randomness of my field, which is actually tougher than most, and has urged me to be patient, keep publishing, and keep applying.

From your post it sounds like you've been doing just that--you've got good teaching experience, are solidly publishing, and are otherwise doing what you're supposed to do. No one is guaranteed a tenure-line position, of course (even those with connections and high-falutin' degrees), but if you've only been adjuncting for a year, it seems as though some patience is in order--on your part and your spouse's.

It also sounds like you're from two distinct cultures--you from academia, she from the business world. The two worlds rarely mix, and I've found that people from each culture do not often understand one another. Try explaining it this way: just as unpaid internships and volunteer work can be valuable credentials in getting a corporate or nonprofit job, publications and teaching experience can also help in getting that academic position you crave. You are, as they say, "paying your dues," which, in our world, takes a little longer.

Best of luck to you on this year's job hunt...and may the arguments end swiftly, with champagne and an expensive dinner to celebrate.

[dr_dre]

I think these situations are always negotiations. Often, nonacademic SOs have unrealistic expectations of this process, so sometimes describing things clearly to them, repeatedly, can help.

Still, I have to wonder if there aren't bigger issues at stake in your situation. I wonder if you might not benefit from couples' counseling? My SO is an accountant, but would rather see me happily puttering at an adjunct job than miserable in a cubicle. I think you both might do well to get into a system where you could have a forum in which to discuss your feelings as rationally as possible. If there's that much animosity and anxiety embedded in the relationship, I would be worried that even when you do find a permanent job, it might not erase those feelings.

Best of luck with it all.

[drothar]

Thanks for the replies.

As I see it, the main problems are that:

She really is very stressed out.  We just had a baby, and during the summer, I am staying home to take care of it while I write. That's working out well (some cute stories about phone calls with coauthors who got to hear the kid burp, etc).  But,  my wife is overwhelmed with simultaneously being the breadwinner and the breastfeeder.  She feels that taking care of the kid is causing her to fall behind at work,  which terrifies her because I am not providing a safety net for her income.  The thing is, the positions available that would fix that situation immediately would (1) not bring in more than 60% of her income (2) be the kind of grunt hacking where I would be miserable (3) I would be flagged as a flight-risk by any competent interviewer.

Also, her pessimism is not entirely unfounded.  Basically, my career has had wild ups and downs, but the constant has been tension with her desire for stability.  When I didn't get a permanent job after two years of postdoctoral work, she switched to this view that I will never get a professorship (despite positive indicators like multiple dissertation awards and publishing in good journals post-graduation).  Nothing I have said or done since has really convinced her otherwise.  I suspect that only job offers will do.

Anyway,  those postdoc years were not up to my graduate work (LDR stress and an overconfident zeal for hard problems).  I did publish solid work in those years, but not as much as I should have.  The move to her town threw my whole 2006 for a loop, and that's just a black hole on the CV.

So I've got three sub-par years going up to 2007. I probably need to get a few more good years like 2007 behind me before I can be taken seriously again.  And she can't bear the thought of waiting that long for me to bring in a salary.

[dr_dre]

A baby? Congratulations on that and best of luck with everything. Perhaps people in your field could help you assess your career options?

[drothar]

The advice of senior people in my field is all over the map. 

My co-authors say if I should just apply, apply, apply. "If you of all people don't get a job, there's no justice." But I doubt there is, and  of course they want to believe their coauthor is doing good work and is worth hiring.

Some of the senior guys at my adjunct institution think I should hang it up and go into software - pretty standard advice to adjuncts. 

The very careful ones say "two body problems are called problems for a reason"

[kitmonk]

Let me see if I've got this right:  You agreed to pass up a good career opportunity for you in order to allow her to pursue a career opportunity for herself.  Great.  But now fair's fair, and she needs to live up to her end of the deal, i.e. giving you the cushion you need to take the necessary steps towards the academic job you're hoping for.

Obviously, we're only getting your side of the story here, but it seems you're doing all the right things: taking on a major share of the parenting responsibilities, doing the right things to make yourself marketable in the fall, etc.  Maybe presenting it to her like a business agreement would help?  Or maybe, as someone else suggested, couples therapy. 

But whatever solution you come up with, the answer definitely is NOT "Do everything her way all the time and take a job that will make you miserable even though it isn't actually financially essential for you to do this."  I'd have different advice if your family were in financial trouble, but it's not, so you've got wiggle room to get what you need.


Good luck!

[pasdemaison]

Your wife might feel more comfortable if you had a non-academic Plan B and a deadline.  I was in a similar situation with my husband and he was much happier once we agreed how long I would spend on the academic job market before giving up and doing something else (four years), what I would do in the event that the academic job market didn't work out (statistical programming: boring, but well-compensated with massive job security), and how I was keeping up those skills in the interim (publishing, networking).  My ship came in at year three.  I got more hassle in the interim than he will admit now ("Why do you keep doing this when everyone treats you so badly?" "This obviously isn't working; why don't you do something else?") but that is, as far as I can tell, par for the course when you deal with folks in business; they will never, ever understand that you can't just network yourself into the job you want, and view the whole process as so idiosyncratic that it cannot possibly be real.  On the other hand, now that I have the position I fought for, he cannot believe how much independence I have. 

Getting a drudge job won't make either of you happy, but looking for an academic job without some other options on the table obviously isn't doing your marriage any favors.  And congratulations on the new baby, but that's obviously a big stress, too.  I've been there: good luck. 

[tamiam]

Welcome to the forums!

I might have a few things to add here:

1. The stress she is expressing is the same as the stress that my husband (an I imagine many primary breadwinners) felt when kids entered the picture. All of a sudden, the overwhelming reality of the responsibility becomes a million times heavier. Thinking you're prepared for kids doesn't mean squat. In my husband's case, he went on Paxil shortly after our first child was born.

2. Probably, having a plan and a time limit would help. Is she on board with your middle-range plans?

3. Hormones and the legitimate difficulties of trying to juggle breast-feeding with work are enough to drive anybody around the bend.

4. This too shall pass. Try not to escalate, ask her exactly what she wants to see happen, and try to help her get as much sleep as possible. Is that baby still getting up in the middle of the night? If so, YOU bring it to her, have her nurse on the outward-facing side of the bed first, then the inward-facing side so that she can go back to sleep while the baby is nursine. Then YOU bring the baby back to the crib or wherever.

If these are all things you've thought of already, I'm sorry for stating the obvious.

You'll get through it.

[drothar]

kit:  My opinion is similar to yours, but in this forum I am preaching to the choir.   My wife would most strongly disagree with your characterization of me "passing up a good career opportunity".  She did not and does not believe that post-docs are career opportunities that lead anywhere.  Indeed, she believes that she did me a favor by getting me off the post-doc spiral. In her world (engineering) postdocs are either (1) people doing one year stints to come back into academia after time in industry or (2) complete losers who could get neither academic nor industry jobs after graduation.  She also loves to bring in questionable analogies with people in lab bench sciences that either have no PhD (!!) or questionable English skills or both, and say those examples prove that postdocs can't become professors.   That the best people in my field often 3 or more years of postdocs leads her to conclude that the field is overcrowded and dieing.  It is this estimate of my future on this path that causes a lot of the disagreement and stress.




pasdemaison:  Variations on the "deadline and backup plan" idea have come up many times.  First there was the "three publications a year minimum or you go into industry". I agreed to this since I figured that if I couldn't do that,  I wouldn't have much luck on the market anyway.  So now it looks like I will storm past it, and she has retroactively disqualified a project (because half the work was done in 2006).  Will this mean a project half completed in december of 2007 should count to the goal?  I sort of doubt it, but should still make this hurdle regardless of any goalpost moving. 

Anyway,  her favorite backup plans involve me becoming an engineer and working for her employer.  Okay, one group would be pretty cool. But you can't put your eggs in one basket like that. Moreover, they are pretty specialized in <blah>, which would really have only a handful of employers besides them doing <blah>, whereas I see a lot more future is <yadayada>, which has a lot of potential, both in terms of commercial ventures and research potential.

The problem is,  there is nobody in town working on <yadayada>,  so it would be a solitary pursuit to really get into it.  But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.... Okay, a real backup plan in writing. That might be the ticket.

[drothar]

tamiam:  The little sweety sleeps from about 10pm to 6am these days.  When she does wake up, I am the baby mover (although we breastfeed in a chair because my in-laws told a lot of scary stories about infants suffocating in down comforters).

Now I think of them,  the in-laws actually play a part in this. They used to be support my goal to be a professor (they are Chinese academics and would like a young person in the family to be a professor),  but with the appearance of their first grandchild, they have switched quite rapidly to being agitators for the "get a real paycheck" crowd. Something about unforeseen calamities and rising college tuition costs...

[kitmonk]

Ah, so it seems there's just a fundamental disconnect over the nature of the academic job market.... or at least the nature of the market in your field versus her own.  Is there, perhaps, a book that addresses some of these issues that you could give her?  Or, better, yet, a trust and well-established older mentor in your field who might be able to explain to her how it really works and that you really are doing all the right things?  Maybe she'd be more receptive if the information were coming from someone who's clearly been successful in your field.

[drothar]

kitmonk:  I don't think I know of  a person she would take this advice from. She once asked me to get a "fair opinion, as a friend" from my coauthor  "Tony". "Tony" said that I should apply everywhere, every cycle and that I should have a job or there is no justice.  My wife now views "Tony" as a minor demon.  Basically, she views all of my coauthors with the respect wives usually afford to drinking buddies.    After one of her close friends took my side, she started talking about how on unrealistic and soft-headed and careless with money that friend is.  There is one Elder Person she might take advice from,  but he is too smart to get involved or say anything controversial.

[kitmonk]

Oy.  I'm out of suggestions, but you sure have my sympathies!  Lucky for me, my SO really relishes being able to be the main breadwinner.  When we met lo these many years ago, the situation was very much reversed, and she developed something of an inferiority complex around our respective money roles.  For her, being able to support me is a sign that we really are on equal footing..... as long as I'm doing something productive that I really love doing and that's not a total pipe dream, she's cool.  I'm just hoping my luck doesn't run out!

[drothar]

Thanks to everybody.  This was not only therapeutic but helpful.

It would probably help a lot if I took initiative with a backup plan. She has explicitly asked for them.  The problem has been this:

The obvious back-up plan in this town is to place my bets on area <blah> and hope that the <blah> lab at GigantoTech gets a hiring line soon. Otherwise go into hacking Java for a bank or insurance company :(

So when she talks about back-up plans, I clam up. Especially since she thinks GigantoTech is so darn great and I am kind of blah about <blah>.


So here's my pitch (incorporating some ideas from this board):
I will try to move into area <yadayada>, both as a research person, but also take the time to resharpen my coding skillz to be appropriate for somebody working on the less theoretical <yadayada> projects.

Pitch points:

1. Randy Bryant (wife knows and reveres him) has identified <yadayada> as an area that "the community" should focus on for the future of computing, especially at the intersection of academia and industry.

2. I know at leas three guys from immediate social network of collaborators that have successfully moved into <yadayada>. They work at IBM Research, Google Research, Yahoo Research, etc.

3. The hop from my area to <yadayada> is much shorter than the hop to <blah>.  Many many people who I see at conferences work in <yadayada> and <yadayada> results have been published at the conferences I go to.

4. It should help with the academic thing as well, by virtue of broadening my specialties.

5. I will use my network (those guys) to try to get the scoop on what is needed to get into the area from where  I am. (Or determine if they think it is dying and time to get out.)

6. I could use a temporary position at one of these labs as a stepping stone into the area (beats adjuncting!),  and the wife could be with me since GigantoTech has a Silicon Valley presence and a temporary transfer should be easy.