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[banana]

To keep me sane over the next couple of months of waiting for a tenure decision, I would enjoy hearing others' notification stories.  Was it by phone? By letter?  Where were you when you heard, and who were you with?

I'll kick things off with a couple I heard recently...

The candidate was virtually certain he was going to be denied, so he and his wife planned a weekend away with their baby.  They literally drove up to the administration building (where he was to pick up his letter) with the car all gassed up, packed, and ready to go so they could skip town for a few days immediately after he got the awful news.  Then, it turned out to be a favorable decision after all, so they re-framed the trip as a celebration and took the weekend away anyhow.


Another involved a candidate who ran into a good friend on the way to pick up his notification letter.  The friend waited outside by the door, clearly expecting the candidate to open the letter in front of him and share the news.  The candidate, however, wanted to be alone when he opened it, and then wanted his wife to be the first one to hear.  So, he had to have an awkward conversation in which he pretty much dismissed his friend and went to open the letter privately.  That one was also a favorable decision.

What other stories can you all add?

[sugaree]

Sorry banana, I have nothing dramatic to add. The letter appeared one day in my campus mailbox and it was a few weeks prior to the notification deadline so I wasn't expecting it. In the midst of end-of-the-semester craziness, I worked.

I did, however, go to Las Vegas several months later for a "girls weekend" to celebrate that, and another friend's 40th b-day. Now THAT was fabulous!

[bookishone]

Me too -- wasn't expecting the letter a few weeks early, found it in my mailbox and STILL didn't realize what it was, idly opened it right there in the faculty mailroom! Luckily it was good news.

[duckwrath]

Wow! People really have to wait for the letter? I think I would have lost my mind....

The Department told me of its decision in early spring, then I was told "unofficially" a couple of months later, and a couple of days after that, our administrative assistant came in and asked how to change "assistant" to "associate" in the system.

The real letter came 8-10 weeks after the unofficial announcement, quite anticlimactically.

DW

[zuzu_]

We learn we are tenured when our contract arrives in our on-campus mailbox on the same day that all faculty get their contracts for the next year. Several of us were up for tenure that year, so word spread quick when the letters were put in our mailroom mailboxes. One of my colleagues was nervous about not getting tenure--he was the only one who had not received informal verbal confirmation of his tenure, and he had caused some waves about some unrelated issue.

So wouldn't you know it, his mailbox was empty that day. Someone called him to come get the mail, and he saw his empty box. About twenty minutes went by until he decided to peek in the mailboxes around his, and lo and behold, his letter had been misplaced one box down.

We still tease him about that day.

[entwife]

We learn we are tenured when our contract arrives in our on-campus mailbox on the same day that all faculty get their contracts for the next year. Several of us were up for tenure that year, so word spread quick when the letters were put in our mailroom mailboxes. One of my colleagues was nervous about not getting tenure--he was the only one who had not received informal verbal confirmation of his tenure, and he had caused some waves about some unrelated issue.

So wouldn't you know it, his mailbox was empty that day. Someone called him to come get the mail, and he saw his empty box. About twenty minutes went by until he decided to peek in the mailboxes around his, and lo and behold, his letter had been misplaced one box down.

We still tease him about that day.

Gosh, I would have had a heart attack!

Our was pretty weird: we got informal notifications, celebrated, then tenure awards got frozen due to the economy, so we got stuck in limbo for a year. We did eventually get it, a year later. They told us in person.

[onthefringe]

We're one of the places with multiple levels up through the Board of Trustees. At each level up to the last, I got a letter with my (positive) decision at that level and a chance to put a rebuttal (?) in my file if I desired. But the very final official letter saying that the board of trustees had confirmed my tenure came two weeks AFTER the trustee's list of tenure decisions was linked in the daily all-campus email. I vividly remember clicking on the link in that email thinking "hope I'm on the list!".

[banana]

I'm loving these! Keep them coming...

[mozman]

I just found my promotion went through (literally 30 seconds ago) because on my departmental webpage it changed from "Assistant" to "Associate" professor.

Literally just happened.  It said "Assistant" 30 minutes ago.

[dellaroux]

Congrats, MOZMAN!!!

Yea!!

[systeme_d_]

Congratulations, Mozman!

[mozman]

Thanks!

And its so typical of this place. No letter, no notification. Just, "oh yeah, btw".

And its not tenure, just promotion. Associates don't get tenure here.

Its symbolic anyway-  I am leaving at the end of the year.

[totoro]

I went to Europe. When I got home from my trip there was a message on my answering machine at home from the Provost congratulating me.

[snowbound]

I've told this story before on the fora, but here it is again. . .

When the tenure letters were being sent out for my cohort, there was a clerical screw-up that resulted in those anxiously awaiting receiving a letter from the President that was "pleased to inform" them that (drum roll!) their contract had been extended for another year.  Huh?  WTF?  A one year extension is, of course, what you get if you're not up for tenure yet OR if you have been denied.  Those in the know, like the dept head, had not been allowed to say anything until the day the letter arrived in the mail and--since I left home before the mail was delivered--I actually got the good news from her. Only later, when I got home, did I get the letter, which I knew was a mistake.

A colleague from another dept, who had been regularly greeting me with cheery remarks about tenure--"We'll be hearing any day now!", etc--was not so fortunate.  I ran into him later as he was arriving at school and exuberantly told him that the tenure decisions were in!  This normally gregarious guy, who had been justifiably fairly confident of a positive outcome, didn't respond to my big smile.. He frowned, muttered something vague, and immediately went into his office.  He had actually gotten tenure, but apparently had received the screwed-up letter that morning!  The poor guy must have had a miserable couple of hours, and my cheery greeting would have made him feel even worse!  (The erroneous letters were retracted later that day and we eventually got the right tenure letters.) 

[anon99]

For us the Dean comes in person and tells you after the meeting.