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[seventhyear]

This is probably more of a blog post, than a forum post, but I'll share here anyway. 

I'm having a hefty ponder about my tenure process, from the other side of the fence.  Friends have recently been denied at the committee stage, and I'm totally torn up about it.  There's watching my friends suffer, there's some political implications etc etc, but what first hit me was an incredible sense of survivor's guilt.  If the friends, who I think work way harder than I do, didn't make it, how the heck did I? 

After several days of pondering, I'm realizing that I somehow managed to do things "right".  I managed to apply for the right grants at the right time, took advice and guidance that I really hated at the time, and somehow had my file ready early enough to get a lot of feedback.  I agonized about the summary statement, and totally trashed it at least 3 times.  That binder was probably the only thing in my life that wasn't done right on the deadline.  And it was only done early because I was so sick of dealing with it.

I generally consider myself a total screwup and suffer from imposter syndrome.  I wasn't a 4.0 undergrad, and grad school was really hard for me.  I took a non-traditional path to my current position at a SLAC (some would say it looks like a random walk) and when I look at who I went to school with, and who I teach with, I seriously wonder how the hell I got here.  I'm pretty disorganized, have the attention span of a gnat, and am pretty ashamed of how much I wind up "winging it" in my classes.  I just don't feel like I ever finish anything.

I certainly don't STFU.  I see lots of naked emperors at my place, and they drive me nuts.   My personal life is a bit of a train wreck also.  Some may know that I've got a pretty nutty multigenerational, blended family.  I could go on, but won't. 

A friend who is an administrator, but not in my chain of command, says I'm a superstar.  WTF?  I know what superstars in my field look like, and my CV ain't that of a superstar.  How the heck did I manage to navigate the tenure process so successfully? 

As I ponder, I'm realizing that I've had a lot of great people around me.  Good mentors and good friends, who have somehow put up with me. 

Anyway, anyone else ever felt this? 

[mirada]

First off, congratulations on getting tenure!  Sounds like you definitely worked hard for it and you should allow yourself to feel good about it.

When I have similar thoughts - imposter, survivor, whatever... - I try to re-up my commitment to giving something back by being modestly helpful where i can to colleagues and making time for students.  (And winging it in class isn't always a bad thing - keeps you on your toes and at least your not phoning it in.)

[hegemony]

Are you sure the friends work way harder than you do?  How come they didn't get tenure?  You are starting from an assumption that the process was unjust, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  Maybe my university is more methodical than yours, but of the people I know who were denied tenure, all of them clearly fell short of the requirements.  Many of them did work hard, but at things that didn't count, such as voluntarily helping a lot of students with special projects -- things that they knew wouldn't count toward tenure, but they somehow had magical thinking.  One person I know was given bad advice (that a textbook would count as his tenure book) and somehow missed any correction from someone else.  So that was unfortunate; but he still fell short of our tenure standards.  Like grades, tenure is given for results, not just for putting in a lot of random effort. 

I suspect that because you don't feel you have it all together -- the self-confident, organized and focused poise of a professional -- you're not really what a tenured professor should be.  Since I got tenure, I notice that most of us are not that person.  And those who are often have the self-confidence without the organization or the focus. Everybody's got clay feet.  Welcome to the clay feet club.  You're earned your feet just as much as the rest of us!

[msparticularity]

Seventhyear, I'm still on the other side of the process, but FWIW: I'm hearing that you have been flexible in responding to change and circumstance, and that you have accepted feedback, even when you didn't like it. My own observation has been that these can be the most important qualities for someone in a collaborative enterprise such as academia. Others you know may have been, on a single data point (or even several of them), more "successful" then you are, but they may also have been far less responsive to the actual needs and demands of their settings.

[toothpaste]

Are your friends perfectionists who refuse to take advice/direction/feedback that makes them feel bad?

[seventhyear]

Our committee is very cross-disciplinary, and it sounds like the committee didn't "get" what was being described in the file, because of the widely different disciplines.  It seems like I was just more "savvy" than my colleagues in how and when I did things. 

[ruralguy]

I think you are just upset that your friends didn't get tenure, and that in itself is justified. That is, you wanted to see your friends do well.

That they didn't do so well is now making you think that you are the screw up, and somehow an unjust world gave you tenure and denied it to them.

My guess is that you are fine (uh, who cares if everything came it at the deadline---thats why its a deadline. if there is one thing I hate, its people who get angry at students or faculty who don't get in everything EARLY! Huh? if they want it earlier than the deadline, then make the deadline earlier!).

Your friends may or may not fine. Probably most of them made a serious blunder. They didn't do something required of them (most of them). Or, they tried hard and didn't make it. They may indeed look more organized, or may indeed have graduated summa cum laude. But sometimes that just doesn't translate well to adulthood and a faculty position (sometimes it does, but sometimes it does not).

Basically, you did it right, one way or another, and thats ok. You can feel bad that your friends didn't make it, but don't feel guilty or feel that you should not have made it!

Move on. Maybe get some counseling or therapy to help you and get personal life straight.

[aprilmay]

It is great that you are modest, but give yourself some credit. You did not get tenure by luck. Granted some people get tenure who do not deserve it and some are denied who do not deserve that, but these are the minority and you do not seem to give yourself credit at all. You "managed to apply for the right grants at the right time"? Applying at the right time does not meant you get the grant. It is hard to both celebrate your success and be sympathetic to your friends' lack of it, but do not forget to the celebratory part. Although your survivor guilt is not uncommon, you deserve to enjoy your tenure.

[amlithist]

Seventhyear, I really wish you'd quit reading my notebooks and posting my stuff under your name. 

Seriously, I was reminded of this just recently, when reviewing promotion files in our division.  Then again, when I'm honest about what I read in a couple of them, it's fairly clear why these two aren't going to make my rank.  They're both people who have good "press"--people like them, they're outgoing, everybody knows them, etc.--but when it comes down to it, I AM better than they are, arrogant as that sounds.  I've worked my ass off to get here, and they haven't, simple as that. 

The same is probably true for you.

[seventhyear]

OP here.  I'm feeling better about things.  There's a lot going on here, but we're all surviving.  Even though all of this happened in a different department, we're reading the tea leaves and have shifted into "prevent defense" for our junior faculty and the associates (me included).  Some of our decisions regarding the apparent change in expectations are going to attract attention when they start to add up.  "Hmm, why aren't any basket weaving faculty helping out in this service role?  They used to send half the department, mostly the young ones."  Depending on how appeals and some meetings go, there will be more little bombs dropping over the next several months. 

And yeah, I'm pretty danged good at this job. I looked back at my file again, and saw that my friends and colleagues who helped me edit my file really got me to put on my peacock feathers and strut my stuff in my file.  I thank heavens that I hit the ground running here and accomplished what I did in my first 3 years, because it helped the tail end, when I was dealing with my parents' health.  I made danged good choices how I spent my time (ok, not the time I waste on the fora, but...).  And I love this "too much time invested, under paid, unappreciated, too many naked emperors walking around here" job. 

I got a batch of evals from the class that I really struggled to get where I wanted it to be.  I still think it needs a ton of work, but the responses from the students were incredible.   And the classes that are the bulk of my load also had good evals.  I'm working a bit more on organization, and being more honest with students that I can't do two things at once.  I won't do office hours during scheduled time with my research students, or during my own scheduled research time. 

Sorry Amlithist.  We do seem to be kindred spirits on many threads.

[oldfullprof]

Congratulations!  We all get ups and downs in our lives.  Celebrate your ups!

[collegekidsmom]

Face it; you're good! People agreed and voted together to give you tenure. Congratulations on a job very well done! Sometimes the circuitous path is the right one and makes the reward much sweeter.

[lightningstrike]

I'm sure you deserved tenure.