Ms. Mentor

When it Looks Like You Won't Get Tenure

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Question (from "Gregory"): As a junior faculty member at Ivy League Elite University, I am not supposed to be "campaigning" for tenure. One recently rejected candidate was described as a suck up. Yet I know that getting the full professors to like me is crucial. If I invite them to lunch, will I seem like a sycophant? Is it safe to give drafts of my unpublished work to senior colleagues and risk their criticism? What about a particularly neurotic colleague who is said to have spoken ill of me at those senior-faculty-only meetings where we -- the untenured -- seem to be the main subject of discussion?

Question (from "Amanda"): I am a second-year assistant professor at an Ivy League university and love my job, though the department is chaotic and dysfunctional. Many full professors tell junior faculty members that if we write two books, we will get tenure, but the actual tenure rate in our department is about one out of six -- and so I expect to be moving on. I love this city, where I have nonacademic friends who keep me sane, but I'm also a graduate of fancy Ivy League institutions with equally low tenure rates. I want to avoid the despair, bitterness, and low self-esteem that I've seen others fall into. Some who do get tenure end up as psychically deformed as the ones who don't. How soon should I apply for other jobs? Should I conceal my job search? Should I apply for undesirable jobs that I probably would not take? And how should I explain wanting to leave an Ivy League job?

Answer: Ms. Mentor sees Gregory and Amanda as stars in one of life's truly wrenching dramas. Smart and accomplished, they have been allowed to dwell, briefly, at the Pinnacle -- but the gates will almost certainly be shut on their noses. There is already a sadness in their epistles, and Ms. Mentor deplores the waste of talent when young people are thrown out of what seems to be paradise -- just because it's always been done that way.

Ms. Mentor asks her readers to imagine, instead, that Gregory and Amanda have been hired in tenure-track jobs at Midlevel University. Full professors warmly invite them to dinner; department parties and meetings always include them. They join pedagogical circles where no one is afraid to describe teaching ideas that don't work. Their partners are helped with jobs and child care, and invited to clubs, movies, and concerts. Because Midlevelers know that hiring is time-consuming and frustrating ("so many good people"), search committees nurture those they hire, wanting them to get tenure and spend long careers teaching what they love and enhancing Midlevel's growing scholarly reputation.

Of course, Midlevel Universities are not prestigious. Their libraries are small, and their faculty lists do not include Nobel Prize winners. Their students get all kinds of grades (not just A's) and rarely grow up to become members of the ruling class. And Midlevel Universities do have their own feuds and factions. As Ms. Mentor need not point out (but will), academics everywhere tend to be highly verbal people who value their own opinions inordinately.

But what happened to Gregory and Amanda?

Well, while Ms. Mentor was musing about Midlevel U., Gregory and Amanda were chewing their fingernails, stocking up on anti-anxiety medicines, interpreting every senior professor's frown or smile as a judgment, and worrying about how to stay and where to go. Gregory cannot have lunch with a senior colleague without its taking on a Symbolic Weight, while Amanda needs nonacademic colleagues as a reality check.

Ms. Mentor can certainly tell Amanda and Gregory how to impress their senior colleagues, and she has done so in a previous column. She, and the other learned worthies on this site, can advise Amanda about when and where to apply for other jobs (a few years early, and no undesirable ones unless you're desperate). No one is apt to ask why Amanda is applying, for it's well-known that Ivy League schools woo Big Names -- while assigning most teaching to junior faculty members and graduate students, who are used relentlessly before they're spit out.

Ms. Mentor can advise Gregory and Amanda to be charming to neurotic senior colleagues -- smile, though your jaw is breaking. She can also tell them that full professors do not spend all their time conspiring against the young. She will encourage Gregory and Amanda to get feedback on their works-in-progress from senior scholars, who are often flattered to be asked -- and who may be willing to write future recommendations.

But Ms. Mentor would also like Gregory and Amanda to use their intellects for research, not for scheming and self-preservation. Worrying about whether you should suck up -- or whether you've sucked up enough, or how well you've done it -- is rarely as soul-satisfying as teaching, writing, or feeling appreciated.

Gregory and Amanda's stories also seem headed toward the same poignant conclusion. They will do everything right, publish one or two books before the tenure deadline, impress several senior professors, teach with verve, and do dedicated committee work. But unless they are like the late Stephen Jay Gould, who spent his whole career at Harvard, they'll most likely be turned down for tenure.

If they do somehow beat the odds, Ms. Mentor hopes they will be kinder than the powerful seniors who are, apparently, untroubled about using and throwing out a rolling cohort of bright, ambitious young people. Surely Ms. Mentor is not the only one who observes all this and wonders who benefits.

Question: I have a striking, unusual hair style that I think is very original, but I've been told that it may put off future employers and cause them not to hire me. What should I do?

Answer: Snip.

SAGE READERS:: Ah, many were the creative responses to last month's column about the flawless candidate who cannot get a new job. Ms. Mentor's readers eagerly theorized: The candidate is place-bound? Has a chronic illness, an ailing spouse, a troubled child, in-laws who can't be left? Many assumed, incorrectly, that the candidate is a "she."

All these are intriguing speculations, but Ms. Mentor reminds her flock that she can respond only to what her correspondents tell her, and that she relies on them for full information. Ms. Mentor does not conduct independent investigations, and she refuses to read minds in public.

Ms. Mentor continues to prepare a second tome, and always welcomes rants, gossip, and questions. She particularly invites material about age discrimination and about coming out in academe (at what point should you do it?) As always, confidentiality is guaranteed, and identifying details are masked. Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, does not open attachments, and gives advice only to those who ask for it. If your boss is loony or your colleagues are cruel, Ms. Mentor will tell you how to cope. She will not hire a hit man for you.