First Person

Getting Tenure

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By Mandy Thomas

First, the big news: The promotion committee at the major research university where I teach has voted unanimously to award me tenure. While my case still has to go through a few administrative hoops, I'm told it's essentially a done deal, so let me pause here and say:

Hooray!

This is it, the milestone that's been my focus seemingly forever -- from the time I decided to apply to doctoral programs, through many years in graduate school, on the job market, and on the tenure track. And now it's finally here.

Friends and colleagues are urging me to appreciate the moment. One told me, "The spring in which one gets tenure is one of the happiest springs there is." That says it all: Tenure not only should make you happy, it will make you happy.

And he's right, in a way, though for me such happiness doesn't come easily. In the past, when I've achieved some professional goal -- such as getting a paper accepted into a journal -- I've barely breathed a sigh of satisfaction before turning to the next worry.

Up to now, celebrating my scholarly successes has always felt inappropriate, for the achievement, whatever it was, didn't represent the finality that would warrant celebration. At such times, I've told myself, "Well, it's not like you won tenure." (Yet I'm quick to urge others to celebrate their own accomplishments. In fact, among my close friends in academe, one of our major activities has been encouraging one another to feel some sense of triumph after a professional success.)

Now I'm making a conscious effort to appreciate this moment, and not to simply turn to the next worry. But as readers of my previous columns know, I do have a pressing worry: My partner lives more than 1,000 miles away from me and my newly tenured job. He has joint custody of his two children, and cannot move to be near me. That's why I've been on the job market this year, at the same time as I've been awaiting word on my tenure case. At this point, I don't know what earning tenure means for my job search. I continue to be torn between a position that I treasure, and a fulfilling domestic and personal life. Tenure, while categorically a good thing, does nothing to resolve that personal dilemma.

Or does it? Now that I've made it -- and surely getting tenure is making it, in some sense -- I have nothing left to prove. I could just walk away, and find another sort of job, close to my partner. Of course, that would mean leaving academe, or at least leaving the competitive environment of a research university. But knowing that the decision to leave was my own would soften the blow.

Now, I have no plans to leave academe, but I confess that I find the idea seductive, apart from its usefulness as a means of living with my partner. So I have to ask myself: At this moment of personal triumph, what is it about leaving the profession that I find so appealing?

My best guess is this: I imagine that if I found the right nonacademic career, I could finally shed this exhausting pattern of overcoming one hurdle just to face another, endlessly striving to prove myself. Getting tenure gave me an "Aha!" moment. I realized that it's not the tenure track that fills me with anxiety and fear that I'm a fraud; it's the academic track. Anxiety, it seems to me, is part and parcel of living the academic life.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm not so naïve as to believe that a mere career change would yield instant tranquillity. I know that plenty of nonacademic careers share the same dynamic of endless striving. And even if I found a job that didn't, my psyche would surely find another rationale for angst.

Given the prevalence of anxiety in academe, I have to wonder: Does the profession attract Type-A perfectionists? Or does it create them, as it forces graduate students to labor through the agonizingly long series of trials to tenure? Probably a bit of both.

However this pointless dynamic came about, I now face the task of trying to change it in my own life. I'm reminded of Prince Chillicheff, a minor character from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. The prince spent nine years in hiding in Russia, and has just escaped to safety when the novel's hero, Dick Diver, meets him: "Dick got up, Tommy too. Prince Chillicheff started out of a wan study of nothing, perhaps of his chances of ever getting out of Russia, a study that had occupied him so long that it was doubtful if he could give it up immediately, and joined them in leaving."

Given the single-minded focus on tenure as the pivotal moment in an academic career, it should come as no surprise that a shift in outlook is slow to occur. More than anything else, tenure represents safety: Having spent years on a precipice, with judgments about the likelihood of falling changing by the day or even the hour, tenure means that I'm now far from the edge and out of harm's way. But as with Prince Chillicheff, I find that I haven't yet abandoned the relentless evaluation and re-evaluation of my prospects. Perhaps I need a mantra to break the cycle, repeating "I have tenure" out loud until it sinks in.

The cruelest joke is that an achievement like earning tenure is double-edged. Anyone who has experienced the impostor syndrome -- and, by my reckoning, that's most academics -- knows what I'm talking about. On the one hand, tenure represents an external confirmation of your talent and, thus, can alleviate the sense that you are an impostor. But since the impostor syndrome derives from a sense that your stature exceeds what is warranted, an increase in stature can make you feel even more like a sham.

By this point, I expect that those of you who want tenure but haven't yet received it, or who are not tenure eligible, or who don't have a job, are rolling your collective eyes. Poor little rich girl. You're right, of course; I'm incredibly lucky, and have absolutely nothing to whine about.

I have tenure. I have tenure. I have tenure. (Maybe just a few more times.)