Balancing Act

My Accidental Mentor

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person It's Not a Zero-Sum Game Are a moderately heavy teaching load and an active research program mutually exclusive? First Person Pothead Ph.D. This is most definitely not a cautionary tale. First Person Subject Experts Need Not Apply Recent job postings and hires suggest that many academic libraries are losing interest in hiring humanities Ph.D.'s. Career News When Laptops Disappear Stolen computers containing sensitive data are a growing and costly problem for colleges. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Betty Falstaff

I'm on the market for a tenure-track job this year, and instead of dreading it, I find myself with a new desire for the next big thing -- a desire that came from the most unlikely of sources.

I just wrapped up my first year as a postdoctoral researcher at a well-known university. By sheer coincidence, I was granted a small office next to that of a prominent female professor in the sciences. She's not my postdoc adviser. She doesn't know my name. She isn't even in my field. And I'm not certain she knows that I can hear her. But I may have learned more from her than any other mentor I've had in my career.

Most of the women I have encountered in my academic field haven't exactly left me aspiring to join the tenure track. The female professors I knew in graduate school have all left the department. They either stepped down to take research-only positions, were fired, or simply quit. I've had plenty of encouragement from successful male faculty members, but I've often wondered where they would be without their stay-at-home wives taking care of the kids and doing the laundry.

I hadn't actually seen or even heard of a single example of someone in my subfield "doing it all." I used to ask myself, Is there something about that male-professor-with-spouse-at-home formula that works? Am I naïve to think that it will be different in my case? Or will the necessity of dual-career couples in my generation change that reality?

Since I began my postdoc, however, I am working next to a living, breathing example of a successful female scientist. And it seems as though she is having a fantastic time doing her job.

I am so aware of her office schedule that I could fill out a timesheet for her. I overhear voice mails, phone calls, hush-hush tenure discussions, and meetings with surly graduate students.

Now, you may be thinking that this is all unethical. But really, I'm just sitting at my desk trying to get some work done and unfortunately, I'm easily distracted. (I confess to pressing my ear to the wall only once -- for the tenure controversy. And can you really blame me for that?)

Part of my fascination with her stems from my own convoluted path in academe. Until I finished my Ph.D., I didn't even consider a tenure-track position. I was frustrated with a failing project, a poor mentor, and few opportunities to interact with colleagues. My own thesis adviser was a famous scientist who spent little time with our research group discussing academic culture, let alone our research results.

I was so interested and passionate about my dissertation topic, however, that I couldn't imagine leaving the field altogether. As time went on, I stood up to the challenge and established a group of colleagues at other universities and started taking charge of my own destiny. When I finally finished my degree, I decided to give research one more try and take a postdoctoral position where I could focus on developing my own research agenda.

So here I am, listening in and getting an accurate picture of what it is really like to be a successful, tenured scientist.

I am impressed to hear her enthusiastically discuss Ph.D. topics with prospective students, as well as to hear her negotiate with her teenage daughter. I see the amount of time that she spends in meetings and on the phone, talking with colleagues. She fields drop-in visits from graduate students desperate for five minutes of her time to discuss recent results. She returns phone calls from search committees asking questions about former students and postdocs. (Important note to self: Call all of my recommenders and update them on my current work and research plans.)

She congratulates her son when he calls to say he passed his freshman calculus class. I wonder when she is able to write and get any research done, but I do hear long silences that I suspect are her productive times.

Listening to her handle all of those issues has given me an idea of the management techniques required of the position, a consideration I had previously only thought about in the abstract. And I wonder, Can I do that?

When you are a doctoral student or a postdoc, much of your daily focus is on completing small tasks. As my thesis adviser used to remind me, you need to remain "single-minded." You can easily lose sight of the larger picture, yet usually someone is there to keep you on track.

Listening to my office neighbor, however, I've seen the necessity for faculty members to be able to work with a team, manage multiple projects, and keep that team together and focused. Those are some of my strengths, too.

I used to think that I understood what it meant to be a tenure-track faculty member in science. You need publications, you need research grants, and you need to be a top researcher in your field. I know that those things will land you the job and allow you to keep it.

But I always thought my day as a faculty member might be like what it is now: Working alone and waiting for an interesting e-mail that might make me laugh. That didn't seem like a job that I would love and would allow me to thrive.

Seeing the day-to-day managerial tasks of a faculty member has changed my opinion of what the job actually entails. It involves a lot of collaboration, interaction, and managing -- things that make it seem like the ideal job for me.

I may not make it to the National Academy of Sciences like my thesis adviser, but I can have a productive and interesting research career while being a good colleague and mentor.

That is what my accidental mentor has taught me. As I listen to her go about her day-to-day tasks, I know that I can do it, too. And I think that desire will carry me through the next year of the dreaded job search.