One Semester on the Tenure-Track

About a month ago, my daughter and I decided to take a hike in a nearby park. As a ten-year resident of western North Carolina, I may be using the word "hike" very loosely here, but for a nearly three year old, a little walk on a mixed use trail qualifies as a hike. We encountered the little hill in the photo, and I found myself thinking about that hill for days and days. We went back later, at least in part because I wanted to take a picture of the hill.

I don't think my metaphor is that complex or hard to guess. As I drove past this area on my way to work for the next several days, I thought about the slow and steady rise of the tenure track, and this hill somehow became the perfect image for the tenure clock.

Over the next several years, I need to build a solid record in the three basic areas of TT academic life: research, teaching, and service. So in this post, I want to take a look at the slow climb in those three areas.

Research: Prior to the beginning of the semester, I finished both a co-authored chapter for an edited collection and an article revision for a major journal in my field. Over the first couple of weeks, I spent time setting up priorities for the semester, and rather predictably, I seriously overestimated what I could produce in four months. I started another co-authored project that has languished in limbo, mostly because I took on more than I could manage at once. I also started two other article drafts drawn from small slices of my dissertation. Finally, I needed to write two grant proposals. I did in fact write those proposals, and I secured the grants that will enable me to start research for my first monograph next semester. I also made significant headway on one of the articles. From a certain perspective, I suppose this is a reasonable amount of work to complete in the first semester. So I'll cap off this category with this observation: I'm glad to have continued many of the productive habits I developed to complete my PhD, and I'm glad to have gotten some work done in the first semester, but I wanted to get more done. Imposter syndrome? Maybe. Unrealistic expectations? Probably.

Teaching: I teach three courses per semester, and I chose to plan for two preps for each semester for my first year--a pattern I would like to continue for the foreseeable future. Two preps reduces the amount of work required for each course. Of course, since I teach writing, this means I spend a remarkable number of hours responding to student drafts. Coming out of grad school, where I taught at most two courses, I've needed to adjust back to a heavier teaching load. In some ways, this has been a real source of pleasure. As a grad student, my first obligation was to my coursework and my dissertation. Now, teaching is a much higher priority, and since I got a PhD in writing because I love teaching, this is great. I am looking forward to developing new syllabi for existing courses and, even more exciting, proposing new courses for the writing concentration in the English major.

Service: I am something of a rare academic: I like service. This, of course, gets me in trouble. Halfway through my grad program, I adopted this mantra: protect your time. I adopted it. I was never actually good at it. I have learned so much from my time on committees and working in writing program administration, things I would not have had the chance to learn if I was better at saying no. I am fortunate to be in a department where tenured faculty members will whisper, "Be careful," when I agree to another service obligation. I also serve at the national level, which is a tremendous privilege and pleasure. All told, I took on several service obligations, and I am learning to be careful not to take on more. This will be especially important starting next July, when I become a WPA.

At the end of my first semester, I'm struck by my deeply felt sense that I have done absolutely nothing this semester. I've learned a great deal about my new institution, I've managed to give a healthy amount of attention to my research, and I've maintained a healthy distinction between work life and home life. I suppose as far as the first semester on the tenure track goes, that really is just about the best I could ask for. After all, working toward tenure is a gradual upward hike. The marathon pace of the PhD is behind me, so while the tenure clock keeps ticking (tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock), it's crucial to discover acceptable rhythms and, most important of all, to forgive myself when I don't meet every goal I set for myself.

When I lived in the mountains, I hiked some pretty tough, steep trails. But I only hiked for four or five hours at a time. This hill isn't that steep, but I'm going to be climbing it for years.

Sometimes, Trying Has to Be Enough

Electronic forms of communication simplify many of the tasks we face in academia. It's easy to confirm the details of meetings; it's easy to get quick feedback on a possible policy change; it's useful for corresponding with colleagues at other institutions. But probably most importantly, it makes reaching students easier and increases students' access to professors. Does a student have a quick question? An email is probably the fastest way to get that question answered. Does a professor want to remind students of a particular aspect of an assignment they may otherwise forget? A brief reminder email can help students to complete the assignment.

I've been thinking about email for a couple of months now. I spend most of my working day in front of my computer, and I usually keep my university email open in a tab. It's open right now. Here's what it looks like:

Nice, right? I like to keep my inbox empty or as near as possible. I file emails as I answer them. Life feels more efficient and less messy to me, and that's important to me. It isn't to everyone, and that's fine, but this is what I like my writing space to look like, and my email space. I thrive in a tidy environment.

But this is why I've been thinking about email this semester. For the most part, students at my institution don't check it.

There have been recent articles about using other forms of electronic communication to reach students, such as Facebook or texting. I will do neither because I prefer to protect certain boundaries between work and personal. Additionally, it is possible that professors are becoming too dependent on email to reach students on a regular basis. I try very hard not to email students too regularly. As a faculty member and as a recipient of several listservs, I understand quite well that our lives are saturated with emails.  It becomes easier to ignore email than to sift through all of the reply-all threads and the auto generated emails from university offices and the announcement emails. My working life is a veritable ocean of emails, and I have no doubt that students receive far more emails than they want as well.

As a professor, I try to email my students only as a result of the following situations:

1. In response to a question: If a student emails me, it's my responsibility to respond. I don't hold myself accountable to respond instantaneously--see my above comment about boundaries between work life and personal life--but responding to students is important. They need to know that I hear them when they ask a question or let me know that they are missing class.

2. A gentle reminder: If a class has shown a habit of forgetting to submit assignments on time or failing to be as prepared as they can be by completing readings, I'll send a little nudge to remind them to get the job done.

3. "Are you out there?": If students start missing class and fails to submit assignments, I email them. Since I can't speak to them if they aren't showing up, I reach it via email in hopes of preventing them from failing the course. I'm not their counselor, and I don't ever want to be, but I can reach out in the interests of their performance in my course.

4. "Oops": I mess things up sometimes. I'm human. Sometimes I put the wrong page numbers for a reading on the syllabus or--as I did yesterday--I manage to completely and totally screw up our learning management system's page. So I send out a slightly embarrassing email to correct my mistake.

Now here's why I've been frustrated this semester. I've been following these rules for ten years, and they tend to do me right. This semester, not so much. Students don't check their email, so they don't see my gentle nudges, my slight corrections, or sometimes even my answer to the questions they sent me. And there is nothing I can do about it.

If you haven't picked up on this, dear blog reader, I like having control over my work environment. So acknowledging my powerlessness in this circumstance is endlessly irritating.

What can I do to make a change to my approach to communicating with my students? When I posed this problem to an administrator recently, he answered thoughtfully and carefully that I should ask for students' non-university email addresses. That is, as he freely acknowledged, not a very helpful answer.

For the moment, I am pondering this, not as a solution, but as a means of comforting myself: Just let go. Contact students and hope I can help them. If they do not respond, then I have done what I can.

Sometimes, and this is hard for teachers to admit, trying has to be enough.