Tracking

There is this funny moment that happens and happens again in the life of the academic. In order to get into a doctoral programme, you have to write an essay that says what you want to study and why. The better your description of the work you want to do and the more clearly well-thought your plan, the more likely you are to be admitted. Then, having considered this fantastic plan and project, the first thing you do when you get to grad school is people sit down and ask, “So, have you given any thought to what you want to do while you’re here?” The first time someone asked me that, I barked out a laugh: I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek thing. It turned out, though, to be the central theme of the first couple of years; how will you decide what you want to do.

Then, there’s a grant you can get in grad school: the Spencer research training grant. It’s pretty competitive to get; again, you have to prepare a research proposal as your application, and because it’s a research grant, they expect that the proposal you put in will be thoughtful and full-blown. At the first meeting, all the new grantees sit in a circle, and, by way of introducing ourselves to the group, we talk about what sorts of things we might want to do with the research grant. This time, more than a year into the doctoral programme, I was brave enough to put up my hand: “Didn’t we have to tell you exactly what we’d do before you gave us this grant?” I asked. Kitty laughed. “That’s to get in the door,” she said. “What you do with the money is all opened up to you now.”

I am beginning to feel that way about tenure. I don’t think I ever noticed how much the idea of tenure subtly shaped what I was doing—even when I was clear clear clear that it absolutely wasn’t doing that. I have heard about the post-tenure crisis: people begin to wonder for the first time what they really want to do next, and now I’m experiencing some of that first hand. All the things I’ve done I’ve really loved, but do I love them The Best of all the things in the world? Which things have I done because I’ve loved doing them and which things have I done because I thought they would help me get tenure? And how can I even tell the difference?

There is a way, I’m discovering, that the lines are mostly cut now between the seeking of tenure and the decision-making process I go through about how to spend my time. I didn’t realise before how connected those two things were. The disconnection is sometimes bewildering. I am very far down the homestretch to tenure, and it’s unlikely now that I wouldn’t get it (still conceivable); in any case, there’s nothing I can do anymore that would influence the path. If I don’t get it after all the recommendations I’ve had so far, it’s just out of my control. But there are all these different options about what there is to do, all of these opportunities and so little time. And there is the small matter of the two mortgages to pay for the next while and the requirement to earn rather large sums of money to pull that off. So which books do I want to write and which workshops do I want to teach and which conferences to I want to attend? How do I spend my time and how do I know which decisions to make. If, as it turns out, my being on the tenure track was in some ways helping me manage my decision making, what will my being off of the tenure track do to me? What is my next great ambition? How do I work toward it?

Long ago I cut out doing things I have to do or things I’m not interested in. I learnt to say no to those things that other people wanted from me but which I wouldn’t enjoy. Now all that’s left is work that I love. And with probably 60% of my working life ahead of me, how do I figure out how to spend my time? As I type this, I’m returning from two seriously interesting meetings where I got to do really engaging work with people I like and respect and which serves a cause I believe in strongly. And I’m looking out at the sea on a nearly cloudless afternoon, my green roofed house visible in the middle of the village, flooded with light from the new windows and skylights. At times like these--which I have to say are becoming downright common--I am overcome with my sense of my own good fortune. It is moments like this when I think I might be made of happiness, when, as James Wright says in the poem "A blessing,": "Suddenly I realize/that if I stepped out of my body I would break/into blossom.” Not a bad problem to have, really, whether on or off the tenure track.

Pictures for today are of sunrise over my house this morning-- the most beautiful dawn I've ever seen, and of my new bedroom which is so perfect in every way that I stood in it and cried today. I watched the surfers in the rain and wrapped my arms around myself so that I wouldn't break into blossom...