God it just feels so good
By Thoreau
Over at Megan’s blog there’s a discussion of academics and job satisfaction. While some are theorizing on why we allegedly hate our jobs, I have to say that I love my job. In response to some speculation on tenure and what people do afterward, I posted my plans for life after tenure. I’m reposting them here:
1) Put aside all the safe research projects that are guaranteed to yield papers, and chase after a few holy grails. If I fail, you’ll never know. If I succeed, you’ll see my picture in the newspaper.
1b) Take time away from the holy grail to dig into whatever project a clever student comes up with.
2) Keep trying different things in my teaching, keep refining my feel for the subject and the students. Keep tinkering in response to student feedback.
3) Send scornful form letters to anybody who tries to get me to serve on a committee.
And I have to echo what another commenter wrote:
“I teach for free. They pay me to grade.”
Amen.
Comment by Just a Quick Question —
April 24, 2008 @ 8:41 am
But what about your duties as Vice-President?
Comment by Doug T —
April 24, 2008 @ 8:43 am
1 sounds good, but I can think of two difficulties. First, how much funding is out there for this sort of long shot research? (Especially if it’s all you’re doing and so don’t have a big resume of papers to point to when asking for the money.)
Second, while #1 is a good deal for the tenured faculty memeber, how are you going to get any grad students to sign on and do the work? And everyone knows that, once you have tenure, you never go into the lab again yourself.
Comment by Doug T —
April 24, 2008 @ 8:44 am
“But what about your duties as Vice-President?”
I think ginning up an invasion of Iran is Cheney’s version of “chasing after a few holy grails.” He’s definitely got down the sending of scornful letters to anyone who tries to get him to testify before a committee.
Comment by Phillip J. Birmingham —
April 24, 2008 @ 9:24 am
“I teach for free. They pay me to grade.â€
I can’t think of a better summation of my thoughts as a teaching assistant. I loved teaching my lab class. I hated grading the lab reports, drawing an almost arbitrary line between the As and the Bs.
Comment by rickm —
April 24, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Megan has the added benefit of hating research (read: googling). This allows her to spout nonsense like, “professors don’t seem to be having much fun.” In reality, academics have higher job satisfaction that most professions.
From the chronicle of higher education: “A new national survey by TIAA-CREF found that 53 percent of faculty members are “very satisfied†with their jobs and another 43 percent are “somewhat satisfied.†Only 2 percent were “not at all satisfied.†By comparison, a recent national survey of Americans in all fields found that only 42 percent reported being “very satisfied,†with another 38 percent “somewhat satisfied.—
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/01/faculty
Comment by Thoreau —
April 24, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Doug-
I’m a theoretician. All I need is time to think. And I teach at an undergraduate institution so I don’t have to spend my time chasing after stipends for graduate students.
Besides, I probably will keep some other safe projects going on the side, despite what I wrote above, but they’ll be just enough to generate a paper here and there to keep me on the map.
Comment by hf —
April 24, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Three words: Post Tenure Review.
Also, you could pick up more of the burden on assessment. They expect tenured guys to do that.
And no, I’m not the least bit bitter damn it.
Comment by dhex —
April 24, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
they might be dissatisfied because tiaa-cref blows dead bears.
Comment by Hypatia —
April 24, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
this is a great plan…if you intend to retire as an associate professor.
Comment by von Laue —
April 24, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
What’s so bad about tiaa-cref?
Comment by Thoreau —
April 24, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
OK, fine, then I’ll wait until I make full professor. If I break out my entire inventory of safe projects that I’ve been saving up, I should get enough papers to make full professor rapidly. Then I quit the committees and work on my crazy project.
Comment by dsquared —
April 25, 2008 @ 4:11 am
Send scornful form letters to anybody who tries to get me to serve on a committee
wooh! stick it to the man! As long as you are also undertaking to never criticise any administrative decision ever, this is fair enough. Otherwise you’re free riding.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 25, 2008 @ 11:39 am
I’m not free riding, I’m specializing. Some people are good at the committee jockey stuff and actually like it. I prefer the teaching and research stuff, so I’m leveraging my comparative advantage.