First of all, I couldn't make it without you. I take a mental health break every day by coming here to read your blog. You have saved my academic life many times.
I'm in my 5th year of teaching, and I have a Big Thirsty I need answered:
Q: What are the parts of the job that get easier? What are the parts that get harder?
I find that the dealing with colleagues gets easier over time, only because I figure out all the necessary trigger points to avoid.
What's harder for me is staying energized for some of the same classes, as I teach the same stuff pretty much all the time. That takes a little recharging that I find gets harder as I get older.
Ohh Rayna, I'm hoping you are in the state of burnout and exhaustion that precedes tenure.
What gets easier: the anxieties about colleagues fade, you teach more and more repeats so course prep time gets shorter, you learn to grade more efficiently, and research and writing become more routine.
What gets harder: service. My god, the service never stops, and if you are even minimally competent you get more and more and more piled on. Also, if you have graduate students, each one is a decade-long commitment from prospectus through the early years on their first job, and they tend to pile up.
Once I got tenure, the chronic anxiety eased up, a LOT. It was like the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the Doomsday Clock had been reset from two minutes to midnight to about 10:30 p.m.
Becoming a full Professor was not as big of an improvement, but it was nice. In addition to my biggest-ever pay raise all at once, suddenly there were no more annoying questions about "Who are you assisting?" or comments about "I want to speak to the professor, not the associate."
Peter Sachs, near the end of "Generation X Goes to College," notes that upon being granted tenure, he could stop worrying about anonymous student evaluations of teaching. This allowed him to stop feeling obliged to entertain in the classroom so much, and therefore to get down to some serious teaching. There was a similar, although not as big, improvement for me upon becoming full Professor: I don't even read my anonymous student evaluations anymore. They are so utterly predictable: whenever a snowflake whines, "he's too hard," I remember that my field is physics, which does require intelligence and mathematical skill. I still can't act as obnoxious in the classroom as the law professor in "The Paper Chase," but I can uphold standards without fear of reprisal, except in the most ridiculous cases, which never go away completely.
I still can't avoid the whining. The whining never gets better. Over the years the whining may well be getting worse. Maybe that's just me, though, because I become less tolerant of it.
When I was an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, and especially subsequently, as a tenure-track assistant professor, I felt obliged to please everyone. I therefore almost never said "no" to any extra service work that reared its ugly head. Since becoming full Professor, I really have no obligation to sit on committees and otherwise do service anymore. I still do, since serving as Chair of my department and serving on the committee to select a new dean were both clearly important for me personally. Since stepping down from being Chair, only recently did I stop shaking: it's wonderful.
Research, of course, never gets easier, nor does bringing in funding for it. If anything, it's become worse, partly because of the stinky economy, and partly because I do have more seniority. When I was a young postdoc, like the guys on "The Big Bang Theory," I was responsible only for myself. Now I have grad students with children to feed.
Some of my answer depends on how long you work at a place. As someone who moved college fairly recently, the hardest thing for me was just getting used to all the new culture. I'd been in one place for a good long time so my adjustment seemed very hard. Who to trust? Who to lead? Who to follow?
But generally, for me, the thing that gets easiest is the teaching. I feel as though I know what I'm doing, much more than when I was a kid first teaching.
I agree that getting the lay of the land and the people who inhabit it becomes easier with time. You figure out who the best person is to contact for a specific question, who would be great to serve on a committee with, whom you can confide in with questions about your teaching, and whom to avoid at all costs. Teaching eventually becomes easier because you're more practiced at it and know what your department expects, but that doesn't mean get comfy and dust off your notes. Change is a constant, and it never gets easier unless you happen to be someone who's inclined to embrace it.
Dealing with students is a mixed bag. In some ways it gets easier because the tenure and the shield of experience protect you. You also get a feel for what the students at your institution are like, which is a huge help in adjusting your curriculum and expectations. But in other ways it gets harder because every semester, it seems that more cheat, lie, don't care, and have no problem telling you exactly what they want and what's wrong with you. Every semester I have to add some new policy to my syllabus because a student has attempted something stupid and then told me it must have been OK because I didn't say it wasn't allowed on the syllabus. Idiot administrators will often back this claim.
The first few years can be overwhelming. And God help you if you do have talents for service, particularly if you're at a service-orientated institution. Anyone who's any good knows exactly who will be on the Curriculum Revision Committee as opposed to the Stapled, Paper Clipped, Hole Punched, or Naked Paper Committee.
From a longtime non-tenure-track teaching-only perspective (I actually want to do service, and can't. I know; I'm crazy; but really, somebody ought to tenure me before I come to my senses; then I would be stuck, and would do my usual, conscientious best): the teaching gets easier because one does do the same thing over and over again, and gets better and more efficient at it in the process; on the other hand, it gets harder, because, as Hiram points out, it's hard to stay fresh (but also hard to do the sort of changing and experimenting that keeps things fresh when one knows from experience that an established routine is the only way to stay semi-sane in, and semi- on top of, a 4/4 load). One (okay, I) also becomes less inclined to think that if only I could arrange my schedule a bit differently, prepare more over breaks, etc., etc., the workload would become more manageable. I've tried almost all the tricks I can think of, and it doesn't get any easier. There's a limit to increasing efficiency, especially if one wants to create the kind of challenging assignments to which students return quirky, complicated (and productively so) responses.
On the non-tenure not-really-career "track" (such as it is), the anxiety about losing one's job becomes worse, because, as Darla points out, institutional cultures and needs are different, and teaching-intensive positions tend to mold one's skills to the needs of a particular institution, without offering the chance to build the professional capital, in the form of research and publications, that would also be valued by other institutions. Of course there are other teaching-intensive positions out there, but I don't get the sense that many of them value experience all that much, if only because hiring mid-career non-TT proffies would shatter the illusion that what they're offering is an entry-level rather than a dead-end job (after all, creating a NTT slot is so much better than hiring 3 adjuncts -- which it is, but still not in any way similar to offering a TT slot). Student evaluations continue to matter (internally, and, if one is searching or might search for a job, externally). And, without the opportunity for promotions (or, in my institution, with sporadic opportunities for in-name-only promotions that create no corresponding salary bump), the wage gap between non-TT proffies and their age/Ph.D cohort peers only becomes larger, and more demoralizing, especially as the specter of retirement (especially involuntary retirement) looms.
Research and writing, at least in my experience, have gotten easier with time (though they remain very slow, given all of the other parts of the picture described above). I may even have some of the freedom of a tenured professor in this area, since I don't have the time pressure of the tenure clock, and I'm only half-hoping at this point that doing research will lead to a better job, which means that I'm less concerned about potential audience reaction than I might be (on the other hand, I'm not always good at figuring out where I fit in a scholarly conversation in the first place, so a bit of pressure to do that might be healthy, and I'm trying to push myself in that area anyway).
Background statistics: 20+ years in the classroom (including TA-ships and independent grad teaching), 6 as an adjunct juggling part-time gigs (with a few full-time semesters thrown in), 10+ in my present full-time non-TT job. I sometimes feel like the ghost of the academy of the future (though admittedly the relatively lucky version thereof).
Everything becomes easier except the continual decline in the students. I just dismissed a class. I asked them simple questions. What is the definition of this and why does that happen? Nothing, nada, zippo. They sit there staring at me as if I asked them to explain how the universe began. They won't even turn to the next PowerPoint slide to find the answer. One of my colleagues told me this is a great job except for the students. I'm beginning to believe him. I can spin on my head and get no response. I wonder sometimes if they are breathing. I put so much into my teaching. I LOVE my discipline. And they just sit with their mouths open staring at me or their phones or their computers or their dicks.
If the students don't kill your passion and suck the very soul from your body, the committees and the colleagues who don't speak to each other unless they're yelling at each other will.
I'd say that the political correctness and the students grind on me more the longer I teach. The former seems like an absurd stricture and the latter just suck the life out of me. I LOVE my good students (even if they have poor academic skills) but the shitheads? I cannot freaking stand them, and I don't think it's just an illusion or misperception that students are getting "worse." I think it's a societal outgrowth of the feel-good, self-esteem-based teaching philosophy of the early 1970's hippie era. It's DESTROYING education in this country because it eliminates academic rigor in exchange for students' undeserved self-obsession. Education should be about LEARNING skills and information, not about feeling good about oneself.
What gets easier, then? Well, when you teach one course 30 freakin' times, you don't have to expend much energy on it. It's automatic and hopefully fine-tuned and efficiently taught. And getting along with coworkers is much easier. You can sense whom to interact with and whom to avoid. You become familiar with the animals in the jungle.
AMEN! The trophy generation of snowflakes are not easy to get used to. The entitlement attitude and the rampant narcissism is not something I am likely to get used to any time soon. Perhaps because I teach Hampster Psychology my students assume I care about their self esteem. My dear snowflakes- I do not give two shits about your self esteem. I am here to make you work, HARD. If you succeed- then you might have some self esteem-or not, I don't care. And tell your helicopter parents to get lost. If you are 21 years old and your mommy calls me to ask if you can take a make up exam, I would suggest to get your testicles out of her purse, that might be your first step to real self-esteem!
It gets easier to figure out which battles to fight ( regarding students, committees, policy changes, etc. It gets easier to spend time screwing off on the internet or leaving at a half-decent hour. It becomes easier to take the summer off (I am at a CC with no research obligations) without feeling you are missing something. It becomes easier to drink, I prefer flavored vodkas.
Learning to say no when asked to handle more service. F&T was correct. Being competent is your worst enemy.
Class prep. I review my notes as I walk to class for a freshman lecture. Senior level courses still take 20 minutes. I might be doing a shitty job, but I spend less time preparing before I do it.
Shooing away the beautiful co-eds who fawn over me. Well, conceivably, it would become more easy, if it ever happened at all.
Handling stress caused by administrators and colleagues. There was a time when I would worry when a dean insisted that we start some stupid program. Now, I know how slowly the gears turn and how the project will likely die before it begins.
I find that the dealing with colleagues gets easier over time, only because I figure out all the necessary trigger points to avoid.
ReplyDeleteWhat's harder for me is staying energized for some of the same classes, as I teach the same stuff pretty much all the time. That takes a little recharging that I find gets harder as I get older.
Ohh Rayna, I'm hoping you are in the state of burnout and exhaustion that precedes tenure.
ReplyDeleteWhat gets easier: the anxieties about colleagues fade, you teach more and more repeats so course prep time gets shorter, you learn to grade more efficiently, and research and writing become more routine.
What gets harder: service. My god, the service never stops, and if you are even minimally competent you get more and more and more piled on. Also, if you have graduate students, each one is a decade-long commitment from prospectus through the early years on their first job, and they tend to pile up.
Once I got tenure, the chronic anxiety eased up, a LOT. It was like the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the Doomsday Clock had been reset from two minutes to midnight to about 10:30 p.m.
ReplyDeleteBecoming a full Professor was not as big of an improvement, but it was nice. In addition to my biggest-ever pay raise all at once, suddenly there were no more annoying questions about "Who are you assisting?" or comments about "I want to speak to the professor, not the associate."
Peter Sachs, near the end of "Generation X Goes to College," notes that upon being granted tenure, he could stop worrying about anonymous student evaluations of teaching. This allowed him to stop feeling obliged to entertain in the classroom so much, and therefore to get down to some serious teaching. There was a similar, although not as big, improvement for me upon becoming full Professor: I don't even read my anonymous student evaluations anymore. They are so utterly predictable: whenever a snowflake whines, "he's too hard," I remember that my field is physics, which does require intelligence and mathematical skill. I still can't act as obnoxious in the classroom as the law professor in "The Paper Chase," but I can uphold standards without fear of reprisal, except in the most ridiculous cases, which never go away completely.
I still can't avoid the whining. The whining never gets better. Over the years the whining may well be getting worse. Maybe that's just me, though, because I become less tolerant of it.
When I was an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, and especially subsequently, as a tenure-track assistant professor, I felt obliged to please everyone. I therefore almost never said "no" to any extra service work that reared its ugly head. Since becoming full Professor, I really have no obligation to sit on committees and otherwise do service anymore. I still do, since serving as Chair of my department and serving on the committee to select a new dean were both clearly important for me personally. Since stepping down from being Chair, only recently did I stop shaking: it's wonderful.
Research, of course, never gets easier, nor does bringing in funding for it. If anything, it's become worse, partly because of the stinky economy, and partly because I do have more seniority. When I was a young postdoc, like the guys on "The Big Bang Theory," I was responsible only for myself. Now I have grad students with children to feed.
Some of my answer depends on how long you work at a place. As someone who moved college fairly recently, the hardest thing for me was just getting used to all the new culture. I'd been in one place for a good long time so my adjustment seemed very hard. Who to trust? Who to lead? Who to follow?
ReplyDeleteBut generally, for me, the thing that gets easiest is the teaching. I feel as though I know what I'm doing, much more than when I was a kid first teaching.
I agree that getting the lay of the land and the people who inhabit it becomes easier with time. You figure out who the best person is to contact for a specific question, who would be great to serve on a committee with, whom you can confide in with questions about your teaching, and whom to avoid at all costs. Teaching eventually becomes easier because you're more practiced at it and know what your department expects, but that doesn't mean get comfy and dust off your notes. Change is a constant, and it never gets easier unless you happen to be someone who's inclined to embrace it.
ReplyDeleteDealing with students is a mixed bag. In some ways it gets easier because the tenure and the shield of experience protect you. You also get a feel for what the students at your institution are like, which is a huge help in adjusting your curriculum and expectations. But in other ways it gets harder because every semester, it seems that more cheat, lie, don't care, and have no problem telling you exactly what they want and what's wrong with you. Every semester I have to add some new policy to my syllabus because a student has attempted something stupid and then told me it must have been OK because I didn't say it wasn't allowed on the syllabus. Idiot administrators will often back this claim.
The first few years can be overwhelming. And God help you if you do have talents for service, particularly if you're at a service-orientated institution. Anyone who's any good knows exactly who will be on the Curriculum Revision Committee as opposed to the Stapled, Paper Clipped, Hole Punched, or Naked Paper Committee.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFrom a longtime non-tenure-track teaching-only perspective (I actually want to do service, and can't. I know; I'm crazy; but really, somebody ought to tenure me before I come to my senses; then I would be stuck, and would do my usual, conscientious best): the teaching gets easier because one does do the same thing over and over again, and gets better and more efficient at it in the process; on the other hand, it gets harder, because, as Hiram points out, it's hard to stay fresh (but also hard to do the sort of changing and experimenting that keeps things fresh when one knows from experience that an established routine is the only way to stay semi-sane in, and semi- on top of, a 4/4 load). One (okay, I) also becomes less inclined to think that if only I could arrange my schedule a bit differently, prepare more over breaks, etc., etc., the workload would become more manageable. I've tried almost all the tricks I can think of, and it doesn't get any easier. There's a limit to increasing efficiency, especially if one wants to create the kind of challenging assignments to which students return quirky, complicated (and productively so) responses.
ReplyDeleteOn the non-tenure not-really-career "track" (such as it is), the anxiety about losing one's job becomes worse, because, as Darla points out, institutional cultures and needs are different, and teaching-intensive positions tend to mold one's skills to the needs of a particular institution, without offering the chance to build the professional capital, in the form of research and publications, that would also be valued by other institutions. Of course there are other teaching-intensive positions out there, but I don't get the sense that many of them value experience all that much, if only because hiring mid-career non-TT proffies would shatter the illusion that what they're offering is an entry-level rather than a dead-end job (after all, creating a NTT slot is so much better than hiring 3 adjuncts -- which it is, but still not in any way similar to offering a TT slot). Student evaluations continue to matter (internally, and, if one is searching or might search for a job, externally). And, without the opportunity for promotions (or, in my institution, with sporadic opportunities for in-name-only promotions that create no corresponding salary bump), the wage gap between non-TT proffies and their age/Ph.D cohort peers only becomes larger, and more demoralizing, especially as the specter of retirement (especially involuntary retirement) looms.
Research and writing, at least in my experience, have gotten easier with time (though they remain very slow, given all of the other parts of the picture described above). I may even have some of the freedom of a tenured professor in this area, since I don't have the time pressure of the tenure clock, and I'm only half-hoping at this point that doing research will lead to a better job, which means that I'm less concerned about potential audience reaction than I might be (on the other hand, I'm not always good at figuring out where I fit in a scholarly conversation in the first place, so a bit of pressure to do that might be healthy, and I'm trying to push myself in that area anyway).
Background statistics: 20+ years in the classroom (including TA-ships and independent grad teaching), 6 as an adjunct juggling part-time gigs (with a few full-time semesters thrown in), 10+ in my present full-time non-TT job. I sometimes feel like the ghost of the academy of the future (though admittedly the relatively lucky version thereof).
Everything becomes easier except the continual decline in the students. I just dismissed a class. I asked them simple questions. What is the definition of this and why does that happen? Nothing, nada, zippo. They sit there staring at me as if I asked them to explain how the universe began. They won't even turn to the next PowerPoint slide to find the answer. One of my colleagues told me this is a great job except for the students. I'm beginning to believe him. I can spin on my head and get no response. I wonder sometimes if they are breathing. I put so much into my teaching. I LOVE my discipline. And they just sit with their mouths open staring at me or their phones or their computers or their dicks.
ReplyDeleteIf the students don't kill your passion and suck the very soul from your body, the committees and the colleagues who don't speak to each other unless they're yelling at each other will.
Otherwise, I love my job!
I'd say that the political correctness and the students grind on me more the longer I teach. The former seems like an absurd stricture and the latter just suck the life out of me. I LOVE my good students (even if they have poor academic skills) but the shitheads? I cannot freaking stand them, and I don't think it's just an illusion or misperception that students are getting "worse." I think it's a societal outgrowth of the feel-good, self-esteem-based teaching philosophy of the early 1970's hippie era. It's DESTROYING education in this country because it eliminates academic rigor in exchange for students' undeserved self-obsession. Education should be about LEARNING skills and information, not about feeling good about oneself.
ReplyDeleteWhat gets easier, then? Well, when you teach one course 30 freakin' times, you don't have to expend much energy on it. It's automatic and hopefully fine-tuned and efficiently taught. And getting along with coworkers is much easier. You can sense whom to interact with and whom to avoid. You become familiar with the animals in the jungle.
AMEN! The trophy generation of snowflakes are not easy to get used to. The entitlement attitude and the rampant narcissism is not something I am likely to get used to any time soon. Perhaps because I teach Hampster Psychology my students assume I care about their self esteem. My dear snowflakes- I do not give two shits about your self esteem. I am here to make you work, HARD. If you succeed- then you might have some self esteem-or not, I don't care. And tell your helicopter parents to get lost. If you are 21 years old and your mommy calls me to ask if you can take a make up exam, I would suggest to get your testicles out of her purse, that might be your first step to real self-esteem!
DeleteIt gets easier to figure out which battles to fight ( regarding students, committees, policy changes, etc. It gets easier to spend time screwing off on the internet or leaving at a half-decent hour. It becomes easier to take the summer off (I am at a CC with no research obligations) without feeling you are missing something. It becomes easier to drink, I prefer flavored vodkas.
The Trophy Generation
DeleteEasier:
ReplyDeleteLearning to say no when asked to handle more service. F&T was correct. Being competent is your worst enemy.
Class prep. I review my notes as I walk to class for a freshman lecture. Senior level courses still take 20 minutes. I might be doing a shitty job, but I spend less time preparing before I do it.
Shooing away the beautiful co-eds who fawn over me. Well, conceivably, it would become more easy, if it ever happened at all.
Handling stress caused by administrators and colleagues. There was a time when I would worry when a dean insisted that we start some stupid program. Now, I know how slowly the gears turn and how the project will likely die before it begins.
Drinking. Oh, it is so easy now.