As I write these words it's a cold Sunday afternoon. LG is out with a friend they haven't seen probably since last spring, early in the pandemic; Tiny Boy is on a zoom/roblox call with his BFF, who is quarantining due to 'exposure.' I've been cooking for something resembling a seder (some of the food, an extended family zoom, light on religion). I haven't yet made the shift to the work week yet.
On Friday, Tiny Boy was at school for the whole day and I found myself, for once, unscheduled. I saw this opening on my calendar, kept it that way, and set it aside for "deep work." I did not get as much done as I'd hoped, but simply sitting in the quiet, ignoring my teaching/admin/home to do lists, was a gift.
I committed myself last week to taking the leap to go up for promotion, something I've been hemming and hawing about for approximately three years. Not surprisingly, it took my practical (male!) department chair to look at my CV and say yes, there's enough here, yes I've talked to the Dean, yes, you should do this. (My previous (female) department chair was theoretically supportive but only fed my anxiety.) It's hard for me to make this leap without thinking about where I was when I was going up for tenure, which was so bound up with infertility. Today I'm feeling okay about this. I have very little to lose (if my case doesn't go through, I can always try again!) and, if not a lot, something to gain, both in terms of money and standing in the field and, more than this....the possibility of helping other associate professor women make the leap. Too many of us stall out. It would be easy to wait, given the pandemic. But also, it's time.
Hooray! Definitely do it. And how great to have a practical & supportive chair.
ReplyDeleteI had a super long comment written out when you first posted it but then my internet went out and it was lost.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Yay! And yes, I am certain you are ready! You've published a lot! Even with just the things you mention here on your blog.
I had not noticed that difference between male and female colleagues, but once you pointed it out I realized you're right about my colleagues too.
And finally, I've been working on my research draft for full this year too-- it is well past time I went up. Apparently if I put it off another year I become a negative statistic(!)
Cheering you on!! Let's do this!
ReplyDeleteMy new female chair looked at my research, said (accurately) that it wasn’t enough to go for full, and got me summer “promotion incentive” money. Practical support!
ReplyDeleteA, that practical support is great! I've received that, too. After traumatic tenure process what I needed was psychological support though!
ReplyDeleteGood for you! Glad you're going to go for it!
ReplyDeleteYES. It's time. I'm cheering you on ... putting yourself out there is hard, but so many others will gain strength from your risk. <3 Keep us posted!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck! Exciting, and great to have that outside validation and certainty.
ReplyDeleteSent in my annual review to the full professors as a formal meeting since I can't have individual meetings in people's offices to make sure they're all on board given covid (this is a new thing-- associate professors can request a review from the full professors). They wrote back, while not official or binding, it was their believe that I was ready to go up for full but that I need to reformat my cv and shorten my personal statement. Which... yes there are firm rules about what the cv has to look like for full and my personal statement would have been shorter if I hadn't been told to magically write one over the weekend, which I said when I turned it in. (They were supposed to just request my annual review statement, but instead they came back and asked for a full research statement.) But that's better than them saying to wait!
ReplyDeleteCongrats!! Your process is different than mine. Our whole dept does not vote on RPT cases; it's an internal committee. I also have some good advice from mine about my statement. And a lot of work to do. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteOnly full professors vote on full professors and we don't really have enough for it not to be all of them. And technically it isn't all of them-- the chair isn't on the committee and our college level rep isn't on the committee. The other year when we had some full profs on leave or part time (one of them took half time to help take care of grandbaby twins), we had only two full professors in the room at the regular PT committee(!) and one of them was the PT chair.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you got good advice! I'm not even thinking about what work I need to do until classes are over. I wish I had a personal assistant I trusted to do all the crap paperwork that comes with this.