Summer productivity so far, by the numbers:
20: pages of marginally coherent thinking on paper about my introduction chapter.
3: paragraphs of that introduction chapter written.
5: days this summer I've actually had to devote to writing said chapter.
2: poems written this summer.
1: number of those poems that's worth reading.
2: courses to teach this fall.
0: number of syllabi completed.
30: days until school starts.
Damn-da-damn damn damn.
Portrait of Clara (as a chemist)
3 weeks ago
7 comments:
It's not only you. Thank goodness you posted this because now I feel better...but hey, you know, it was summer so what's a girl to do?
Perhaps one additional stat might put the summer in a slightly different perspective:
1: number of advancements from assistant to associate professor.
Compared to that, everything else is pretty much gravy, isn’t it?
I concur with dkm.
I don't do numbers. They only make me angry and mutter unintelligible curse words.
dkm: Yeah, a different perspective, but not perhaps the kind you mean, since advancement at my institution carries neither of the touted benefits of "tenure": a significant increase in compensation and the kind of job security that makes intellectual freedom possible. Given that I will continue to consider myself perpetually on the job market--if not actively then keeping myself ready to jump on it when a congenial job presents itself--it remains crucial that I am competitive in two fields, and I have seriously slipped in one by not having finished this book.
And anyway, it's not like I do what I do for my academic rank. Tenure was never the endpoint.
I'm confused. Why does tenure at your institution not provide you with the two things you listed?
And good luck on getting rolling with the book.
Would it be insufficient to say that it's because my institution is stupid?
More in full: my institution is, let us say, in transition, from an old teaching college model to a new research university model, and it hasn't yet figured out that it must likewise transition the way it both places demands on and compensates its faculty.
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