Toddler on the Tenure Track

If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that I've been playing around with Notion as an alternative to my current task management system. And if you're a newsletter subscriber you also know that I was exploring ClickUp and Asana as alternatives back in September... what can I say, I love this kind of stuff 😄.

Academic life often means following the opportunities, which may or may not match up with where your family has roots (which may or may not be where you want to live too!).

If you’re interested in being close to extended family you can certainly seek out positions that are located in the same area/nearby but it’s not always a guarantee that you’ll find an opening that’s specific to your area of expertise.

Last week I shared what my first year looked like. This week I’m sharing some thoughts about what helped during the first year. Kind of like advice I’d give to my past self. In no particular order, here are some of the main things I’d remind myself of on a daily basis if I had to do it all over again.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing a recap of my first and second years on the tenure track, along with some reflections about what I learned each year. Once summer is done (for me, that’s in September), I’ll share insights from my third year (still got a few more months to work on those goals!).

The ability to juggle multiple projects with an infinite number of moving pieces is (I think) an essential skill for reducing the overwhelm that can come with academic life. In an ideal world, it would be lovely if this wasn’t a necessary skill for survival, but we live in the real world, with ever increasing workloads and expectations, where advanced project management skills are essential. Between research, teaching, service, and all the things that don’t fall within the bounds of these three pieces (…setting up your office?), there is always something to do. Project management should be a key component of all doctoral programs... instead of expecting everyone to learn through osmosis (which doesn’t always work out so well).  

Back in February I got an email from Leigh of Teaching Academia. Teaching Academia is a wonderful resource that’s dedicated to helping people navigate and succeed in academia. Leigh asked if I’d write a guest post about being on the tenure track with a kid and I (of course!) said yes! Given a few other recent scheduling posts on the Teaching Academia blog (here and here), we decided my post would focus on a week in my life.

If you haven’t had a chance to read (or skim!) my experiences on the academic job market while pregnant, you can find that post here. I did about 6 first round interviews when I was between 2 and 6 months pregnant. I then went on 1 campus interview when I was 7 months pregnant. I’ve put together a summary of my main takeaways from these experiences for those of you who are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant and also navigating the academic job market.

Oh. My. Gosh. People love to give advice about the academic job market in general. Add in the fact that you’re also pregnant and the desire to impart wisdom goes through the roof! And of course if you don’t follow their advice there are dire consequences (i.e., you won’t get the job). That being said, I got a whole lot of advice, and to the best of my memory, only one of those people had been pregnant while searching.

I started graduate school in 2011, right after Mike and I got married. We knew kids were in our future and we knew that grad school and our geographic location were temporary. We figured the next place would be for the long haul so it made sense to wait until after our next move to have a kid. The original plan was that I’d finish school in 4 years, but life happened and I tacked on an additional year.

In my last post I shared a random daily schedule. Today I thought I’d share some basic principles that I try to keep in the forefront of my mind when I’m thinking about how the work day/week will play out. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it does serve as a nice foundation on which my work schedule (and to some extent our personal schedule) is created.