Question 1: I have just finished my Ph.D. — a decade-long process which was combined with bringing up two children who are now teenagers — and have a full-time teaching position at a local college. What advice do you have for making the transition from student to professor, particularly in terms of developing habits that support both work and leisure/fun?
Answer 1a: Making the transition to full time faculty member can be difficult. Generally, when we’re finishing graduate school we envision the post-dissertation period to be a relief from much of the stress. Unfortunately, few of us actually experience the transition into full time faculty status as a relief. The stress continues, despite that massive hurdle behind you. If you’re in the same department as you were when in graduate school, or in a brand new environment, your relationship to colleagues and to students is different. You’re a colleague to the other faculty, and not so much of a peer to the students. As a colleague, we need to maintain strong professional relationships as much as possible, so we are more likely to socialize in the hallways and share lunches together. We are also more often required to serve on committees together and we get to know our faculty peers more fully in those settings. In some departments, it’s easy to get chewed up with too much service work and thus feel overwhelmed. It’s fairly common that when we begin culling our dissertations into publications, we go through several drafts and submissions only to be turned away with rejections from journals. It’s easy to get discouraged in this process. So, my advice is:
1. Time management is critical. Keep your calendar yourself and ensure that you maintain your commitments, including scheduled times for working on your research. Working on research at home, rather than at the office where you’re more likely to be interrupted with phone calls and hallway chats, is generally a good idea. When I was in this situation, I kept all my research documents at home, and my teaching documents at the office. I worked on my class preps at the office, and scheduled my non-teaching days for research work at home — as much as possible. If you can schedule your committee meetings (if at all possible) to coincide with your teaching days, then you can keep your research time at home “safe”. If home is hectic with lots of commotion and kids doing their thing and it’s not a feasible place for you to work peacefully, then use your campus library. Find a quiet corner and set up shop there. It’s tempting to give up your research days (or a portion of them) to make it to a meeting and be a “team player” — and it may be necessary to do this on occasion, however, you want to minimize that. Just as you would commit to keeping an appointment with a person, you have every right to keep an appointment with your research — the consequences are important to your livelihood.
2. Success in academia depends on mental health, I think. Mental health, of course, depends on a balanced life. Juggling the demands of a family and a career is tricky. If you have a domestic partner, set up a schedule with each other to share domestic responsibilities and do your best to stick to that schedule. If you’re not in a domestic partnership and are single-parenting (as I did throughout my son’s life), it’s vital to develop a community of support (this usually means parents of children your own kids spend time with) to help each other out. Sharing the carpooling duties, and field trip chaperone duties, the school clothes shopping, and many other domestic needs, can be a real life saver. So, I suggest cultivating and contributing to a community of support where you’re each other’s safety net.
3. Keep showing up. This seems trite, but I’m serious. This is a wonderful profession in so many ways, but there are times it can really knock the stuffing out of us. I’ve found that even on my worst days, going to class and teaching can be therapeutic in that it helps me to get out of my own head (where I tend to fret too much and over-think my problems when I’m in that headspace). If your problems are overwhelming, get away from them for a while; getting back to them with your batteries recharged really can help you tackle them more effectively. In academia persistence is as important as talent and intelligence. So keep working at it.
Finally, there are some resources that can help think through more specific challenges: a book titled “Mama, Ph.D” came out a few years ago from Sage. It’s excellent and has terrific chapters on many topics; there is a facebook page called “Criminology Mamas” where many people post questions and supports. There are probably other resources I haven’t listed. Good luck!
Answer 1b: Congratulations on the Ph.D. In both my professional and personal life, I try to establish some routines that will enable me to function as a faculty member, a parent, and a human being. These have to do with budgeting time. Everybody’s routine will vary, but here are some general guidelines:
1. Use calendar/scheduling software so that you and your children know what’s going on when. Impress upon your children that if it is not on the calendar, it does not exist. Make sure all medical appointments, school events, extra-curricular events, etc. are on there.
2. Make appointments with yourself. In particular, make a two-hour daily appointment for your research and find a dark corner of the library to hide in.
3. Teach your children to cook. I am a great believer in eating the evening meal at home, but I know that it is not always possible. Your kids can help by taking turns in preparing simple meals, or at least heating things up. This is also an appointment of sorts, and it is an important one.
4. Have a life. Go to cultural events, garden, paint, sing, kayak, race funny cars–whatever. Be more than just Doctor Mom. Do it because if it fun, and if it stops being fun, don’t do it anymore.
5. Observe a Sabbath. Everyone needs a day off work to just chill.
Question 2: Junior faculty can sometimes feel bullied by senior faculty and/or by administration. How do you handle these situations?
Answer 2a: I remember feeling this way in one of my very first department meetings in a new department. A man in the Department stood up and shouted at me, pointing his finger in my face, and accusing me of not supporting his promotion and tenure (in spite of being an new tenure-track faculty member, I was expected to vote — that’s never a good idea). I was very upset by his mistreatment and had never expected that to happen; it caught me by surprise and left me feeling very unsure of myself (particularly when he was present) for years afterwards. What was so disappointing, in addition to his aggression towards me, was that other people in the meeting (three other men and another woman) remained silent rather than intervene. This left me unsure about my other colleagues as well. I distanced myself as much as I could from them in an effort to find safety. We need allies to help us negotiate tense and potentially volatile situations.
First, it’s important to do a “gut check” — if there’s something going on that does not feel “right” to you — it probably isn’t so trust your gut.
Second, if your department chair is someone whom you trust, try arrange a private meeting with her/him and discuss your concerns (use neutral language as much as possible, and ask questions like “is there something else going on here that I should know about, or that would help me to understand this better?” and “what can I do to alleviate the tension in this situation, if anything?”). Chairs often know more of the details about the interpersonal dynamics than they ever wanted to know and can be helpful in figuring out a constructive solution to the problem. As a chair, I have done some “shuttle diplomacy” in an effort to help colleagues build a more positive professional relationship with each other.
Third, many universities now routinely offer mentoring programs for tenure-track faculty — we have mentors within the department as well as mentors beyond the department (on a voluntary basis — mentoring relationships cannot be forced). Look into a mentoring relationship with someone whom you can trust as a sounding board.
Fourth, your campus may have policies around professional demeanor or “collegiality” — it’s worth knowing what those are and what recourse that might afford you. Likewise, if you have a faculty union, perhaps a union representative can guide you in any actions available under the union contract. If the person intimidating you is an administrator, he/she has a supervisor (chairs are supervised by deans, who are supervised by provosts, etc). You could consider making an appointment with the supervisor of the bully in your life and making him/her aware of the problems you’re facing.
In recalling my own experiences with these problems (yes, there’s been more than one), I sometimes wonder how I could have handled it differently in the moment when it happened. I envision myself standing up to the bully and telling him off. I envision myself saying things like “who the hell do you think you are to treat me this way?!” and demand that professional decorum be restored to the situation. It’s easier to envision this in retrospect than to actually do it in the moment when it’s happening. I am now more inclined to stand up for myself than I was during the early years of my career. When I see tenure-track faculty around me today who might be struggling with the same problems, I stand up for/with them. Not as a “maternalistic” protector, but as an ally in the cause for civility. The lesson here is not merely what can a victim of bullying do, but it’s also about what can bystanders do to defuse the situation and hold the bully accountable. I hope this helps.
Answer 2b: It depends. Lame answer, I know, but your response must be based on your unique situation.
I found myself in this situation many years ago and I confided in an 89-year old retired school teacher. Her advice? “Never get in a pissing contest with a skunk.” In that case, the best thing to do was to ride it out. The bully in question not only bullied me, but everyone else in sight, including higher level administrators, so it was only a matter of time until his downfall.
Assuming that no blatantly illegal or unethical conduct is involved, one has to strike a balance between standing up to bullying and getting along with people. I recommend an excellent review by Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman, “Faculty Experiences with Bullying in Higher Education,” from Administrative Theory and Praxis 32(1), March 2010, pp. 48-70. Broadly, “handling” these situations depends on the climate of your workplace. Some colleges and universities are volcanoes of downward flowing aggression, and the only way to deal with it is to leave. At the other end, there may be one colleague who is a bully. In this case, other senior faculty may not perceive a problem because they “came up” with the bully and the bullying did not begin until the cohort was safely promoted. Sometimes neutral questions of other junior colleagues (“How do you get along with Crustington-Grump?”) may help you to feel out the situation. If everyone thinks their senior colleague is a bully, some collective action is called for. If you are the only one who sees it, you may wish to do a little self-examination before acting.