My first day of work as a professor
Before I started as an assistant professor at University of Hawaii, I took four months off for personal development and introspection. I used that time to travel, climb, read, and think about what I really wanted out of my life once I started academic adulthood. I want to: (1) do interesting work, (2) enjoy the process, (3) help others through my work or by proximity, (4) to be joyful and fulfilled.
As a graduate student applying to professor jobs, the social contract we seemed to be signing up for was stress from funding and long hours at work. I have an immense amount of respect for my faculty advisors but boy do most of them work a lot. I was scared to start this job and have the same fate as these wonderful but overworked individuals. The main question I asked was: “does it have to be this way?” I spent four months of my time-off building the emotional conviction to not let myself succumb to this myth that you must work this hard to be successful. Time and time again I came back to this talk given by Dr. Radhika Nagpal, professor at Harvard, organized by my amazing committee faculty member, Dr. Hadas Kress-Gazit. You may be familiar with her article I summarize as Seven Years a Postdoc as a Tenure-Track Professor. She is definitely the trailblazer in this mentality and honestly, I can tell you so far that it’s been working in the month and a half that I’ve been here! A month is a short time so I’ll revisit this topic on an annual basis. The mentality as quoted from her article:
“Seven things I did during my first seven years at Harvard. Or, how I loved being a tenure-track faculty member, by deliberately trying not to be one.
I decided that this is a 7-year postdoc.
I stopped taking advice.
I created a “feelgood” email folder.
I work fixed hours and in fixed amounts.
I try to be the best “whole” person I can.
I found real friends.
I have fun “now”.
I decided that this is a 7-year postdoc. ”
I took a faculty position at an R1 university with a world-renowned planetary science institute as one of the only space technologists to build a space empire. I’m a tenure-track assistant researcher, which is equivalent to what other institutions call ‘professor’ but with a higher research load and minimal teaching load. I am required to teach 4 credits every 4 semesters, which is 1 class every 2 years. This extremely light teaching load is the envy of every faculty member I talk to, so I realize my situation is likely more conducive to having work-life balance as I’ve heard teaching is a huge time-sink.
Now to comment on this mentality. Even though I came into this job with the emotional conviction to follow the Seven-Year Postdoc plan, I went through a rough week when my mental state started to degrade. Here’s how my emotional conviction degraded: peer pressure to work more + lack of confidence as a young faculty member + comments poisoning the well of what this experience should be like. Pressure to work more came from one of my bosses who had no malicious intent; I quite respect this person and enjoy their company but took these comments to heart: “sometimes you’ll need to write a proposal in a day. I recently wrote one within 24 hours, now it’s a long 24 hours but it can be done.” Now, I understand I can’t be like a clock-in clock-out kind of employee every day. In the end, this job is a “get-it-done” kind of job. Comments like these normalize an unhealthy lifestyle, and maybe this is what this person’s life is like, but I certainly do not wish this upon anyone else. This comment is just a sample; most comments are subtle brags about the lack of sleep one gets, or the long hours crunched. Because I just got here, I am an impressionable young mind digesting as much advice as I can get. I should prepare myself for this lifestyle and lean into it.
Since then, I’ve talked myself out of it through introspection and a sticky-note, a physical reminder of the privilege of my situation. To respond to the peer pressure, these people went or are going through rough times. My friend recently told me, these comments are a way of justifying that they’re doing enough to have a place here. I took these comments too personally and I should console, support, compartmentalize, move on. That’s their life, their way of speaking to me, and I do not need to be in that situation. Not to say their methods are wrong or that mine are better, but to say that there is space for the both of us. To respond to a lack of confidence, I pride myself in excellent time-management and need to believe that what I’m doing is enough to be successful. To respond to poisoning the well, I am choosing not to take to heart the way things must be or hear toxic comments about the way faculty behave. I can listen but withhold judgment so I may discover the people, the environment on my own terms.
I realize that there are people who work harder than me and some of them will achieve more than me. I’m not a person who can work ridiculous hours so I must accept the sacrifice in accomplishment to sustain joy in my life. I respect those who want the job more and live the job harder than I do. The best that I can do is work incredibly efficiently during the workday for nine hours of focused time. I should not worry about perception of how hard I am working because I am achieving a lot in a minimal amount of time. I told a colleague that I was going to install a swing hammock in my office and this person responded how that wouldn’t look good, but I developed enough confidence to respond gently that I know how much I work; that is enough.
I’ve worked nine hours a day for five days a week for a month and a half. Honestly, I am proud of what I’ve accomplished so far, of the work I am proposing, the connections I’ve made, and the activities I’ve gotten to do. I wrote my first proposal within a month of starting my job, titled: “Low-Cost Cubesat Kit and Course Development for Undergraduate Research Projects in the Public Domain” which focuses on aerospace education accessibility, a passion of mine. I’m almost done with my second proposal, titled “Robotic Learning for Exploration of Extreme Environments through Planetary Surface Analogues”. I am so excited about both of these projects and I think my voice is very strong in each narrative. I record what I do every week because in the big picture, we forget how much we accomplish. Here’s a link to the research log.
We’ll see if I like this job in a year. We’ll see if I’m any good at this job in a year. The point is that I do not compromise the way that I pursue my academic vision. I’ll let the tenure review panel decide if my pursuit was good enough. Until then, I’ll have seven years of joyous, meaningful job security.
Update, March 12, 2022, two years later:
A question I get a lot about the blog piece is: “… so are you still maintaining a 9-hour workday?” It’s been two years since I last wrote this opinion piece and I’m happy to say that I adhered to a 9-hour workday 95% of the time. There were some days in which I had to work longer days or on the weekend for a proposal, or a faculty search committee took up 15 hours of my week and I couldn’t get any research done, but I compensated by taking an afternoon off when I had a less busy week. I only recently felt like I was juggling too many balls and dropping some balls, to which my therapist said: “we need to realize which balls are glass and plastic”.
Regarding success, I feel super fulfilled and I think I’m doing a good job for the most part:
A couple of my high-performing, high-achieving students: Baylor de los Reyes and Michael Mori. I am so super proud of them and I always say, I’m more proud of them for how little I had to do for them to achieve so much
I have raised over $1.375 million as a PI and $0.95 million as a co-I or senior personnel under my direct control, or $2.3 million total. I’ve participated in a total of $40M worth of unsuccessful proposals, $4.5M of which I led.
I taught and am still teaching a Spacecraft Mission Design course, EPET/ME 400, and got great reviews. I was nominated for the SOEST Excellence in Teaching Award, although I ultimately did not get it. I’m teaching quite a bit more than is required in my job offer because I want to start an aerospace program.
I work with 2 PhD students, 4 Master’s students, 40 undergrads on the rover team, and 20 undergrads on the satellite team. My students are killing it! I cry out of joy when they succeed. I was recently nominated for an Excellence in Mentorship Award.
My research productivity is honestly slow going. I focused most of my time in the first year on proposals, most of my second year on training students to get to the state of the art, and I’m feeling a bit insecure about my publication rate. I’ve published a journal note and conference paper but I should probably average 2 journal papers a year to be confident about gliding through tenure. I hate thinking about external tenure criteria as a reason to feel bad about my research productivity but I hate losing, even if I don’t like the rules. It’ll be ok though. My students and I will get there, and I just need to believe that my current efforts will pay off at a rate higher than 2 papers/year if I keep going.
Outside the tenure rat race, I’m trying to work outside the system by promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI)initiatives and you know what, I’m damn proud of what my colleagues and I have done. I’ve been a part of a gender equity proposal, created an inaugural JEDI committee in our department, and pressured administrators to create a JEDI director for our school. These efforts aren’t exactly valued in the tenure evaluation criteria but you know what, I believe in advocacy work and I’m going to use my job security and work hours to do what I think brings value to the university.
Qualifiers for success and failure:
I am very lucky to be in a research tenure-track faculty position. My advisor was jealous of my job offer because I had so little teaching responsibility. Teaching does take up a considerable amount of time and emotional bandwidth. There’s no doubt in my mind that much of my success and ability to adhere to 9-hour workdays is attributed to my very generous job position.
That being said, I am using my flexibility in part to do research, but also in part to grow an academic degree and pursue JEDI efforts. I’m not doggedly progressing my research portfolio as much as the job entitles me to but I’m going to do me. We’ll see if in 3 years if the tenure review committee deems me productive enough.
I do get asked to do a lot of service, informally as a part of proposals or formally to be on faculty search committees and student thesis committees, more so than male colleagues. I deal with a lot more microaggressions (sexism) and mentorship of underrepresented students because I seem more approachable. These emotionally-charged events stay with me past the 9-hour workday and into the weekend at times, although I don’t count these hours in my 9-hour workday.
I think I’ve sufficiently proved that the 9-hour workday is possible as a pre-tenure faculty member; I think it’s possible to be happy and productive, maybe less productive than what you dream but the real win is not burning out and staying in the game so you can give to others.