Growth by Design, Not Default: Navigating the Career Seasons When Your Old Map Fails
Scrabble letters forming “a new chapter”.
I help mid-career researchers develop sustainable, impactful research programs designed for the next phase of their careers. Click here to find out more.
The career strategy that secured your tenure will rarely get you to your next intellectual breakthrough. Mid-career requires laying down your old map and intentionally choosing your next destination.
I have a confession to make. As a relatively junior faculty member, I COULD NOT understand why the associate professors I worked around were so frazzled and angry all the time. I remember thinking regularly to myself, “If you don’t like your job, maybe you should find another.”
Thinking back on this now, I shudder at how naïve and judgmental I was. Naïve because my department did a fantastic job of protecting me from most of the endless and sometimes tedious service obligations that exist within universities. Judgmental in the sense that I assumed their concerns weren’t valid and that those feelings would never find me. Plot twist – they found me 😳.
The Post-Tenure Identity Crisis:
As junior faculty, we still function mostly in the “student hustle” zone. This zone is characterized by the need to power through to achieve our candidacy, finish our dissertation, and then eventually get tenure. Striving for the next thing is easy and comfortable for us. By the time we achieve tenure, we’ve been hustling for more than 15 years (on the conservative side).
But what counts as accomplishments changes once you get tenure. Don’t get me wrong, the system will very happily allow you to continue striving and accumulate more responsibility with little to no additional recognition. There are endless service opportunities within higher ed, whether they are in your profession, department, school, or institution, and at the same time there are also endless numbers of senior faculty who have served their time (or not) and are looking to get off these committees.
It was in this vacuum between tenure and promotion to full professor that I really began to understand that I theoretically had at least 20 more years of work ahead of me before I could retire. So, the question I started asking myself was, what do I want to do with that time?
Subheading 2: Diagnosing Your Current Season:
Short answer: definitely not what I had been doing. The hustle had worn thin, but I wasn’t sure what would replace it.
After getting tenure, I was tired and honestly still involved in a crap load of stuff that I had already committed to. I started by asking myself what I didn’t want to do anymore. Some of these decisions were straightforward (finding a new person to take on a role I had). Others were more complicated and required multiple conversations with a variety of stakeholders and partners. It also meant getting comfortable with people misunderstanding why I was making the changes. It has taken me years to divest myself of most of these responsibilities. And I am not entirely done yet.
This process, while long and complex, has given me a framework for how to proceed into the next phase of my career where I work to build with intention. Now I ask myself:
1. Does this work need my specific skills and knowledge? Or can someone else accomplish the same goals? - Protect your time and share opportunities.
2. Does this work energize me? Or does the thought of doing it make me dread what’s ahead? - Your energy and attention are finite resources spend them wisely.
3. Will this work provide meaningful impact to the stakeholders I serve? Or does it just mean another publication that only other academics will see? - Your work matters, don’t turn it into another check-box.
Subheading 3: Stepping Into Sovereignty:
Of course, my pathway won’t be yours, but the process for figuring out your next steps will be similar. The hustle was fine for a time, but it is time to transition to a model of existence that is sustainable for the next 20-30 years of your career.
Here’s to a new generation of associate professors who might be a just a little less angry.
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