The Academic's Promised Land: Tenure Track aka Publication Expectation Torture
Sometimes the best inspiration comes when you least expect it.
I had a great conversation with Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Professor and Author (Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America). We were catching up on her upcoming year at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and my Executive Coaching business. And we discovered a unique synergy in our work.
She described the suffering of so many of her colleagues working in academia. The necessity to get work published and the procrastination and anguish around submitting articles due to the high degree of perfectionism in the academic field. The guilt is awful. They KNOW they need to submit, but they procrastinate, and the procrastination feels like laziness, and it is not that. But it feels horrible. The procrastination stems from the fact that they cannot get past their perfectionism to get their work OUT THERE. Trying to get it perfect is completely self-sabotaging.
A piece of work might be GREAT. Ninety percent Complete. But NOT submitted. Not yet. That is such a common pain point for anyone with a perfectionist streak. You want it DONE RIGHT.
100% right.
Ok, let’s be honest, 1000% right.
Editing, throwing out, starting over, scribbling, erasing, crying, asking for just one more opinion, or a bout of analysis paralysis, taking the dog on one more walk, the one thing they are NOT doing is SUBMITTING their work.
Everyone has a unique spin on the world we move in. Share it. People want to read it and you owe it to everyone, and to yourself, to get it out there.
I do not work in the field of academia. My perfectionism drives procrastination pain, overwhelm, saying yes to too many things and a good wholesome dose of mom guilt. So, I needed to do a little research to understand the demands around this push for publication and what gets in the way. Holy Cow! Here is a little taste of what our friends in academia are up to…
They earn their PhD, and presto, they land an Assistant Professorship! Congratulations! Right. When this does indeed happen, and of course it does happen, the Assistant Professor’s work is based on research, teaching and service to the university. Covid, going on-line, weekly PCR testing, dealing with students who are not always known to make the best social decisions, dealing with university politics, dealing with a changing emotional landscape (did your parents ever call your professors?!), is all part of the glamour.
At year six, an Assistant Professor is up for Tenure, which means they can teach what they want, how they want, for life. But getting there is NOT simple or easy. The above was just the day-to-day.
The tenure dossier includes the following: cv, list of publications, comprehensive teaching portfolio, tenure statement, list of awards and grants, details of university service and 5-10 letters of review from prominent senior scholars to see if you cut the mustard. They vote. If you “pass,” the president or provost of the university reviews your submission.
That sounds like plenty cause for anxiety and lost sleep. But with Nicole’s statement in mind, I dug a little deeper. It turns out that the publication situation is not what it used to be. In Higher Education institutions of days long past, it may have been acceptable for a professor to never have published anything. But now there is colossal expectation around having multiple publications. The more you publish, the more prestige you earn the university, the more prestigious the university the more desirable it becomes to students. Drawn from Cal Berkely’s edu site, ‘Where a few articles would have sufficed a few years ago, you now need a book. Instead of a book, you need a book (at a university or prestigious commercial press) and clear evidence of progress on a post-dissertation project.” it goes on to say, “Don't delay sending out draft articles and manuscripts until you have it just right. You will likely have to revise it on the basis of reviewers' comments anyway. Let it go. Time is of the essence, and passes shockingly fast, even if you don't have small children. There are few places in life where the perfect is more of an enemy of the good/publishable.”
THIS IS PRECICELY WHERE I CAN HELP.
And I do it in a ridiculously straightforward way:
I help you Plan Backwards and I help you trounce that High Achiever in you that self-sabotages and stirs up all the reasons why you procrastinate.
Planning Backwards.
⭐️What is the specific date of submission?
⭐️What are all the steps? Interviews, writing, research, reviews, etc.
⭐️We chunk it up and put it in your calendar
⭐️ I hold you accountable.
What is special about that? Surely you can manage that by yourself. SURE. YOU CAN. But are you?
Sometimes the best gift you can give yourself is to have someone there to get you started…with the end. Someone with whom you can just share ideas. As you talk, your ideas will become more solidified.
I will help you calendarize your submission. More than, “ok, let’s see, sabbatical is from Jan to June, and I have the summer off, so I will submit in September.” Raise your hand if you have had that plan before? If it worked out, that is fantastic! But sometimes unplanned, unstructured time feels impossible to wrestle into productive output.
I use principles pulled from Project Management taught to adults with ADHD. (It is ok if you are not ADHD, the fact that you are teaching and publishing and parenting and living in general is enough to make the practice applicable). We simplify and we calendarize. We chunk things up and we put real, understood timing against the work.
Writing something for publication is not a “to-do.” It is a project. I can help you treat it like one.
If you or anyone you know would like help with this, please contact me or share this article with them.
