Saturday, September 26, 2009

Save the cheerleader, Save the nerd

An assistant professor said to me recently that there are two things that make his job particularly difficult, in ways he hadn't imagined before becoming a faculty member:

1. It's a lonely job, meaning he spends a lot of time sitting alone in his office and writing grants
2. There is no one cheerleading for him and telling him he's doing a great job. Most of the cheerleading comes from other assistant profs he knows, in the form of group commiseration.

I've heard before that writing is a fairly lonely event, but I picture myself getting up from my desk every few hours and doing something like speaking with a colleague down the hall, or visiting my students in the lab. I also figure there will be a somewhat large number of interruptions from students and visitors knocking on my door, which is something I will have to learn to manage.

What surprised me is that this faculty member felt like not having a cheerleader was one of the unexpected aspects of academia. Did he have a cheerleader during his graduate and postdoctoral work? If so, what planet is he from, and when can I visit?

I do find that most of the cheerleading that occurs in graduate school (and in the postdoctoral community) comes from friends and peers. It would be nice if more positive reinforcement trickled down from the faculty ranks, and I wonder if the lack is due to any of the following:

> Faculty don't have the time to spend on leadership tasks such as how to motivate and manage their team given their fundraising/ networking/ service obligations
> Faculty don't realize how helpful and motivational this type of support is
> Faculty don't care how helpful or motivational it is
> Faculty don't know how to motivate students in this way

I suppose the answer varies from faculty member to faculty member. I've seen very caring people who want to engage their students but lack the people skills to do so. I've seen faculty who couldn't care less about students. And I've also seen the rarer species of faculty who both care and are good at motivating students.

I think the moral of the story is don't rely on finding a cheerleader, but do keep close to you any friends / advisors / colleagues / family who fulfill this role. And most of all, work on becoming your own cheerleader, because we all have those days where we need a boost.

6 comments:

  1. Once you become a faculty member, your cheerleaders are your peers who review your grants and manuscripts, and who invite you to present seminars at their institutions and at conferences, workshops, and colloquia. Of course, this is different from sports cheerleaders, who cheer just as loud when their team is down 55-0 in the last game of a season in which they have already lost their first 11 games. If you suck as a faculty member, no one is going to cheer for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Did he have a cheerleader during his graduate and postdoctoral work? If so, what planet is he from, and when can I visit?

    Ha! I guess it depends on where you're coming from, as we sometimes can happen upon unexpected cheerleaders (will write about such an experience this week). In graduate school, when I had drastically more accessibility to my advisor than I do now, I would occasionally ask him in meetings, "How do you think I'm doing? What am I doing well? What could I do better?" It takes some courage to ask for a frank assessment of your work, but I was able to feed off of my advisor's praise, and I tried to better myself based on his advice.

    Who knows what you can do as a faculty member. I would definitely be looking for a mentor, some kind of tenured faculty member. That would be the only cheerleading I'd expect to find, and even that requires the effort to find a mentor.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Comrade, you're right. The more successful you are, the more people seem willing to support you and do their best to further your career. Success in general seems to be self-perpetuating. (You won an award, that makes it easier to win the next one, and so on...)

    It's significantly harder to find people who are willing to help you shine when you're a bit more rough cut. Too bad since we miss out on a lot of talent that way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have also been surprised by how lonely my life as an assistant professor is. And it turns out a big part of why I enjoyed research was the incredible group of people I got to interact with daily. I don't have that in my new academic home. It feels like it's just me against the world. That's probably amplified by my being the only black faculty member in the College of Engineering (and I'm female and probably the youngest newbie; My colleagues' children are my age). On another note, I have realised that my faculty friends are all non-scientists. Odd.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think support from other junior faculty is key as well as a mentor. It's good to get a checkup to make sure you are doing right things and staying on track. But, day to day most of my support comes from peers. Also, remember that you need to toot your own horn a little and share good news with your mentor and your chair so they know about it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anon, I can see why the combination of those factors would make things lonelier. I wonder though if later in your career when the older colleagues retire, if you won't be able to have a very interesting and impactful role as the most senior of the junior folks. Maybe you'll get to have a significant role in shaping the future direction of the college / department... A friend of mine recently began working at a company where he is younger than his peers by a a couple decades. He finds it tough being taken seriously now, but in a few more years he'll be at the top of everyone's promotion list and his career advancement will likely move faster in the long run than if he had started at a younger company.

    ReplyDelete