Advance warning - long essay!
I'm an academic with quite a few years under my belt, but still at lecturer level. I've applied for promotion 4 times in the umpteen years I've been at this level and applied for other jobs (got interviews too, but no job offers). I have a pretty good publication record, everybody says (at least, everybody outside my own department ), and have had some grants including one current one that's quite big. In the last 3 or 4 years, two other departments have invited me to apply for a professorship and the last external person my HoD chatted to about whether my CV was "good enough" for promotion also assumed I was going for a chair. I am not being bigheaded when I say that I should have been promoted ages ago.
I am currently filling out the soul-destroying promotion forms again and getting once again the sucked-in teeth and the "ooh, I don't know if you have a case, you're being a bit optimistic in saying this, this and this".
The last interview I had gave me feedback that the reasons for not promoting me in my current department were, and I quote, "bllsht". All the feedback from recent job applications has been very positive, just that I'm not exactly in the right area they wanted (e.g. one "personality" wants someone in their field and won't budge - that was from someone I know well and I believe them; or all candidates appointable but another one had research more central to the unit).
My HoD doesn't particularly like my research, and one previous HoD didn't like it either - they think it's too applied and too interdisciplinary. I was entered into REF under a different grouping, so it's true it is interdisciplinary. I'm in a slightly soft science, and was entered under a different, slightly less soft science. I don't really have a research group - we tend not to in my field - I usually have 1 or 2 PhD students, or an RA, and sometimes a few undergrads helping out - but we don't do much "lab" stuff anyway. But the number of people can vary between 0 and 5 or so.
I really, really love my research. I don't love writing papers but I think that's probably due to the soul-destroying nature of the submission process. I get them done, slowly but I do get them out. I like writing collaborative papers (one of HoD's beefs with me actually, as he'd rather I was Big Cheese on all of them).
I'm on the fence about teaching - I don't really love it or hate it. I don't want to only teach (so I don't want to move to the OU or into A level teaching).
I do some public engagement, but not enough to make a career out of it. I have done some science journalism, but mainly very light blogging (far too low profile for anyone to notice), and although I have a few proper contacts who have said some positive things about my writing, at the point when I had energy to do this I made a lot of pitches on possible stories to these contacts and never got any response (not even no thank you).
DH works in a government department and we are very geographically limited in where we live. We've always been like this, we have one preschool DC now though and we have thought about moving (see above re applying for jobs) we would now have a choice of living in our current, non-London region, or in the SE as he could get a transfer to the London office, but (partly because we're thinking of having another) it would be a really bad time to move right now. We'd be happy to move once that phase is out of the way, either before or just after the current DC starts primary school. The last few jobs I've applied for have been in our current area, but there aren't many universities here.
I am just so, so fed up with academia, with my current department, with the personalities and politics, and with the whole system of universities refusing to promote you unless you move.
I don't find academia particularly flexible and family friendly, though everyone says it is. But I don't find lectures that go on into the evenings when you have to pick up a child from nursery particularly flexible, nor do I find helpful the expectation that I'll check emails on my day off/in the evenings/work on projects at the weekends/lie about working from home if I have a sick child (and then actually work while the child is whining round my knees). And I don't find the senior male academics flexible or family friendly either (gosh, how surprising).
I have thought of a few things I could do instead but none of them seem really sensible or to work for me in any way, to be honest. Perhaps I could be inspired about one of them. Perhaps other people have more ideas.
(This post got so horrendously long that I snipped out my job ideas, I'll see what responses I get before posting them!)
Sorry this is such a novel! I had a real sob on DH last night and he said I need to GET SOME ADVICE. I am thinking of going to our staff advice service but I think I really need some perspective first!
Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.
Work
What else could I do - academic in distress!
namechangeforissue · 29/11/2013 14:27
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.