This is a post from the 2013 drafts! One of us has since left academia after getting tenure (life after tenure wasn't great-- it really wasn't worth it), and the other is now a full professor.
We had been inspired for this post by Reassigned Time (I think maybe she posted as crazy grad prof? I can't quite remember.) She talks about her life after tenure in this post.
We noted in the comments that we'd asked what life after tenure would be, and we thought talking about life after tenure would make a good meme.
So... my life after tenure...
Well, I was doing plenty of service before tenure. Doing even more now.
For a while I was like wheeeee I can research anything I want now and my cv became very dilettante. But now I'm like, oh, I kind of want to leave here and that's putting pressure on the kinds of things I should be working on. I'm not really doing a good job focusing though.
The feeling that I can just up and move if things go wrong is not as easy after tenure. In fact, I have been trying but nobody wants me :sob: Along with that is feeling like I have a stake in local and state politics, and that is truly depressing. It's much easier to ignore if you think you're going to leave in 2 years.
It is nice that I can't be fired. But also there's a need to fix things to make them better for juniors. And with the state being very anti-DEI those goals are difficult.
I asked a friend and she said she relaxed, bought a house, got a dog, and then became department chair and hates most of her admin. I hate most of my admin too, but I'm not even a department chair!
For those in academia-- did your life change after tenure? How? If you're not tenured yet, what do you hope will change?
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