I don’t post much here these days. Stretched too thin. But I have to speak up because I’m reading too many arguments about how tenure makes faculty jobs easy. I have a suspicion a lot of people who get bitter based on this misapprehension only have one tiny fantasy view of tenure

Tenure doesn’t come with less work at any faculty job I have ever had. It comes with tons of work, & work that has nothing to do with my teaching or my classrooms or my research. My primary job is my teaching 3 classes a quarter to an average of 80 students.

Here’s what I also do in my kush and easy tenured job:
advising 20 or so students
Co-chair on 2 committees
Secretary faculty association
Member of 5 committees that meet regularly
Head advisor of student club
Mentoring 2 new faculty

Meetings I have to attend regularly:
Shared governance
Instructional council
Humanities division
Community forums
Trainings regularly for admin and advising work
Quarterly inservice

I’m on our negotiation committee working hard to improve pay and support for our adjunct faculty. This summer, I am starting a 27 credit ESCALA training to learn to train other faculty on equity, inclusion, and diversity practices, and then I will spend time training them.

And none of this includes the work I do for my scholarship because it’s not considered part of my service. Oh yes, that’s because I work at a CC. I don’t think anyone who complains about the privileges of the tenured has likely even thought twice about a CC because of bs

about how it’s not real academia, or it’s for non-scholars. I have a Ph.D. I have a book out. I am spending the next two years lecturing around my state on my research thanks to @HumanitiesWA (YAY!). All of this comes out of what I can squeeze in on weekends and summers.

AND I am an excellent, caring, dedicated, and challenging teacher to bright, hard-working students who suffer from a large number of equity gaps. I then struggle with feelings of inadequacy because I can’t do MORE for them, more I know I could do with more time and mental space

that is otherwise taken up with service. And in case someone’s thinking I have done this willingly, to myself, I will say yes, I took a CC job knowing well what it means, but I am not the one piling more on my plate because I am hungry. I am doing it because we don’t have enough

Full time faculty and our admin and staff are stretched just as thin as faculty are, doing the work of two or more jobs. I do it for the reason all of my fellow profs do it—because it’s got to be done, and we are the only shoulders around.

We had a job opening last year for a TT position in English. We had less than 60 applications. Our pay is high, our benefits are stellar, and I have amazing colleagues who respect and care for each other (mostly). Yet, a dismal turnout. The previous year’s opening had 70 apps.

All because people only WANT the fantasy, a fantasy that only really exists for a select few, and I bet those select few still have real problems in their work.

My goal here isn’t to alienate people in an already alienating market. Academia is rough and unfair and based on such an outdated system of thought and long overdue for an overhaul to make it a more functioning world that gives its workers what they all need and stops exploiting.

But, I am done listening to all of the whining uninformed, elitists, who think my job is easy just because I am full-time and tenured. Come take my job for a year while I take a sabbatical to start a new book that will take me twice as long to finish as my first one (8 yrs)

because of my job. Then, I will listen to you whine about your exhaustion, depression, feelings of inadequacy, & tell you it’s ok, it’s a labor of love, so you don’t need more money or less work because what you’re doing is so meaningful, and that’s the REAL reward.

Maybe I will gaslight you just a little bit, too, and say that maybe you’re just not suited to this, or maybe you need to improve your time management. Oh, I will also encourage you to go learn about self-care and work-life balance, so you can feel better because we all know

the problem is you. You take on too much. You work too hard. You’re not protecting yourself and your time.

And lest people begin to tell me that if I am this bitter and exhausted, I need a new job, I will qualify that I do indeed love my job and can think of nothing else I could do that would matter to me this much. I love my students and do all I can to help them learn their best.

So please, the next time you want to complain about how the grass is greener when you have never made an effort to take care of that grass or you have only seen others do it, others who are so good at it it looks easy when it isn’t, think twice and stfu.