In 1922 George Lynn Cross, coach of the team, said this to the Oklahoma legislature.
We want a university of which the football team can be proud.
I thought of this a propos of some conversations I have had of late.
Some of
you may feel if you stand out in your work (where you publish, your visibility
in the profession) you may well find there is some resentment among your
colleagues
I believe that may be
the case. Their argument will be that you do not do enough service, you are too
devoted to your work and external scholarly meetings and invited presentations,
and being out there, and not being stuck with the scut work of the department,
or your work is really not serious, or it may just elicit lower annual ratings
than are warranted--or other reasons too wondrous to imagine. There is a legacy
of "the average" (or cutting down those who stand out) at many a
university that goes way back. Deans and the provost want excellence, but as a
consequence they will find that more than half their faculty does not look so
good and are reluctant to challenge that half. Being smart and successful and
ambitious might work at MIT or Berkeley or Columbia, but perhaps it is a mixed
deal at your institution.
For the sake of your
university, aim high. Do you very best work, feed your ambition with
achievements that are extraordinary, be as prominent as you can be outside your
home institutions. If they do not reward you appropriately, and
recognize your excellence, other universities will.
I am not suggesting
anything dramatic, or suggesting that your university is a weak institution.
However, your remarks reminded me of what I sense at many an institution, and what
I gather happens at promotion and tenure committees. Perhaps all this has
disappeared, but I think not.
Also, it is crucial that
you not get shanghai'ed into heading too many committees or institutes or
centers--if such duties will slow down your scholarly work. In the prime of
your career, as you are, you need to focus on family and work, making sure you
do not kill yourself with overwork. [One example, recently: one school had a
faculty member as its vice dean for administration or some such. The dean
realized that what the school needed was more scholarship, in quantity and
quality. Now a non-tenure-track faculty member is the vice-dean. And the
pressure and freedom to produce scholarship falls to the former
vice-dean--appropriately.]
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I was
talking with my sister, and she suggested that my following my own nose, rather
than doing what was expected, did not mean that others appreciated what I was
doing and hence I might well not have been as rewarded as I "ought"
to have been.
Now, I really cannot
complain. I have received my share of grants/fellowships, published lots of
books and enough articles, and I have a job!--where I have been able to write many
of those books and tend to my family, and teach more or less what I wanted to
[the secret here was to invent courses that met specific needs, or
undergraduate, or were manifestly interesting, or make courses into what I
wanted to do, or say Yes! to whatever they needed to be taught], and live in a
good place. I got paid! I knew what I was getting into when I started, since I
had just been at a top university and before that a more average one, and
before that at a top university. And I did need a job! I did
not have alternatives or choices, to speak of, at least a university despite
two books and the rest. I am grateful for my job.
My point here is that
following your internal compass, one that has been guided and molded over the
years by the strongest institutions and teachers, is what you should be doing.
I know that you have choices, and I suspect that for the next 5-10 years you
will get nibbles regularly. But, that freedom to point your work in the
direction you wish is perhaps the biggest reward for our profession. To be able
as well to attend to your family, both your spouse and children, and your
parents, is the other reward.
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