What was the best part of being a professor is now the worst part of being a professor

We get to do it all. Which means we have to do it all.

I think I fell in love with this career path when I was in grad school. I realize that a lot of y’all had mixed experiences en route to the PhD, but I have to admit that saw what I did in grad school was absolutely a blast for me, and it also was a microcosm of the job that professors do.

What was so great about grad school for me?

I got to do research, on whatever I wanted to work on, as long as I thought it was important and was going to advance our understanding of the world.

I got to teach! I got to work students who wanted to learn about biology (as well as some even some who didn’t but were nonetheless enrolled). This was great!

I got to train new junior scientists! I had a whole team of undergrads working with me on the projects that comprised my dissertation. One of them moved on to become an entomology professor! And I wasn’t even good at this at the time.

As a budding expert in my field, I was positioned to do outreach, engage in policy related to the topic, and was growing as a resource for the community.

Since my dissertation project was my own, that means I wrote grants to get the work funded. And when the work was done, I published as sole author, and sometimes with the students who joined me on the project.

I got to present my stuff at conferences, meet other people working on similar things, get to know and learn from people who are super experienced and wise and smart, and all that.

It was very cool! You mean I can do this for an actual living? And have a shot at having the security of tenure? That sounds amazing.

In some ways, it still is quite amazing. I’m doing research on the stuff that I think is most interesting and important and in need at the moment. I get to teach a population of students who are curious, earnest, kind, deserving, and prepared to grow with support. I get to share my work with the public, publish in well-regarded journals, get funded from federal agencies, and I have a lot of flexibility in how I schedule my time.

For me, a highlight of being a professor is that there is a ton of variety. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be at a teaching-focused institution, because it wouldn’t separate me from the fun aspects of the job like teaching labs, doing fieldwork, being involved in all the pieces of my science, and working closely with undergrads.

I got what I wanted. I’ve been in this job for about 25 years. How’s that plan working out, having a lot of variety in the job?

I think it’s exhausting, because there’s no way that I can even come close to matching all of the expectations that are put on me. Which means that I need to choose the expectations that I’m prepared to fulfill, given within the number of hours I have in each given week, and then come to peace with not meeting all of the unmet expectations.

What expectations are these that I need to choose among?

My students and colleagues are depending on me to be a strong teacher and make a difference in the lives of those enrolled in my courses. They’re also expecting me to take on a subset of these students and provide a quality traineeship in research. Other segments of the community think my job involves bring in grants and generate publications. Others think a big part of my job is to take part in the governance of my university, while others think it’s important engaged with my academic societies and serve others in the discipline using academic and organizational skills. And some think it’s my job to perform outreach to support the protection of biodiversity and a quicker transition to clean energy production. And then there’s always the work of repairing entrenched inequities that persist everywhere.

All of these things are cool, all of these things are important. And I cannot possibly do them in the quantity and quality that others might be expecting. The obvious conclusion here, which I hope you’ve reached with me, is that we do not have to be captive to the expectations of others. When the job is bigger than any single human being, we need to make the choices that meet our needs and also keeps us sustainably employed. With the privilege of tenure, there’s more latitude to make those choices.

I’ve come to terms that this octojob is too much to keep sustainable in the long term. In the run up to tenure, sure I can juggle the research, the teaching, the institutional leadership, the mentoring, the outreach, the professional communities, and all of that. Heck, I even did this run up to tenure twice. Now that that’s in the rear view mirror, I am I expected to juggle all of this stuff all the way up until retirement? If I decide to specialize on some things because I can’t do every single one of them as well as others are doing them, am I going to be deadwood or driftwood? That’s just someone else’s judgment based on their own expectations, after all, right?

A couple years ago, I decided to pick and choose a lot more carefully than I had in the past. My mental health has steadily improved, and I think I’ve had the bandwidth to grow in new directions and increase my impact. I think it takes a combination of good values and wisdom to do a good job to sort things into four categories:

1. The stuff that you are simply not doing

2. The stuff you have to do but it doesn’t have to be done well or occupy much of your time

3. The stuff that needs to be done well, and takes a bunch of effort, but it’s not your primary focus

4. The stuff that are your highest priorities

I think everybody sorts all work into these categories, consciously or unconsciously. I think being conscious about this allows us to be more strategic about these choices. And I think being transparent about these choices with others can help both you and them manage your expectations.

It’s okay to bump stuff between categories, though I think we’ve got to be very careful about putting something in the “needs to be done but not done well” category for obviously reasons.

In my opinion, the hardest part of being a professor is deciding what goes in category 1 and what goes in category 3. There are some things that, for moral imperative reasons, simply need to be done well if you’re going to be doing them. But if that category is too full (or your job requires that this category to be overfull, for example a job with a high teaching or mentoring load), then you’ll never get to category 4, and there’s a temptation to put that stuff in category 1.

It’s worth nothing that how people decide what needs to be done well and is important even though it’s not their primary focus is often associated with identity, and so when some tenured white guys make the choice too often to simply not do things that are important, that screws over people who feel ethically compelled to pick up the slack. I think that’s where transparency is huge here, instead of silently deciding to not do certain things and to focus on others, that way we can identify an equitable approach to the division of academic labor.

Was I thinking about this stuff when I chose to be a professor? Not at all. But it’s at the forefront of my mind nowadays! I’m not as excited about all the stuff as I used to be. And that’s okay! But I realize that this is the job that I took, which means I need to do my job. And if the university is expecting more of me than they should be, that’s their problem, but I need to make choices to resolve that problem without harming my students or my colleagues. This is a heck of a juggling act.