{"id":37597,"date":"2017-01-24T11:27:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=37597"},"modified":"2017-01-24T11:27:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:27:46","slug":"will-not-whatever-takes-successful-academic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/will-not-whatever-takes-successful-academic\/","title":{"rendered":"I will not do \u2018whatever it takes\u2019 to be a more successful academic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oath\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the past couple of days, I\u2019ve read two articles that both made me a bit sad. One<\/a>, \u201cLook What They Make You Give\u201d, is Elizabeth Rodwell\u2019s reflections on turning down a tenure-track job and what sacrifices she\u2019s made to establish an academic career.\u00a0The other<\/a>\u00a0is an anonymous author\u2019s frustrations with her professor-husband and the way that her own career has been put on hold.<\/p>\n

Alone in a country where I (initially) knew almost nobody, I didn\u2019t feel the romantic sense of adventure I had expected. I just felt isolated. All the more so when I returned to Texas and found myself craving a greater balance between work and life. With my marriage a casualty of both my fieldwork and my relentless focus on my career above all else, I was also back on the dating market at age 35.
\nElizabeth Rodwell<\/em><\/p>\n

I want him to be respected for it, just not at my expense. I\u2019ve got a degree, but I\u2019ve been a bit busy to write any books myself. I\u2019m the one always on her own with the kids at parties, or on family days out, museum trips and cinema visits, because he was always \u201cworking\u201d. Don\u2019t get me started on people who think academics have \u201clovely long holidays\u201d.
\nAnon<\/em><\/p>\n

Both of these women are casualties of academic culture\u00a0\u2013 as well as sexism, of course. Rodwell sacrificed health and personal happiness to try to advance her career; by the time she was offered the fabled tenure-track job, she\u2019d remarried and had children, and wasn\u2019t willing to relocate thousands of miles away \u2013 a sensible decision for her family, but one that meant she was chastised by a mentor for not being willing to \u201ccommute from one coast to another \u2013 visiting my husband, babies, and stepsons only on the weekends\u201d.<\/p>\n

Anon, meanwhile, has taken on the lion\u2019s share of childcare and domestic servitude in order for her husband to work round the clock. He, apparently, doesn\u2019t even know how to unload groceries into the fridge. Or rather, I suspect he would learn perfectly well how to do it were he on his own, but since he has a wife to do it, he can fall back on the persona of the charmingly impractical professor, learned in arcane knowledge and elbow patches, and helpless as a baby when it comes to ironing and paying bills.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have anything radical to say about either of these articles, and certainly nothing that I haven\u2019t already said before on my blog. But what I will say is that I stopped thinking \u201cYes, whatever it takes\u201d about achieving a successful career quite some time ago. Mostly since I had my daughter, but even before then.<\/p>\n

I do not, and almost never have, worked 14-hour days, and I certainly can\u2019t now, since my husband takes Grace to nursery at 8am and I leave the house at 4.30pm to pick her up. I almost never do any work at the weekend, not even checking email.<\/p>\n

Perhaps in some ways I\u2019ve got more efficient in using my time since I had a baby, and I know I have less of it to myself \u2013 but also I sometimes just have to let things slide. I have not published as much as I could have done, or perhaps should have done. I\u2019ve not been to all the conferences that I could have been to. There are opportunities that I\u2019ve missed.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t regret them. In the late afternoon and evening, I belong to first my child and then my husband \u2013 and to other friends and family, when we have the time to catch up. I belong to myself, too, the parts of myself that aren\u2019t about work but are about reading novels, taking baths, cooking nourishing meals, watching interesting television, painting my nails in colours that even in the depths of January make me smile, remembering warmth.<\/p>\n

I used to want to be brilliant. Of course I still do want that, too; I\u2019m still an ambitious person. But the sum of my life is not my job. I have a year and a half left of my Leverhulme post, which will mean in the end that I have been at the University of Oxford<\/a> for six years. Six years in which I have become, I think, a better teacher and writer \u2013 but I hope also a better ally and friend.<\/p>\n

None of this will have been a waste, whatever happens. I have already started to think about what comes next. I know that I will not be willing to relocate our family for a job unless it\u2019s not only a brilliant job but also in a place that offers my family opportunities, and that means my husband isn\u2019t wrecking his own career. So I will mostly be looking for commutable opportunities, which limits my potential jobs quite a bit.<\/p>\n

I am no longer willing to take very short-term contracts that offer us no security. It may be that I have to leave academia, which would be a source of great grief for me. But I do have ideas of other things that I might do, and have already started building connections to establish them, just in case.<\/p>\n

I will always be Dr Rachel E. Moss; I will always have taught hundreds of bright and interesting young people, and I will always have talked about my research with some of the cleverest, kindest people around.<\/p>\n

I drew a line in the sand for myself a long time ago. Will I regret the distance of that line from the shore in years to come, that I drew it too far up the beach, will I think that I should have risked more? Perhaps. But I will know I drew that line so I was not at risk of drowning: not just for my sake, but for those I love.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Rachel Moss is a lecturer in late medieval history at the\u00a0University of Oxford<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past couple of days, I\u2019ve read two articles that both made me a bit sad. One, \u201cLook What They Make You Give\u201d, is Elizabeth Rodwell\u2019s reflections on turning down a tenure-track job and what sacrifices she\u2019s made to establish an academic career.\u00a0The other\u00a0is an anonymous author\u2019s frustrations with her professor-husband and the way […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":37598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[42653],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-37597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-casualties-of-academic-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nI will not do \u2018whatever it takes\u2019 to be a more successful academic - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/will-not-whatever-takes-successful-academic\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I will not do \u2018whatever it takes\u2019 to be a more successful academic - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the past couple of days, I\u2019ve read two articles that both made me a bit sad. 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