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Post by Go Bears on Sept 24, 2011 13:21:46 GMT -5
Berkeley. Hey, a budding sociologist can dream.
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Post by hmm on Sept 24, 2011 13:58:15 GMT -5
I've been a bit surprised to see so many posters who dream of getting a job at top research universities. Having just spent nearly a decade at a top 5 school where I got to know several assistant profs quite well, I can say without a doubt that their lives were *not* happy. The intense pressure to publish and the highly competitive environment amongst profs, plus the pressures of teaching and meeting the demands of grad students, plus applying for grants and performing departmental service pretty much made it nearly impossible for anyone to live a balanced life until after tenure. Of course everyone's needs and desires are different and many people thrive on pressure and competition, but in my experience top schools can often encourage an unhealthy level of workaholism that can have major negative consequences on personal lives.
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Post by indeed on Sept 24, 2011 14:27:32 GMT -5
I've been a bit surprised to see so many posters who dream of getting a job at top research universities. Having just spent nearly a decade at a top 5 school where I got to know several assistant profs quite well, I can say without a doubt that their lives were *not* happy. The intense pressure to publish and the highly competitive environment amongst profs, plus the pressures of teaching and meeting the demands of grad students, plus applying for grants and performing departmental service pretty much made it nearly impossible for anyone to live a balanced life until after tenure. Of course everyone's needs and desires are different and many people thrive on pressure and competition, but in my experience top schools can often encourage an unhealthy level of workaholism that can have major negative consequences on personal lives. Word. Having just spent the last few years as an assistant professor in one such department I'm trying to get out. But to each his/her own.
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Post by head in the sand on Sept 24, 2011 16:59:19 GMT -5
If you think that "The intense pressure to publish and the highly competitive environment amongst profs, plus the pressures of teaching and meeting the demands of grad students, plus applying for grants and performing departmental service pretty much made it nearly impossible for anyone to live a balanced life until after tenure." only applies at Top 5 places, have I got some news for you...
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Post by not surprised on Sept 24, 2011 19:17:47 GMT -5
Can you blame us for wanting to become what all our advisers think we should become? Most of us will be lucky enough to get jobs, of course. But, we are still lured by the romanticized notion we have of the "life of the mind" at these elite R1 universities. Plus, a lot of us want to live in urban environments. Not at all surprised we see a pattern for a lot of top research universities in California.
P.S. I must say I'd die and go to heaven if I got the Berkeley or Stanford tt gigs. Five/six years of misery is worth it for an entire academic life in a fantastic university in the good old Bay Area. Granted, I'm gay and "family-less," so my work/life balance can take a back burner for a while to live so close to the gay mecca that is San Francisco.
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Post by pdoc on Sept 24, 2011 23:54:59 GMT -5
the flipside to the 6 years of no life to get tenure is that life after tenure is pretty nice. I am a post doc at one of these places and I can't think of a single time in my year here that I've seen my postdoc supervisor stay past 4. Or answer an email during the weekend. And this person is by no means slacking off. With over 3 million dollars in grants over the past 5-7 years, hu's been able to assemble a small army of postdocs and graduate students to do the nitty gritty work of the research, while buying off courses and the like.
Still, it is not in any way my dream job. At this point, my postdoc supervisor is a lot more like a manager than a researcher, has little interaction with undergraduates, and probably interacts with the budget people in the university more often than with the graduate students.
Which is why, for me at least, my dream job is at either one of the smaller r1s or SLACs with research requirements. Small classes, a few graduate students, more manageable research and grant expectations. A place like Emory, or Miami, or Barnard, or Rollins, and so on.
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Post by hoop on Sept 25, 2011 2:31:21 GMT -5
So people think they'd be able to get tenure at Stanford?
This is a rosy-eyed thread of hopes!
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Post by hopes on Sept 25, 2011 8:01:26 GMT -5
I wonder if prestige of dream job is higher for grad students than postdocs (or just people who haven't been on the market as many times). This is my third time, and my dream jobs are Rice, UofIllinois, Emory, and Dartmouth. I don't feel like I am lowering my sites from previous years, because I am really excited about those schools. It is not that I want life balance, either. I love working. It is because I have come in contact with scholars from a broader range of departments over the past few years, and realize that the "gap" in scholarly output is a lot less than advertised at the top schools. What gets someone hired at a top department is often luck as much as skill. It does not mean they are not brilliant scholars. Just that there are a lot of brilliant scholars out there who don't hit on the right subject at the right time, or get the best reviewers for their work when they are in grad school.
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Post by hopes on Sept 25, 2011 8:02:45 GMT -5
Argh. Sights. Also, poor placement of the parentheses in the first sentence. Sorry
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Post by U be trippin on Sept 25, 2011 11:10:28 GMT -5
Looking at the tenure numbers for faculty at Stanford, I'd say they have a pretty good shot of getting tenure there. Also, it never hurts to apply. You never know if luck and fate dance a funny tango on your app cycle. Best of luck to all you overachieving first timers out there!
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Post by check again on Sept 25, 2011 14:24:10 GMT -5
Try checking the tenure numbers at Stanford again. Only one out of five assistants who went up has been tenured in the last 10 years, which was the first tenure since the 80s. All the other senior faculty were bought from somewhere else. The only places harder to get tenure are Harvard and Yale.
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Post by gotcha on Sept 25, 2011 14:29:08 GMT -5
I hadn't factored in senior faculty hires from elsewhere. I just looked at the number of tenured faculty period. Good to know. Berkeley Soc, Haas, or UCSD it is, then.
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Post by Yale really on Sept 25, 2011 14:40:47 GMT -5
Why would it be so difficult to get tenure in such a lowly ranked sociology department like Yale? They should be happy they get relatively competitive applicants knowing their history of under-funding and marginalizing the discipline.
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Post by meorginal poster on Sept 25, 2011 15:33:54 GMT -5
Seems like most applicants are reaching for the stars. That's a good thing. And places like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, even if you don't get tenure with the department, I am sure you won't have a hard time finding another job!
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Post by Am There on Sept 25, 2011 20:50:22 GMT -5
Every position has its stresses and its compensations. The question is for you to match up well with the position you attain. Publishing a lot is stressful for some doctoral gads.
By now, you must know how much you obsess about a research problem and devote your time to it. What's your favorite weekend or night activity: reading journals and delving into Sociology, or instead "escaping" into dating, movies, travel, TV. Think about it: why go to a place that values what you seek to escape from?
High-demand research positions pay more, give you many perks, expect less teaching, and surround you with an intellectual environment. But you do have to produce on their terms. If you do well but not enough for tenure, you'll still land at a good school. If you want a "balanced" life, go elsewhere, although even there the imbalance may be grading hundreds of student essays for your four classes. Any serious professional career -- football star, film actor, top-line artist, software evangelist -- cuts into your "balanced life." What's important is how much you value the euphoria of being appreciated and living in that lofty domain at least for a while.
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