Well, it has been a very long time since I’ve added a new post to this blog. Simply put, I’ve been very busy. Going through tenure is a grueling process. As time went on, it became more difficult, rather than easier. Perhaps it was just the stress of wondering whether my efforts would pay off? However, the bigger issue was the struggle of finding the balance between my career and my personal life. As the career continued to take more time, miscellaneous, unimportant tasks such as blogging had to go. Anyway, I'm trying to start this up again as time permits.
I’ve had an awful lot going on in my life. One of the motivating factors behind writing this blog was to help others who are going through similar situations, such as pursuing tenure in higher-ed. I can’t imagine my experiences are unique in any way. I’ll try to summarize a few very important experiences I’ve gone through, particularly over the past year. Some of it has been wonderful. For example, last year, in early 2016, I found out that I received tenure! I was promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor, which is a typical promotion when one gets tenure.
While that news was wonderful, I often wonder about the cost must one pay to obtain tenure. Life is short. And, if you have children, you have far more important pulls on your attention than tenure. Children grow quickly. Mine is shooting ahead so fast. I have so many moments when I wish his growth would slow down so I can catch up. He’s an amazing boy. My son is what keeps me motivated and smiling.
Family balance. It’s important. In fact, I intentionally chose a liberal arts undergraduate institution for my career. I wanted to work at a place where I would not be suffering through writing countless grants and having no life. Yes, it was eventually a conscious choice, though not at first. In 2008, while I was finishing the final touches of my PhD, I was interviewing at several universities for postdoc and tenure-track positions. I had several offers, especially from postdoctoral research positions in bioinformatics. I had some decent research credentials and I really want to keep building that up to land a top-notch research position. I ultimately accepted a position at NIH as a postdoctoral research scientist in a bioinformatics lab. A few months before I was to start the position, however, I lived through some critical, life-changing events. Without going into detail, let’s just say that these events changed my focus from living a research-driven life of grant-writing and self-promotion, to realizing I needed to consider what is best for those beyond myself, most notably, my new family that was simultaneously starting.
I admit that I did not always do the best job finding that balance, especially at the beginning of my career. I had a very difficult time going from pursuing a PhD where you can’t possibly do anything but focus on yourself and your research 24/7, to suddenly becoming a dad! That was very hard. Becoming a parent changes everything. People tell you that all the time, “Oh you’re having a child? Life as you know it is now over.” Well, it’s not that it’s over, it’s just 100% different. And, you just have no idea just how different everything is until you hold your child for the first time after being born. It changes everything. And, I experienced this change at the very start of my very first tenure track position (a prior position before arriving at Bucknell.)
My son has been the most wonderful gift to me. Being a parent has been the most amazing experience in my entire life, and one I am still in the beginning stages of. (He’s currently 8 yrs old as I write this. Such a fun age!!!) In some ways, being a parent is far easier than the pursuit of a research-focused career. In other ways, however, it is surely more difficult. For instance, I can just put my laptop down when I’m frustrated with R and data cleaning, debugging poor models, etc. and just walk away. I can’t do that with my son! Despite those few trying times where you feel that pull, I’ve learned to try my best to put him first. Sometimes things get neglected. I’ve missed meetings, missed deadlines for grants, told students who needed me to stay late, “No” on numerous occasions, and occasionally came to class completely unprepared because my son was sick and kept us up a good chunk of the night before. But, those times are so few. And now that he’s older, he’s so independent compared to those younger years! Being a parent, simply put, is amazing. It is the most wonderful, rewarding experience I’ve ever lived through. (I have yet to encounter the teenage years… I might change my mind then.)
So, am I satisfied with my career? That is a very complex question. This past year, since getting tenure, I’ve been sucked into far more service activities than I’ve ever had to endure. It has consumed a lot of my free time. I rarely feel like I have free time to pursue any research interests during the semester anymore (not that I had that much time before. Now, it’s just worse.) Additionally, I’ve been trying to get involved in any opportunity I can that gives our students interdisciplinary experiences. I am a firm believer that our college should be moving fervently toward providing open, collaborative, integrative, interdisciplinary experiences for every student. Our college is a rich environment to provide such experiences, and yet we fall far behind our peer institutions in this area for no good reason that I’m aware of. And unfortunately, I’m not in the majority on the urgency of this endeavor. But, since I’ve been here, I think we are finally making some strides.
I love teaching. I still do. I’m in my 7th year at Bucknell and still find teaching very rewarding. But, I miss research. I miss the opportunities to do some deep-diving into the latest mass-scale biological sequence analysis methods. I’ve branched into many analytic methods that focus on pattern discovery and predictive models on sequential data. This is still where my heart is, and I’m longing to get back into this work. But, how? How do I keep teaching at the level I do, increase my service commitments, and somehow find time to get research done? I’m realistic — it’s not going to happen unless something else decreases. And, my work can’t just happen during the summer. I must be invested in some amount of research every week, so that I can maximize my efforts during breaks and summer. But, how? I do not see my service obligations decreasing. I believe that we will continue teaching a 5-course load per year, which is too heavy to conduct high-quality research during the semester.
The approach I’ve tried to follow over the years is to establish a few good students in my research during the semesters through independent studies related to topics I’m investigating. Occasionally, I have bright, motivated students who want to continue the work over the summer, and sometimes these students end up producing some publishable work! I do not see this approach stopping anytime soon.
On the bright side, thankfully, I am about to embark on my first year-long sabbatical for 2017-2018 as a tenured faculty member. I have numerous projects I want to pursue. Thanks to some wonderful colleagues at the Geisinger Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute, some interesting projects are in store which should yield some positive outcomes with my research agenda. I’m looking forward to it.
I write the above forcing myself to try and be positive. Yet, this has been an incredibly hard year this past year. I had more substantial life-changing experiences this past year that has caused a real sense of urgency to rise up within my soul to just get back to pure biological sequence analysis related to cancer and disease.
In December 2016, I found out that my mother had ovarian cancer. It was devastating to me. I spent all of the time that I could afford learning everything I could about ovarian cancer so I could have educated conversations with my mom’s oncology team. I wanted to help her and my dad make the best decisions for her possible recovery. Without going into details, unfortunately, it was not long before I realized that her symptoms were clearly indicating that she was in advanced stages, most likely Stage IV. This is not uncommon with ovarian cancer, because most women don’t have symptoms until it’s too late. The doctor tried to convince us that it was Stage IIIC, but in my heart, I just knew it could not be. And unfortunately, they could not operate to remove the ovary and surrounding tumors because she had blood clots that prevented any possible surgery. On top of that, she was experiencing ascites - a condition where fluid rapidly accumulates in the abdominal cavity. There are many causes of ascites, but when the diagnosis is ovarian cancer, the literature suggests a matter of months before death. My mom passed away in early February 2017, only 2 months from the initial diagnosis.
This loss happened so fast. As I write this, I still tear up. I struggle every day to understand what it was that I lost, and how to keep my spirits up and move forward. My son has been a wonderful motivation for me to keep positive, remain hopeful, and smile. I know it is what my mom would have wanted. She would not want me to wallow in my misery, but for me to keep smiling, keep loving my son, my family, and keep doing what I love to do. So, I do my best to try and remain positive. It’s not easy yet. This is all still fresh. I’m not sure it will ever be easy. This loss is going to hurt for a long time.
(As if that wasn’t enough, my last living grandparent, my mom’s mom, passed away just a few weeks go, in April 2017. Yeah, it has not been a good year.)
After a week of helping my dad prepare the funeral, burial, etc., I pretty much had to go right back to work. I’m so thankful for my colleagues who helped cover my classes while I was dealing with my mom’s situation and loss (Thank you Abby and Chris!!!! I owe you both so much. You have no idea.)
The first week back, I pretty much just stared into space a lot. I would lose my focus in class while talking. Students would talk to me, but I honestly just had a hard time caring about anything. I was hurting inside, but knew I had to keep motivated and just do what I could to get through. I have times when I am in my office, and I think about how nice it was to have my regular phone calls back home just to touch base with her. I think about how fun it was to have my son call her up to tell her the latest corny jokes. There were so many things I took for granted at the time. Now, I just occasionally shed tears.
I don’t care to talk with anyone about it. It is what it is. This is the cycle that we call "life". I understand that. It’s a big loss for me. I’m grieving, but I will make it through this. We all do.
I get angry with this loss. I was robbed of an amazing, wonderful, compassionate woman. She was too young, dying at a mere 68 yrs old. That is young, considering that life expectancy for women in the U.S. is about 81 now.
Let's get back to the original point. Tenure. When I found out that I received tenure, I remember so clearly calling my mom right afterward I received the news. I called her within minutes of receiving my letter. She was so happy! So proud! Such joy shared, in a way that only a mom could. She has been the biggest support system throughout my life. She was my biggest cheerleader in everything I wanted to pursue. I lost my strongest source of support I’ve had since I was a child.
I remember when I went to graduate school, my parents looked at me and said, “Wow, we’re so impressed with what you are doing. We have no idea where you get your intelligence or your drive. We can’t understand much of anything you are doing now. But we are so proud of you, and know you will keep moving ahead to achieve great things.” I remember looking at them, and thinking, "I don't understand why you are saying those things to me." I was so humbled when they were talking to me like that. It was a moment when I finally started to realize what it meant to be a first-generation college student. They truly did not understand any aspect of what I was doing, and I’m not just talking about my research, but about college and graduate school in general. They only knew that it was good for me to go to college after high school. After that, they figured I’d get a job and have a family. I pursued a path that really didn’t make a lot of sense to them. My parents never went to college. They got married at 18 yrs old and lived a very basic, simple life. Yet, they supported me regardless of their own lack of understanding of my passion for learning, and ultimately for research. I truly was blessed to have them as parents. (Fortunately, my dad is doing well. He is healthy and recovering from the loss. It will take all of us time.)
OK, seriously getting back to the point. The cost of tenure. What is it? Well, I can’t really tell you right now. I’ve lost a lot recently, and I recognize that those things I lost have nothing to do with tenure, directly. All I can tell you is this: I strongly, strongly recommend that you find an appropriate balance between your career pursuit, your family, and your own sanity. Keep in regular contact with those you love. Take the time out regularly to call your parents, siblings, family, hug your spouse, love your children, grab a drink with friends, and be social. And, when I tell you to be social, I mean be social like they did before smartphones and social media! Go out with friends! Get out of the house! Leave the electronics at home! Have a hobby or two, and stick to it. Exercise regularly doing things that get you outside. Stand up regularly and walk away from your desk and your computer every hour. And parenting? The papers, the grading, the new assignment you need to create… they can all wait an hour or two so you can be the best at being a parent when you get home from work. Be a kid and play some games, go and play outside, read your child’s favorite book to him/her, and do whatever you can to help them smile. Your family is far, far more important than trying to be the best tenure case your department has ever had. Read your tenure document from your department, have a clear understanding of what you need to achieve, and do what you need to do. Because it's not a game where only the top receives tenure. You only need to achieve what is laid out in your tenure review criteria. Overachieving does not get you more tenure. It's a binary outcome. Either you get tenure, or you don't. Have good short-term and long-term plans. Stick to your plans, and always strive to have balance. Balance — that is the cost, and you need to figure out how much you can afford to lose, because you never know when those people in your life who you love and hold dear to you, may be gone… forever.
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