Saying “No” Before Tenure

FeMOMhist celebrates having tenure because, among many other things, it allows her to say “no” to service obligations without fearing consequences.

This is an interesting perspective for me because I say “no” to service obligations precisely because I don’t have tenure. Recently, I visited a workshop organized by the Dean’s office that prepares us to submit our tenure dossier.

“Please, please, just start saying “no” to all those service obligations,” the Assistant Dean implored us. “Nobody gets tenure because they have done a lot of service. Just concentrate on publishing. This will decide whether you get tenure.”

I know I said this before but I love my university.

4 thoughts on “Saying “No” Before Tenure”

At my school, there is essentially no publication requirement for tenure. But what that means is you’d better be saying yes to committees when they come calling. I suspect the same is true for feMOMhist. That said, I’ve had to start saying no because so many people have asked me to do things that I simply can’t say yes any more. I DO want to do research, and I have a paper that I’m working on right now. Not to mention the grueling teaching load I have! Doing research while plugging away at a 4-4 load is extremely difficult. I don’t really need anything else to do. So I’m saying no more often.

Now, back to my paper… 🙂

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