Just as the title says, I received tenure at a university a while back and have lost a lot of motivation in teaching and research.
What motivation I do have, is in an area that I would not get grants for and is not useful at all to the university.
People at universities, how do you keep motivation in publishing? Has your area of interest changed over the years?
8 comments
Covid destroyed my motivation. Only just getting back on the horse now.
I have seen this before. Being a tenured teacher or instructor isn’t just a “job”. If you don’t love the subject you are in, it can be hell. A pension really needs to like the subject they are teaching to survive at the uni level. I feel like too many people try to get uni jobs here without even understanding what the job really is.
If I can ask, how did you fall into an area that you’re not motivated in? Not saying it sounds silly, I’m just curious what the steps were.
I did not experience that, OP – if anything, finally getting a tenured position allowed me to be in a much better place mentally, being able to settle down and give a hint of financial security to my family. I do understand what you are saying, though. My demotivating factor is the never ending cycle of “things to do” and the hope that next week I’ll be less busy… yeah, sure. Anyway, here’s how I cope with that.
You bundle teaching and research together, however these two activities are fundamentally different. Is there one that ‘naturally’ motivates you the most? You could focus on that one to help you through a tough time like now. In my case, I genuinely love the teaching part of my job. While I do no particularly enjoy having 10 weekly koma, each class is its own challenge, students can be pretty spectacular (spectacularly good or bad, that is), and sharing something that I find interesting with them is… genuinely enjoyable. I tend to be the happiest, work wise, on my way to class and my was back from class. Naturally, that’s where I focus most of my effort, then. Research… ugh. I feel you there. As in your case, my research focus moves and shape-shifts and narrows and broadens, which I don’t mind. It’s the writing that I loathe. How do I cope with that? Simply telling myself that it’s work. It’s the part of my work that I enjoy the least (ok, that’s a lie, committee work and 事務 take the cake there) but in the end it must be done. It’s part of what I do to provide to my family, feed my children, buy the stuff that in turn genuinely makes me happy. My true happiness, my drive, lies outside of work.
Also I treat myself to a Lego set every time I publish a paper so yeah maybe that should have my answer and you can ignore all of the above.
TL;DR: at the end of the day, it’s work. Some of it is more enjoyable, some of it is less. Focus on the former. Think of why you are doing this, the benefits you get outside of work (mental, financial, your pick). Reward yourself for doing the good thing.
Bonus: consider joint research, or working closely together with a colleague. Joining a professional association may also be of help for the research bit.
Just picture yourself unemployed in the current financial recession. After that you will be motivated to even research the odor of ants’ farts.
why does it matter if your research is “useful at all to the university” where you work?
I love doing my research and it has nothing to do with my job (unfortunately).
Another tenured uni prof here. I went through a period immediately after landing tenure where I didn’t have any motivation (or time or energy) to pursue new research endeavors. Two things helped in my case.
The first is that I reached out to colleagues to invite them to do joint research. This not only allowed me to split the workload (and overall time commitment) with the colleague, but also it forced me to set aside time to regularly make progress so that I wouldn’t show up to meetings empty handed.
The second thing I did was branch out into textbook publishing. I had coauthored a textbook before tenure that sold relatively well, so when I was feeling in a rut after tenure I decided to create a few chapters for a follow-up text to pitch to the publisher. This also forced me to set aside time to research and write if I wanted to make the pitching deadline. (Not to mention it was a refreshing change of pace from writing research papers.)
I think it is normal. The last two times I was job hunting at least 50% of the hiring committee members had very minimal publishing histories at all and only about 15% had solid ongoing publishing records in education. I just checked my department and over the last 10 years for 10 people there are only about 10 articles published in proper impact journals. The universities often value service over research as they benefit much more from the extra work you do on projects over a few published articles.