I recently read the post
Teaching Like a Motherf@#%er: Finding My Mid-Career Mojo which got me thinking about tenure, professional activities and professional responsibilities in librarianship.
This freedom has been excellent for my career. By being able to write
and publish whatever is interesting to me at the time, I end up writing
better
and publishing more, which in turn provides additional income, which
eases the pressure of somehow needing to find a tenure-track job, which
creates even more space for freedom, and so on and so on, etc, etc.
My hunch is that pursuit of tenure is a significant constraint on
academics when it comes to producing their best and most-interesting
work. Fear and self-censorship are not proper ingredients for
excellence. It makes me think of some good advice that I do my best to
remember.
Yes, I agree - but I also disagree. I'm as high in rank as I can go within my current system. Does that give me a certain sense of freedom in terms of professional activities? To a certain extent, I do feel less pressured to take on committee work or professional obligations for just another "line on my resume" (we had a whole discussion about this very notion at thatcampSE this year. BUT (and this is a huge one) I continue to remain at the same level of professional activity, if not greater AND I continue to build my expertise and knowledge (working on a new Drupal side project). I continue to grow as a professional and to contribute to the profession.
Currently, I am creatively exploring opportunities where I can make the most impact for the least amount of financial outlay. In other words, where can I contribute the most to the various disciplines I cross (technology, web, cataloging/metadata, social media), further my reputation/network, and enrich my brain.
However... not everyone is like that. Without some sort of reward, mandate, or penalty, there are professionals within the profession who are not professionals... but job holders. (although they may be perfectly professional in demeanor).
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