tenure stress

This fall, I am up for tenure here. For those of you unfamiliar with the academic lifestyle, you teach at a school for a while (3, 5, or 7 years depending on the school and whether you came from another school where you had tenure), and then you prepare a big, fat packet outlining your teaching skills, your scholarly productivity (publications and papers given and grants received), and your service (committees, mostly). Then, you sweat for several weeks while your department debates whether you should stay or go. Then after they decide (provided they say you stay), you sweat for a couple months while your college within your university decides. And then you sweat while the higher-up administrators decide. You submit the packet in September and you usually hear from the last group in January.

I am trying not to worry too much about it. I get generally good-to-excellent reviews of my teaching, I teach one class no one else here currently could teach, I'm in a small department where we are all at or above our limits for hours taught, there is little competition among specialties in my department. Also, I will have had 6 or 7 publications out before the tenure decision (and several more in the pipeline; one of my goals this break is to finish writing and submit 2 or 3 papers I've been working on). I also have received 2 in-house grants and have had my name on two NSF grants (one rejected, the other we still haven't heard back). I have served on several committees, been active in the community, given numerous talks on the state and national scale (just not any THIS year - didn't get anything new out in time for the deadlines). I have chaired a grad student's thesis committee and have just been asked to be on another student's committee. I run an independent project in one of my courses which fills a requirement for the department as a whole.

I have a couple of new project plans in the pipeline: two I am going to discuss with the people who will be my co-workers tomorrow, and a proposal to write in hopes of getting funding next spring.

Still, I'm worried: no external grants (I majorly have my fingers crossed about that pending NSF one; that could make me or break me), and I'm not giving a presentation anywhere this summer.

My department chair says I'm doing fine. I wish I could let myself trust him, and on some level I do, but I'm too much of a worrier to totally let it go.

Sometimes I think: "they wouldn't want to go to the trouble and pain of doing another search to replace me." (Also, someone told me I was the only person with the necessary qualifications who applied for the job). Other times, I think "someone in the administration will point out I've brought in no overhead costs through external grants"

I really don't want to leave here. I like the students here too much. I like teaching too much. I like the people I work with too much. I like my house too much. I hate the thought of packing up everything I own. I can't imagine trying to look for a job in the current economy.

Anyway.

Switching gears. Yesterday was a remarkably good mail day. Both the new IK and Cast-On came. As is often the case with summer issues, there's a lot I can't wear (my, um, top, is too big for tanks or camisole type things or halters). But there were a couple of cute lightweight cardigans, and I really like Interweave's habit of running "small gift patterns" in their summer issue. And I liked the Koigu lace socks, although I would have used a lighter clearer color for them...

I also have to 'fess up on recent yarn purchases (one came yesterday). Over the past couple weeks, I've bought:
two skeins of Lorna's sockyarn in "Tuscany", from ThreadBear
a skein of "Fable" in "the tortoise and the hare" and two skeins of "Mrs. Miniver" "Cinema" from Handworks Gallery
1824 cotton in "Musk" for the "Sitcom Chic" from Yarn Forward

And finally, assorted skeins of Emu DK, from Elann for animals out of Kath Dalmeny's "World of Knitted Toys".

I mention this because I began one last night - I am making the snake, using the colors pretty much as specified (she describes it as using "the colors of the poisonous garter snake" which confuses me, because in the US at least, garter snakes are about the most docile and harmless snakes there are - I mean, you can pick them up and they just wrap around your hand to soak up your body heat. Also, the colors look most reminscent of a coral snake, which is poisonous, but coral snakes are red, yellow, and black, and this snake is pink, white, and black.). At any rate, it's sort of fun to make and it's going fast. It's one of the simpler toys, it will just have one long seam when it's done.

I still think toy patterns should be set up to be knit in the round whenever possible.