On Going Back Off the Tenure Track

This spring, I achieved what I had long convinced myself was not in the cards for me: I landed a tenure-track job. But instead of celebration, the job offer resulted in one of the most painful and difficult periods of my life—one that didn’t end in my joining the ranks of tenure-line faculty who have “made it.”

As a graduate student, I was aware that the looming realities of the academic job market meant two things: that the chances of getting the coveted tenure-track position were slim, and that candidates have to be ready, willing, and able to move to where the jobs are. But like many in academia, while I was reading stacks of books, teaching recitations, and writing a dissertation, my partner and I were also building a life. In nearly a decade I spent from first year MA to PhD, plus six years of contingent work, we had four children. And while I was preparing for my career as a historian, my husband graduated from law school and actually began his career, advancing from clerk to junior associate to partner in a thriving, growing firm.

Unlike in the academy, where moving to take a new job is often a sign of a flourishing career, moving to a new state isn’t exactly a smart career move for a partner in a law firm. So between the grim truth of the history jobs reports and my partner’s career, I resigned myself to working hard to find local jobs after I graduated. For two years, I drove all around the county adjuncting, picked up online gigs where I could, and ran adult reading and discussion groups for local historical societies. Eventually, I supplemented my salary (and got health insurance!) when I was hired by my PhD-granting department as a part-time administrative assistant. It wasn’t exactly the dream, but it was something. Finally, in 2018, they hired me as a non-tenure-track assistant teaching professor and things seemed to fall in place. Maybe I couldn’t have the real job, but I had a job that I both enjoyed and was good at.

But during this time, I was also working to establish myself as a historian. I published an article, several book chapters, and then my first book; became executive editor of a leading digital history publication; and co-founded and co-produced a successful history podcast. In the spring of 2021, I won a major fellowship and a book prize in the span of about one week. With those successes buoying me from the funk of parenting and teaching through a pandemic, I thought maybe it was time to push against the walls I could feel solidifying around my professional life. I started applying for tenure-track jobs again, and though I knew those jobs often came down to luck more than anything else, I imagined myself stepping more fully into a life of scholarship, service, and teaching. An attempt at a line conversion from contingent to tenure track at my current university failed, meaning the only way to get on the tenure track was to leave. Then, I got the job offer: an assistant professorship in my exact area of specialty in a small, friendly department at a vibrant regional university. It was too good to pass up—so I didn’t. We’d make it work, I reasoned. We had to.