Academic Rites of Passage
It has recently struck me that most of the events that seemed most important to me weren't the standard"transition points" that most would expect. Graduations and exams had very little to do with my own sense of my progress towards a 'successful' academic career.
So, here is a brief list of the things that seemed significant to me along the way...
1) Being nominated to the UGPROC (Undergraduate Program Committee) in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, History Department, sometime around 1986. The trick to this was that the faculty members treated me, a lowly undergraduate, like somebody who had a valid opinion. It was quite a heady feeling. Also, serving on the committee went a long way towards de-mystifying faculty members and academic processes... nothing like seeing your professors gripe, gossip, and doze off to make them human.
2) Serving as"Camp Manager" for the Kavousi Excavations on Crete in 1989. Kind of like the above, this task provided me with an insight into how academic endeavors (in this case, big-buck archaelogical dig) play out in real time. It also gave me a sense of the perks of the traveling academic lifestyle.
3) Fieldwork/Disseration Research in Nigeria, 1992-1993. This was my third trip to Nigeria, but it was the first where I was travelling without an institutional safty net. The contrast between the degree of independence and the responsibility to get enough done to actually produce a viable dissertation was heady. But, I managed to drink a bunch of beer and put together a band on the side anyway. This was yet another taste of the traveling academic"good life."
4) First Class on my own. In 1994, while ABD and residing in Knoxville, I bumbled into a 2/2 teaching gig at my old Alma Mater of UTK. Interestingly enough, it was for the African-American History Survey. I vividly remember walking to the first class meeting, absolutely terrified of the politics of being a middle class southern white boy preparing to teach African-American History (an even more political field than African history, most of the time). Within a week, I was heading for class with a spring in my step. This is still the point where I feel like I broke through to the other side.
5) First Book Review. This was, I think, in 1995. Somebody actually heard me talk at a conference, and asked me to review a book for a real journal, which at least at the time struck me as a big honor. I remember reading the book in meticulous detail, taking copious notes, and carefully crafting my 900-word opus. I still remember how excited I was when I got the page proofs.
6) First Round of Rejection Letters. This was also in 1995, my first real year on the job market. The brutal and repeated smack downs were very much an eye-opener to the harsh reality of trying to get a job. A couple of job interviews did result... but to no avail.
7) First Teaching Award. In 1998, I got the Abna Aggrey Lancaster Award for Teaching Excellence at Livingstone College. I can still feel the glow.
8) First job interview where I wasn't totally desperate. Love Livingstone as I did, I needed a job that would let me write, and was pleased to get an interview at NKU in 1999. I still remember the pleasure of interviewing when I already had a job.
9) First International Converence. I attended the West African Research Association Conference in Dakar in 2002. Somehow, the fact that I was flying to another conference just to give a paper seemed utterly unreal. The whole way there, I felt like I was pretending to be an academic.
10) Tenure... 2003. OK, this one is predictable, in that anybody who doesn't feel tranformed by tenure is an idiot. But, what tenure really did for me was make me feel old. The very title"Senior Faculty" still weighs on me.
11) Saturation. Sometime around 2004 or 2005, it hit me that I had way more work to do than I could actually keep up with. Like, er, posting regularly at Cliopatria...