Celebrate everything. Every. little. thing.

To reach the most important milestones in an academic career, we are dependent upon the approval of others:  getting the Ph.D., getting a tenure-track job, getting tenure, getting published.  How we relate to this dependency has a lot to do with how satisfied we are with our careers.

We might respond to this dependency by feeling powerless:  Other people have control over my fate; there is little or nothing I can do to affect the outcome.  I send my job applications out, and search committees control whether I even get an interview.  I send articles out to journals, yet I am at the mercy of reviewers.  I submit my dissertation to my committee members, but they get to decide whether my work is good enough to deserve the Ph.D. 

Or we might respond to this dependency by feeling resentment:  That reviewer had no business reviewing my article, because he clearly doesn’t know the first thing about John Dewey!  My dissertation advisor is washed up and can’t even come up with a good idea for her second book; who is she to judge my work?  Social scientists and scientists have no idea what goes into writing humanistic scholarship; their feedback on my tenure file is completely irrelevant.

A lot of academic unhappiness is caused when one or both of these responses become our dominant response to our career dependence on the approval of others.  Here’s how I think this works:

Powerlessness encourages insecurity about the value of one’s work, and bewilderment about how academia works.  You may have heard someone say:  “I have no idea how I got this job; I don’t know the first thing about how to advise anyone else on the job market.”  “I don’t know how I got that article published in Journal X.  It’s just luck, I guess.”  “My committee probably let me defend because they were tired of having me around.”  “I’m the admissions mistake.  I have no idea why they let me into this Ph.D. program.”  This kind of response to dependency produces academics who think that they are here by mistake or chance, who believe they cannot advise or mentor others effectively because they see their success as a matter of chance, and who are diffident about their own abilities, no matter what their accomplishments.

Resentment encourages seeing other people as obstacles to our success, rather than viewing them as collaborators, colleagues, and friends.  You may have encountered a resentful colleague who fails to contribute to department service, or who makes passive aggressive comments in meetings, or who tries to draw you into conspiracy theories about the people who are out to get her.  Often the resentful academic takes full credit for her successes, but blames her failures on others.  “That reviewer just didn’t get how brilliant my article is!”  “The dean is out to get me because he is jealous!”  “My colleagues are all second-rate hacks.  They wouldn’t know a great work of scholarship if it hit them in the face!”  This kind of response produces academics who cannot play well with others, who thrive on and magnify negative situations, and whose willingness to mentor and advise can often seem contingent upon whether they perceive you as friend or foe.

Now I’ve painted two extreme caricatures here to try to suggest how these two common responses to our dependency as academics can contribute to deep unhappiness and dissatisfaction with our careers.  Fortunately, these are not the only ways we might respond to this dependency.

 

What is the antidote to powerlessness and resentment?  Celebration.

Academia is short on celebration.  Our career goals are often very long-term:  earning a Ph.D., getting tenure, publishing a book, etc.  Not only is the outcome something over which we do not have control, it also is really far away.  If we constantly defer celebrating until we have the Ph.D., the tenure-track job, the published book, or tenure, it could literally be years between celebrations.  That’s pretty depressing, frankly.

Moreover, when all we do is celebrate the final outcome of a particular milestone, we are actually increasing our dependency on the approval of others.  If I can’t celebrate submitting my first dissertation draft to my committee because they might not agree that I am ready to defend, then I am giving my committee not just the power to award me the Ph.D., but also the power to tell me when I have done something worthy of celebration.  If I can’t celebrate sending my book manuscript out to presses for review, then I am giving the editor and the book reviewers not just the power to offer me a contract, but also the power to tell me when I have done something worthy of celebration. 

You get to decide when you have done something worthy of celebration.  And if I were you, I would celebrate everything.  Every. little. thing.  Why the heck not?

If you celebrate what you have accomplished now, you take some of the emphasis off of the final outcome.  Think of it this way:  if you celebrate finishing a manuscript, no one can take that celebration away.  Not even if the manuscript is rejected by the journal you really wanted to see publish it.  You may not have the publication you wanted, but at least you didn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate finishing the manuscript in the first place.

Plus, it makes academic life more enjoyable.  Otherwise, you could be waiting for years to celebrate.  And in the meantime, you may be on pins and needles, feeling too powerless or resentful of your dependency on the approval of others to genuinely appreciate your accomplishments.

Celebration can look like whatever you want it to look like.  It might be throwing a party, posting an update on facebook, taking a day off, going on a dream vacation, enjoying a movie, or calling a loved one to tell them the good news.  Celebration is whatever will feel like celebration to you.

Celebrate when you send out a manuscript.  Celebrate when you get a book contract.  Celebrate when you have a good day of writing or teaching.  Celebrate when you handle a rejection well.  And of course, celebrate when you get the first copy of the book, the final tenure letter, your Ph.D., and that job offer. 

Academic life is a lot more humane when you celebrate frequently.  And, it turns out, frequent celebration makes you a lot less dependent on others for their approval.  They will still be gatekeepers, of course, and you will still get rejections.  But by owning and celebrating your accomplishments along the way, you acknowledge that you are not entirely powerless over your fate, even if you cannot control it.  And by owning and acknowledging your accomplishments for yourself, you attenuate your dependence on the approval of others, which alleviates the tendency to resent them for failing to grant it.

 

So try this on.  What do you have to celebrate today?