Denied Promotion: For Associate Professors

There is perhaps no better time to remind yourself that your career and your employer are different. This is even true for those of us who plan on staying at the same university for the rest of our academic work lives.

Promotion to full professor--and the detail of promotion-- is usually not about ability, often not about impact, and even at times totally disconnected to achievement. When we are denied promotions, even those that are not connected to our “safety” and “security” it still feels like a total F#(# Y##.

There are also times that faculty go up a year or two earlier than they should--they are feeling ready to go up with they are not actually ready, when their record does not warrant. I will get to this in more depth in a later post.

Regardless of the reason for denial, it is essential that you realize the facts- we have lifetime employment. We can go up again. Our teaching, research and service is OURS- we can find ways of making it meaningful for us, joyous, if I dare, in spite of the opinions of others.

Yes, it sucks. Yes, the denial of promotion feels like a total rejection, an abandonment even, often a betrayal. But it is just vote, in a moment of time,  our career is just ours. I am not minimizing its impact- it takes money out of our pockets. It can seem as if we are wasting our live at a place that does not care about us.

I love the University of Washington Tacoma. I do. Both of my kids are students here- one is graduating with her degree in Education this spring. But it is just my employer. It is Google. Jack N' The Box.  A coffee house.  A business.  It is an institution. A group of people. Some will leave soon. Some will retire soon. All of us will die, at some point, and the whole place will be full of new students, faculty, staff.

But until I die- I have my career. My writing. My teaching.

And you have yours and nobody, nobody, gets to take that from you. Even when it feels like they can.

They just got to vote on your promotion, and that sucks, but votes, as do people, change over time.