Note: This post was originally written in December 2019, right before the start of the pandemic. The original post can still be found below. In between then and now, I hardly did any blogging. There were many reasons for that (the pandemic, Hedy taking off) but the main reason was also this post series not being finished. Each time I thought about blogging, I immediately thought “oh no I have to finish the series”, blocking my creativity in even thinking about posts.

And then, why *did* I not finish the posts? Because the more I thought about it, the less I thought any of these “mistakes” were my fault! One reason for that was that I am now supervising people in the same situations, and it was surprising to me how much power I have to prevent them from making these mistakes! It is not a fact of nature that young academics are struggling, it is a result of the system. Many people (on Twitter for example) were also pointing that out, they kept asking: ok, but what could the university have done to make things better?

But finally, the most important thing is that, in essence, all of the original mistakes came down to just one thing, and one thing only: There are no clear rules for how to succeed as an academic. How many courses, papers, outreach activities are enough? What to focus you scarce time and energy one? This creates a gazilion different issues, from burn-out (when have I worked enough?) to racism/sexism (well, Karim/Karin wrote many papers but did they also do enough <insert other task here>) but that is a story for another day.

My experience (your milage may vary of course) is that senior academics who are supposed to help us do not help to make decisions at all, rather they insist that making these decisions is “part of the process”, which I think is true and valuable, but sadly, while young academics are figuring out how they want to succeed (and often also: while they are starting a family), they also will be evaluated on the results. My tenure track, which I can now look back on with some mild pride, was a big adventure of figuring out who I was and where I wanted to go, and most of it were great learning opportunities, apart from the fact that and the end of a “long and winding road” I was supposed to have a coherent vision.

All of the “mistakes” I talked about initially come done to: I did not know yet what parts of academic work I wanted to focus on, and how to apply that focus.

So today I am freeing myself from the obligation of finishing this series, I have changed, the world has changed, academia has changed and I am looking forward to using blogging a a medium again (esp. in the light of Twitter imploding!).

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Over 2 years ago I got tenure: a permanent appointment at a university. That was 4.5 years after I started at assistant professor in Delft. For people not too well-versed in academic “traditions”, before people get appointed as a professor with a long-term contract, in most places they first go through a tenure track of 5 or 6 of sometimes 9 years, during which they have to prove they are worthy of professorship, and excel in teaching and research and visibility. I managed to make it (but not really with flying colors for reasons that we will get into in this blog post series).

After I got tenure, many other things happened, I quit the tenured position at Delft and switched to Leiden. All of this time, I have been playing with the idea of writing a series of blog posts on the whole process and I guess now it the time to start that!

I hope to achieve three things with these posts:

1. A bit of closure for me. Working on a temporary contract of 6 years while being evaluated was not easy for me, and at many stages I thought of quitting. I even applied for a job outside of academia in the middle which I did not get in the end. Maybe writing up some parts of the experience will help me heal.
2. Lest I forget. On the other hand… I have come to realize that the further away the tenure track is, the more positive I look at it, to the point where I tell more junior colleagues it was “not all that bad”. But it was and it is good to remember that.
3. Help for others. There are a lot of people on tenure tracks around the world, including some at many current institution. It might be good for them to see it was not always easy for me, and there might be some valuable tips here.

So here, without any order or further ado, is a list of mistakes I made on the tenure track, which I aim to all expand into blog posts over the next few weeks months years. Some of these mistakes I regret, others I think were needed and valuable because of the things I learned from them, some turned out amazing (like taking risks) but were still totally mistakes!

1. I made no clear agreements with my supervisor
2. I had no real (concrete) research plan
3. I did not know how to manage time
4. I did not co-teach courses
5. I spend time on irrelevant things (which by sheer luck turned out to be beneficial)
6. I supervised all students like I wanted to be supervised
7. I had no way to decide what to work on
8. I did not spend effort on creating a group
9. I did not understand personal factors in working with others
10. I was not present enough in the university