Query: How do you define a senior colleague? Am I senior after three years out from tenure? I don't consider myself a senior scholar. But maybe I am wrong.
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I’m ten (11?!) years post-PhD, but I don’t have tenure & I’m one of the newest people at my job, so I never feel senior & never know policies/procedures/etc BUT a colleague & I were talking the other day about how advising & grad students-wise, we really are & we need to embrace the responsibility.
Senior scholar? To me it depends on how much one has published, but def post tenure. Senior colleague? That's more relational - do you have responsibilities for mentoring/supervising people. And also, do you actually do shit for others.
I think once you're associate-level you're senior, and I also think it's important to deliberately start to think of oneself as senior, and the implications. I never "feel" senior but I have the responsibilities nevertheless.
w/an addendum that ofc it directly benefits the white cisheteropatriachical structures of academia especially if minorities don't recognize our own seniority
(obv you already know this! just getting it into words etc)
Absolutely. I'm not a working academic, but as a writer and independent scholar I certainly haven't adjusted to the reality of how much I've published, or to the idea that other people are junior to me.
I think that's so common and normal! I'm about to age out of eligibility for the British Academy midcareer scheme and I'm like, ok, where's my full professorship 😂
I've aged out of the ECR schemes now (viva 2016) but am still often assumed to be ECR. I try not to be too sensitive or misread intentions, but there's a point at which it starts to feel like a gendered insult (ie you look like a young and inexperienced woman - in reality I am a frog, obvs)
I embraced being a “peer” once I got tenure, which covers “responsibility.” “Senior” felt harder to claim, implying prestige as well as longevity. But there’s no denying it any more: after Covid, several colleagues retired; I found myself the second oldest person in my department. It’s been a shock.
We've been on hiring freeze since the dawn of time and we had three rounds of voluntary severance (including "targeted") so we're basically all middle now. I have many thoughts about this.
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(obv you already know this! just getting it into words etc)
https://jonathanmorse.blog/2023/09/08/on-labor-day-white-ceases/