Nov 03 2008
Confronting Insecurities: Seeking Professional Success in the First Year
The bell chimed for the third time, the soft sound reverberating through the conference room. I opened my eyes, shifting on my cushion to alleviate the stiff pain that had accumulated in my back and knees. Around me, other members of the class smiled sheepishly, stretching their arms overhead and wiping at blurry eyes. This was the fifth session in our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class, a program offered to the community through a local clinic. I had signed up for the class at the end of summer, thinking it might be useful to learn about stress reduction as I transitioned to my new role as an academic librarian and assistant professor on the tenure track.
“Well, what did you experience?” the instructor asked.
Our conversation centered on a perennial question: eyes opened or closed during meditation?
“I was thinking about that, too.” I jumped in, launching into a long description of what I’d been doing during the thirty-minute session, how I’d started by looking at the floor in front of me, then sat with my eyes closed until my eyelids were fluttering, and ended by looking out the window over everyone’s head. “I didn’t want to accidentally make eye contact with anyone else and I got to watch the sun set over the fields. It was really peaceful.”
One of my classmates turned to me, a wry smile on her face. “You were busy!”
I laughed, chagrined. She was right: instead of being fully present to each moment at it arose, I had fallen into the trap of thinking about where I should be looking and what I should be doing.
Defining professional success
I thought about this moment during the next few months as I caught myself repeatedly worrying about what I should be doing in my new career to be successful. In my position, professional success is most prominently defined as achieving tenure. Even though I promised myself I would not let the tenure track make me feel insecure about who I was and what I was doing, the opposite proved true.
The tenure requirements on my campus are straightforward and flexible enough to apply to any discipline: excellence as a teacher, an emerging pattern of professional activities, service to the institution, and support of the college’s mission. “It’s up to you to make your case when you come up for tenure. You have more control than you think over the process,” an older and wiser colleague told me — although I didn’t really believe him. I couldn’t shake the pit in my stomach that grew whenever I thought about tenure. It was over five years away, yet I found myself obsessing over how much I was (or wasn’t) doing every day to meet the requirements. Finally, I asked myself whether I going to be a nervous, insecure wreck for the next few years, or whether I could embrace a healthier attitude.
Armed with the advice from my MBSR class that the things we avoid are often those we most need to face, I took a deep breath and plunged into the depths of my insecurities. To my surprise and delight, I discovered four things that helped me overcome them: confiding in a mentor, revising my attitude toward my job, exploring work/life balance, and trusting myself.
But is it enough?
Whenever I thought about my job requirements, I always came back to the same unsettling questions: Am I doing enough? Where’s my checklist? Who will verify that I’m doing what I should be doing? Where’s my stamp of approval?
I worried, even though I encountered countless opportunities from day one to begin fulfilling my professional activities. Given the high demand for library instruction sessions, I found ample opportunities to teach and colleagues who enjoyed discussing teaching approaches and styles. I ended up on one campus committee because one of my colleagues was on leave and submitted my name as her replacement; I found my way to another after an impromptu conversation with the committee chair about the role of the library in teaching research skills to students. Even my emerging pattern of professional activities got a jumpstart, thanks to several regional conferences and motivated coauthors.
But still these questions nagged me. I decided to bring them up with my faculty mentor, a senior colleague outside of the department who was assigned to me through our faculty development program. It took a surprising amount of courage to do this. Even though I knew I could talk to my mentor about almost anything, I hesitated to bring up my insecurities, not wanting to look like I was out of my league.
“How do I know when I’m doing enough?” I finally blurted out one day over lunch.
“Well, think of your job like a plate,” she said, indicating our dirty dishes. “Don’t just look at the number of things on your plate but also at the time requirement for each item. You might have only one or two committees, but if they are major committees, they might result in a pretty full plate.”
“Right,” I said, “but I hate to say no to anything. What if I turn something down and it ends up costing me tenure?”
She laughed. “You’re doing enough. And relax. It’s only your first year.”
I felt a tremendous amount of relief when I heard those words. As I reflected on them over the next few days, I realized that I needed to take a new approach to my job, one that was not dominated by the part of me that counted the lines on my CV. I had the luxury of time to take ownership of the process, setting my own goals and pursuing my own professional interests. I realized that I had also lost the sense of doing a task for its own sake. Why not look at conference papers as a chance to stretch myself and share research with the library community, or consider serving on a committee as a chance to help further the mission of the institution — instead of only as a line to add to my vita? In this way I could begin see tenure requirements as guides to a well-rounded professional life.
Life beyond the library
I began putting my professional life into some semblance of order, but insecurities and worries about tenure still plagued my personal life. During the first few months on the job I found Saturdays to be particularly stressful. I wandered around my house, looking at the laptop lurking on my desk. Well, maybe I should just touch up that class handout or send those committee minutes, I would think, sitting down at the desk only to emerge hours later. I’d fallen into the pattern of seeing work as all-consuming, with tenure as the ultimate — and only — goal. Why wouldn’t I spend every free moment working? Knowing that this approach was not healthy, I started paying attention to the phrase “work/life balance.”
I love my job and am committed to the work I do, but it’s not my entire identity. In subverting my own life completely to my work I had made tenure the ultimate goal, instead of seeking to live a fulfilling life in which my job is one part, but not its entirety. I knew what I wanted to achieve in terms of balance but wasn’t sure how to proceed until I heard a senior professor talking about the vow he made to himself to spend at least one entire day each week not doing anything related to work. This became the perfect antidote to my workaholic tendencies and my nagging insecurities. Every Saturday I remind my inner self that I do not need to work today, and then I launch into a leisurely perusal of the newspaper, or dive into a novel, or sometimes simply stare at my walls, picking out new paint colors.
A happier ending
By doing these things I learned to start trusting myself on a professional level. For most of the first year I repeated the pattern from the MBSR class: I persisted in thinking that I should be doing something more or different than what I was actually doing. Instead of shaping my professional activities this mindset became a hindrance, drawing on all my insecurities to keep me from appreciating the work at hand. By confronting my insecurities I discovered that the true guiding force for my life came from within. I can pursue research agendas, committee work, and teaching endeavors that are interesting to me instead of weighing them against what I think I should be doing. The choice and the responsibility are mine. I am free to pursue professional success, which I now define not so much as getting tenure (although that’s still important!) as work that is fulfilling, personally interesting, and conducted within healthy boundaries.
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After graduating from the library program at the College of St. Catherine in 2005, Julie Gilbert worked in a variety of libraries, including academic, community, and public. She is currently Academic Librarian & Assistant Professor at the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library at Gustavus Adolphus College. In addition to overseeing systems work at the library, Julie has explored and assessed a wide range of methods for providing instruction to library users. In her spare time she still enjoys reading novels and picking out new paint colors for her walls. Email Julie at jgilber2@gustavus.edu.