Making It to Mid-Career and Helping Others Arrive

Introduction

Rocking my still-nursing first-born, I wondered if the time I was spending on writing, revising, resubmitting–all for another rejection–was going to be worth the time I was trading with my son. I thought I had “made it” when I landed my tenure-track position as an English professor. I had a PhD, the job I thought I wanted, and a partner in the same professional and geographic place as we started our family. But as I was becoming a mother, I feared I was failing as an academic and failing as a mother. It felt as if nothing I did was enough, and I started to feel the pull toward stepping away from the tenure-track. Connelly and Ghodsee (2014) note in their book Professor Mommy that most writing (at their time of publication) about mothers in academe was actually about mothers leaving academe. For instance, Mama, PhD was a collection of essays from mothers who had mostly decided to leave behind the stresses of a full-time academic job (2008), and Esnard (2016) notes that mothers leave academe regularly. I was part of a group of academics who did not see role models ahead of me who had succeeded while raising a family; leaving sometimes seemed easier than staying.

Fortunately, I made it through those early struggles and not only received tenure just after the birth of my second son, but I also eventually became the first woman on my campus to be a full professor. This chapter will explore my own (eventually successful) journey to and through mid-career in academe as a woman and a mother, while offering some advice for mentoring that can help lead to success for individuals and campuses. I hope to offer individual strategies toward scholarship success and promotion, while also outlining the ways specific mid-career mentoring programming can be offered in a university setting. I will utilize my experience as a faculty member with minimal mentoring, as well as both a faculty mentoring program coordinator and a faculty fellow running a virtual mid-career mentoring program to suggest the types of activities and supports that can help academics in mid-career realize their goals.