Moving at Mid‐Career

Abstract

Discernment about when to make career moves is often clouded by a host of competing desires and motivations. In this essay the author peels back layers of vocational choices in order to begin to reveal motivations behind those choices. Questions pertaining to notions of prestige, imaginative projection into a new position, clarity about what one values in theological education, and shifts in thinking about pedagogy in a new context are explored.I had been an assistant professor and then a tenured associate professor for several years at one theological institution when it seemed time to move. It was time to move partly because I was not teaching all that I had been trained to teach. I wanted to reach more of my full potential as a teacher/scholar. It was also time to move because I had a growing family. I was teaching at a relatively prestigious institution in a very expensive location. As much as I loved where I was working, I wanted to provide a better quality of life for my children and myself. I prayed for another position at a good school in a region of the country where it wasn't too cold, the cost of living was lower, and the salaries were higher. Then I vigorously began applying for positions that met these criteria.One of the nice aspects of being mid-career is that you feel comfortable questioning prestige, what it means, how it is attained, and whether or not that is what matters most to you. Part of my growth as an academic was to recognize that the colleagues whose work I respect were at a variety of institutions, all of them fine schools but not necessarily carrying the status I had coveted when I was younger. When I first received my doctoral degree from a prominent institution, I was attracted to prestige. Growing into my career, I found that the relative prestige of the institution where I was hired did not make me happy. I was not even certain what prestige was anymore, why I had thought it so important, and why so many of us crave it. Who, in the end, is qualified to define which schools are worthy of such labels? As a mid-career scholar, I recognize that it is the quality of a scholar's work and not the name of the institution that makes the difference. After nearly a decade, I found myself deconstructing, demystifying, and demythologizing the term "prestige." What is the practical, actual quality-of-life value of that elusive carrot? I came to the conclusion over the years that "prestigious" is a name attached to certain places with a given history, whose faculty, when considered honestly, are as much of a mix as anyone else's. Therefore, I began my mid-career job search with a different set of priorities from those of my early post-graduate years.