207 Letter from Emily Yeager
Dear confrere,
I offer you two main insights that hopefully can advise you in a happy, healthy, and sane career as a future tourism researcher.
Family:
Some of you may be wondering, is it feasible to have a family while in academia? YES. Work life balance is a struggle in academia, but it is totally possible (although never perfect). If you are considering the path to parenthood while pursuing the career of academia, there are two actions that you can take to make achieving this goal easier.
- First, make an appointment with your institution’s human resources (HR) department to discuss your options for maternity leave. Each institution, state, and country differ but ultimately, HR will be a great place to start as they will know your options by heart. It is their job. At my institution, I was offered a pause on my “tenure clock” during my maternity leave. CAUTION, if you can avoid it, try not to view maternity leave as an opportunity to get ahead in the tenure process. In the U.S., our maternity leave is short. I remember finishing typing a book chapter with my left hand (I am right-handed by the way) while breastfeeding my son. I regret not planning ahead and using that hand to hold a historical fiction novel of my choosing.
- Second, carve out a firm “no-work” block of time in your day to spend with your family. Mine is from 5-8pm. Obviously, life happens, and you will have disruptions to these blocks of times (e.g., teaching a night class). In these cases, I just readjust my block of time (e.g., come into the office later to spend a little more time in the morning with my family).
Work smarter not harder. This cliché is of utmost importance to maintaining your sanity in academia. I have found two methods which have helped amplify my research, teaching, and service at my institution without over-burdening my pursuit of tenure.
- We are lucky that tourism, whether you believe is a field or discipline (an internal debate sparked by Tribe (1997) in my early Ph.D. years), is interdisciplinary. Be bold and reach out to others on your campus from different departments, fields, and disciplines who hold expertise or interests that align with yours. Interdisciplinary collaborations can lead to innovative research and can be an avenue to larger funding sources. In my first year of my current tenure-track position, I had at least one coffee appointment a week with a new potential collaborator across campus and in my own community to not only “advertise” my research interests but also my research skills. Sometimes, you may be invited to be a part of a project not primarily because of your research agenda, but rather you may have been asked also because of a specific skill that you possess (e.g., qualitative methods and analysis). CAUTION, it is ok to say no to collaborations as well. Sometimes interpersonal characteristics don’t mesh. Or, you simply do not have the time. While I often say yes, learning to say no is a constan