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- 2008 nsf advance workshop:
- Fear of failure, fear of success
- Nifp workshop participant fears
This handout is from Mikki Hebl's talk entitled "Fear of Failure, Fear of Success".
- Not to perform as high as everyone else
- To be compared w/others in different situations as interdisciplinary area
- Do not get any interview
- Never obtain a ROI grant
- Bias on woman, mother, minority
- Opportunity for collaboration with different departments
- Public facility (such as Nano Lab, Confocal Microscope, Machine workshop)
- Relocation
- Time to spend with family
- Getting grants
- How to really stand out during application
- Not being independent enough
- Getting tenure while having children
- Getting an offer with some issues in my grad school career (e.g. bad grades from health problems, lost years, lack of many publications)
- How are recent Ph.D. recipients who are about 40 years old viewed and received?
- i.e. are universities less likely to want someone older to join their department?
- I am competing with “hotshots”
- Getting funds
- Not getting “my dream” job
- Not finding a research niche in my saturated field
- I’m not the “type” for academia
- I care about my family too much
- I can’t publish enough
- I’m a “failure” if I don’t go to academia
- I like doing experiments but I fear that I would not like managing people
- Successful people seem to have more energy to put in more hours than me
- Getting funding
- Publishing enough
- Finding a job!
- The interview!
- Publications!
- Be successful at my job as a good mentor
- Be happy at my position
- Not finding a job together with my spouse since we are in the same field
- Whether I will feel sophisticated about contributing to the betterment of society as against my career being just for my betterment
- Find a faculty position in the same city as my husband
- Not enough publications
- Being in a too collaborative field-not getting individual credit-not being “hard core” enough
- What if I “make it” but the people I most respect do not think highly of my work?
- I’d almost rather be clearly bad (and move on) than forgetably mediocre
- Going for tenure and having kids at the same time
- Differentiating future research with previous one
- Finding grants to survive
- Not being able to mentor my graduate
- Loss of enjoyment of aspects of work
- Failure to reach personal goals/obtain sufficient external respect
- Low monetary compensation
- Developing a research program while spending all my time teaching
- Two body problem and sexual orientation
- Maintaining my hobbies
- Being too stressed out in faculty position and having it negatively affect my relationship
- Missing deadline for fellowship faculty pos and not knowing where to apply
- Worried about finding the right balance of teaching/research so that I feel comfortable with balancing life and family
- I’m also worried about possibly finding a position that would allow me to spend more time with family than the traditional faculty position
- Not getting interviews
- Not getting offers
- Not getting funding
- Not achieving tenure
- Having doubts about whether I’m pursuing the right track while I’m doing it. i.e. “second thoughts” undermining successful process
- Job search
- Family
- Job security
- Financial stability
- Working as hard as I possibly can and not getting a job offer that I want
- Finding my ideal position when my husband does his ( he is medicine seeking fellowship in cardiology)
- Am I good enough to succeed in academia?
- Does my research really matter?
- I have a husband who is a PhD too but works in industry worried about 2-body problem
- When to have kids? I feel like I don’t have control, so I want to figure out how to handle this uncertainty which I am sure I would love when that happens
- Not being tough enough for the job
- Not having enough energy for both: a fulfilling private as well as working life
- I won’t be good enough
- My research will not be properly evaluated
- My presentation skills are not where I want them to be. I stutter.
- Earning respect of students and colleagues as a professional woman. That is, how to unlearn all the girlish quirks and shedding insecurities in order to feel at home in a professional institution.
- Learning to make networks and not feeling awkward utilizing the network
- Lack of publications in relation to other candidates
- I know that many schools hire 1 yr. or more in advance and wait for the right person, but will such a person be disadvantaged in the interview process by not having as much work done and published?
- Finding positions for both my husband and myself that enable us to devote as much time to family as we desire, but are also professionally fulfilling.
- Not ending up in an ideal location
- Not being productive enough
- Finding a position that fits my geographical needs
- Being good enough to run a lab group independently and provide funding for everyone
- Being a good mentor (will my students succeed?)
- Being productive enough to get tenure
- Getting an offer for myself and my husband (same department)
- Work-life balance
- Spouse in academia
- Will I like being faculty as much as at the bench
- FUNDING!
- Time for my other passion-dancing
- Worried about when to apply and if my application is good enough yet
- Thinking of stellar research ideas that will get funded
- Being “good enough” in my own eyes; not expecting too much from myself (unrealistically)
- Getting an academic job at a research institution with out doing a post doc
- My husband finding a job where I find one (location)
- I won’t get interviews because I’ve done long post doc while I had 2 kids and my publication record doesn’t look very strong
- Not having the support of my post doc advisor in my job search because he wants me to be his post doc for another 3-5 years
- Not finding a job in a good research institute
- Presentations
- Saying the wrong thin in interviews
- Tenure
- Not finding a good enough research topic
- Worried about becoming a “machine”
- Finding the right job where teaching is more valued that research
- Finding/getting more bad mentors
- I’m worried of becoming the crazy cat lady! (balancing life and work)
Source:
OpenStax, 2008 nsf advance workshop: negotiating the ideal faculty position. OpenStax CNX. Feb 24, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10628/1.3
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