Tell All

From a reader seeking your comments:

"I am currently on my 4th postdoc position and still have a 4 years left on my current fellowship. I've decided that I don't want to continue moving around, even for a permanent position. If a position opens up in my current town, I will apply, otherwise I plan to look for a job outside of academia in a few years time. Several people have contacted me with further fellowships or jobs positions abroad that they encourage me to apply to. Some of these people are current collaborators. My question is, how do I let them know that I don't want to apply to these jobs, without risking losing my collaborations over the next 4 years? I feel that if I let people know my true intentions, they will write me off as 'leaving academia', stop collaborating with me, inviting me to conferences etc... Even if I do eventually do something else, I still want the next 4 years to be productive scientifically, yet don't want to apply to places I have no intention of going to for that to happen. "

It is always tricky giving advice with only partial information about the context and people, but, as usual, let's not let that stop us. One possibility is to imagine this scenario in the context of our own collaborations and speculate about what we would want this person to do if we were working with them. Using that approach, this is what I think:

You should not apply for jobs you have absolutely no intention of taking no matter what. If you were merely leaning towards staying where you are but could possibly move for a great job, then it is worth applying anyway and seeing what happens. But if there is 0.00000% chance of your accepting another academic job if offered, I recommend not applying.

I realize that advice leads you to a situation of having to explain to your colleagues why you are not applying for academic jobs, but I also think you should be open with your colleagues about your decision. If I were your collaborator, I would keep working with you for the next few years but would know not to plan on doing so in the long-term (assuming your non-academic job wouldn't involve such collaborations). In fact, I am reminded of a situation years ago when a colleague of mine left academia but we kept working together for a while to wrap up a project. This was fine with me, and I appreciated having some notice because it affected my plans regarding proposals, students, postdocs and so on.

There are likely to be some conflicting views in the comments (I hope!), but perhaps seeing a range of opinions will nevertheless help this reader wrestle with the options and come to a good decision for this particular situation.

Making Change

The topic for today is whether/how much some of us academics change our research focus over the years. Some of you are too young to have sufficient data to answer this question for yourself, but even you youngsters can look around at more senior researchers and see whether and how much people change research focus over the years, from very dramatic changes to a small but perceptible shift.

Some possibilities are:

(1) dramatic: this could be very dramatic, like a change from chemistry to classical languages, or it could be within the same general field but with a change to a totally different subfield.

(2) semi-dramatic: this could involve a shift motivated by interdisciplinary research -- for example, a physical scientist who increasingly became involved in a major way in the life sciences or engineering such that they develop a new field of expertise. In this case, they still have their feet in their original field and subfield, but they also have a new research identity. This type of change is not so rare, or even surprising in some fields, but it still does involve a rather major shift.

(3) perceptible but not very remarkable: this type of change could involve a change in the types of research problems addressed, but the researcher would still be mostly identified with their original subfield; maybe someone develops new research methods that can be applied to different types of problems and this motivates a bit of branching out in research questions and subfields, probably with lots of help from colleagues in these other subfields. Or maybe interests shifts, new collaborations lead to new interests, and so on. There are lots of ways that this type of change can (and probably should) happen during a career.

And then there's:

(4) no change worthy of note.

Although I certainly know some in the first two categories, I think many of us are in the third category, which describes what I think is a rather normal sort of change in the course of a career. I am trying to think of examples of category 4, and I can think of a few people who have done the exact same thing for many many years (some with great success), but I still think various shades of category 3 are more common.

Do any of you consider yourself a category (1) or (2) or (4), or are most of us (3)s? You could answer about your advisor or other academics you have observed if this question isn't relevant to you (yet).

How Many Times

In Scientopia today, I pose a question from a reader who previously went through a retention process (years ago) and is considering doing so again. Is this too much? Is there a limit to how many times one should do this?

Promote Yourself

Today in Scientopia, a discussion of how and whether to promote your work (and therefore yourself) without (necessarily) alienating everyone in your field, from the point of view of a non-extroverted mid-career science professor.

Academic Fish Ponds

In Scientopia, a reader wonders whether to try to move from a Top-20ish graduate program to a Top-5 university to maximize chances on the academic job market in the future.

Bloom Watch

Last week, in a post that touched on the topic of post-tenure emotions (empowered vs. entrapped), I wrote this:

.. I have done my best work after getting tenure. I am not one of those genius-people who did her best work by age 30 (or 35). Some of us get tenure based in part on our accomplishments, such as they are at the time of the tenure evaluation, but also largely on a gamble about our potential. (I am going to explore an aspect of this more in a near-future post.)

The kernel of the idea I want to explore relates to what we do after tenure, no matter what we did before tenure. In this case, the "what" mostly refers to research because I am basing this discussion on my MRU*-centric point of view, but, with some modifications, this classification scheme could perhaps be exported to other situations. I think that probably most of us in academia can easily think of examples of each of these Types listed below, although some are more common than others. [* Major Research University]

Type S: steep upward trajectory in career from day 1; S1: productive before and after tenure, but even more productive and creative after tenure; S2: flatline at high level after tenure;

TYPE M: moderate upward trajectory from day 1 to tenure (enough to get tenure), but then M1: a steep upward trajectory after tenure, similar to Type S1 but this person was slower to bloom, or M2: flatline at a moderate level after tenure;

Type F: flat trajectory before and after tenure, but at a high enough level to get tenure (maybe just skimming over and along the tenure bar) and high enough to escape the label of "deadwood" after tenure; not awesome, but steady and better than Type L..;

Type L: steep (L1) or moderate (L2) trajectory pre-tenure; other trajectories possible, e.g., intercept with vertical tenure-line may be just about anywhere, but the key to the L path is that it involves the total transformation to deadwood not long after tenure (that is, not decades after tenure, but instead it happens while still at the early/mid-career stage).

OMG I think I am going to have to graph this.

Note that there is no significance to the y-intercept. The Type S line could start above or below some of the other lines, for example, but I am imagining this type of person as making a strong start.

I think it is also important to note that I don't just mean 'number of publications' (or grants) in my definition of productivity. I mentioned creativity in my definition of Type S, and this is an important element of 'blooming' in my classification scheme. The post-tenure 'bloom' in this case is not just a churning out of a stupendous number of publications, but involves making new and interesting discoveries or advances, having new and creative ideas, and all that kind of good thing.

Also, there is no criticism attached to (some) of this. Some faculty who flatline at a moderate to low level, for example, have taken a different career path, such as one involving more teaching and/or service. That may or may not be fine, depending on circumstances and expectations.

Do you see yourself here, or did I leave out some important trajectories? Feel free to suggest significantly different trajectories (yours or your favorite/hated colleague's) and I may modify the graph later.

These Happy After-Tenure Years

Some of my friends got -- or seem to be getting -- tenure this year. Yay for all of them! They are thrilled and I am thrilled for them.

This is a happy occasion for most, and the only reason I add "for most" is because I have read essays (including a recent one in The Chronicle of Higher Education) by or about people who feel depressed and/or "trapped" by tenure. Unlike some who left critical comments on the CHE essay, I do not subscribe to the "You should be happy because there are even unhappier people in the world" philosophy. If you don't like many things about your job, you aren't going to like them once your employment position becomes (essentially) permanent, even if others in academia have less job security than you do. I feel sympathy for these depressed-by-tenure people, even if I don't really understand the phenomenon. I hope those depressed by tenure find a way to recover, perhaps by changing something about their career paths or goals (but not necessarily by becoming a depressed administrator).

I am fortunate that getting tenure was a happy, empowering thing for me. Although tenure was of course a necessary goal in my academic career path, my primary job satisfaction has involved the doing of research, teaching, and other professional activities -- developing new research projects, working with students, teaching new courses or improving old ones, and so on. Tenure gave me the chance to keep doing what I loved and also provided new opportunities, so I have never felt "trapped" by tenure.

Also, I have done my best work after getting tenure. I am not one of those genius-people who did her best work by age 30 (or 35). Some of us get tenure based in part on our accomplishments, such as they are at the time of the tenure evaluation, but also largely on a gamble about our potential. (I am going to explore an aspect of this more in a near-future post.) In letters supporting tenure cases, it is common to see phrases like "rising star" or "steep upward trajectory" to describe the tenure candidate, in recognition of the fact that there is only so much that can be done in the tenure-track years, even by those who work 24/7.

Perhaps this mostly applies to fields in which the tenure-track years involve building labs and research groups and other time-intensive activities that are necessary for new and exciting research projects to be launched and for at least some research goals achieved. I bet, however, that it also applies to any field in which more ambitious research can only be undertaken once you have developed a certain network of colleagues and contacts and attained the awesome knowledge that only comes with experience (says middle-aged me).

People who feel trapped by tenure probably dislike quite a few things about their job (colleagues, students, location etc.) and are likely a bit burned out by exhaustion and stress. For most of us, though, I hope that it is not the case that the best, most productive years are over once tenure is secured. Tenure gives us the security to pursue more risky research ideas, lets us build a larger research group (if that is desirable), and gives us the chance to serve on even more committees (<-- sarcasm).

Tenured readers: Do you feel "trapped" by tenure? Or empowered? Both? Neither? Something else?

What About Us?

In Scientopia today, there is a discussion of issues facing mid-career and older faculty; specifically, issues related to negotiating a retention package at one's current institution, upon receiving an offer from another institution.

Wrong and Stupid

In Scientopia today, I present and discuss a reader's question about what a search committee can and can't consider in deciding which candidates to interview, with a particular focus on a common issue..

To Stay or Not to Stay

Over in Scientopia, the topic of discussion today is whether it is bad to stay at the same institution for a postdoc after a PhD, and various other scenarios related to staying vs. moving on at different academic stages.

Overexposed?

Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question as to whether it is better to take a 1-year, non-tenure track, teaching position that will/might become tenure-track (and thereby possibly getting the 'inside' track on the TT job), or whether it's better to wait and apply for the tenure-track job.

By the way

Although this exact scenario no longer applies to the reader who sent me the question, I was nevertheless intrigued by the situation because it seems like a near-perfect storm of complex personal situations that can arise during the negotiation stage of a faculty hire. Consider:

Some of us have been in the situation of getting an offer of a faculty position and then having to bring up the fact that our spouse is also searching for an academic position and would it be possible to hire a second person as well? In some cases, the two-body problem is common knowledge throughout the process, and in some cases it is news to the hiring department.

And some of us have been in the situation of getting an offer and then at some point needing to bring up the fact that we are going to give birth just before or soon after starting our new faculty position.

I was in both situations, but consecutively. When my husband and I were hired at our current university, there was a gap of about 3 months between signing the contracts and my calling up the department head to have an "Oh, by the way.." conversation. He was very nice about it, mentioned that other faculty had young children, and emphasized that the department was family-friendly. I had been very nervous about calling him, but everything turned out fine.

But what if you are in both situations at once? When and how do you communicate about these issues with the department head or other administrators?

My advice is to bring up the spouse situation soon after getting the offer if you are going to be asking for some sort of second position. That is necessarily going to be part of your negotiations and decision.

Issues involving parenthood, however, are not typically part of the negotiations, although I know some faculty and administrators who have circumvented the long waiting list at on-campus childcare centers by making guaranteed childcare a part of the negotiations. Unless there is some practical reason why you need to announce your parental status, however, I don't think you should bring it up if you aren't comfortable doing so and if it is not relevant to the negotiations.

Some women feel that it is deceptive not to mention it at an early stage, including before the contract is signed. If you are going to ask for family leave or tenure clock stoppage very soon after arriving, administrators would certainly want to know this as soon as possible, but it is not deceptive if you wait to convey the information.

That would be my preference, but only because it makes sense to me to separate 'things that are relevant to the negotiations' from 'things that are not'. What I don't know is whether or how making an early announcement of pregnancy (i.e., before the contract is signed) might affect the negotiations. Could it weaken your negotiating position?

Or am I wrong that it is in fact useful information at the negotiating stage, and, if you have a family-friendly department head, you can work out an amenable arrangement re. teaching (for example) proactively, as part of your hiring?

If you have any direct or indirect experience with needing to tell your new department "By the way, I'm in the family way..", I hope you will share your story and note (1) when you told, (2) why you decided to tell when you did, and (3) how things went.

Insecurity as Motivator

Today in Scientopia, I consider an ethical dilemma involving a PI and a research scientist who hates to write.

Left Behind

Today in Scientopia, I discuss some angsty, anxious, anguished e-mails I get from readers who are thinking of "leaving" Science and/or Academia and are worried about what others may think of them as a result.

Out With The Old?

A question arose recently about an early career scientist* who has been slow to publish results from their PhD research. Now that this person is on the tenure track (TT), they have to make decisions about how best to spend their limited time: pursuing new research vs. finishing old projects.

(*someone completely unrelated to my research group, just in case anyone is getting paranoid)

I am not talking about unreasonable expectations by former advisors regarding post-graduation or post-postdoctoral publication; i.e., I am not referring to cases in which someone published the key papers from their previous work but their advisor would like them to publish even more. In that case, new work clearly must rule.

The tricky cases are when there are still major papers that should come out of the pre-TT years, but these have not yet been written/submitted.

Yet, if a TT professor spends time writing up old projects, there is less time for the new projects. There are only so many hours in a day and there are only so many years until the tenure evaluation. And there are an infinite number of important things to do in that time.

Factors in the decision about how to apportion time between old and new work include:

- It's important to initiate and publish results from new work that is identified specifically with the time at the TT institution and that does not involve the TT professor's PhD advisor(s) or postdoctoral mentor(s).

but:

- It's important to finish what you started, especially if your PhD and/or postdoctoral research was particularly interesting. Your visibility and reputation derive from the totality of your work, not just what you accomplish in your TT years.

Ultimately, I think that new work (research done entirely at the TT university) is more important than old work (research done during a PhD and/or postdoc), so if you have to choose one over the other, the new work is what the TT university will want to see at tenure evaluation time. Some people do get tenure based primarily on work done with their famous PhD and postdoctoral advisors, but this is not a good strategy for getting tenure and for establishing a respected research program.

As an advisor, I am not objective about this matter. Although I can write -- and even convince myself to believe -- that new work should prevail over the old in terms of publication priority -- I also feel that it's very not cool to leave advisors and other colleagues in the lurch with unpublished work, even if that was never the intention. Also, some institutions request letters from former advisors and postdoc mentors for tenure evaluations.

When I was a postdoc, I had published a few papers from my PhD, but I had some more to write. I spent most of my postdoc time on my postdoctoral research, but I systematically carved out some time for writing up the rest of my PhD research, so eventually it was all published. This turned out to be excellent preparation for being a professor and working on multiple projects at once; i.e., many of us, as professors, always have some projects in the writing-up stage and some in the data-gathering stage and some in the idea development stage and some in the glimmer-in-our-eye stage. It should therefore be possible to finish the old work without sacrificing the new work.

How's that for a mixed message?: In reality, you have to prioritize your time and probably should favor the new projects over the old projects, but, ultimately, you need to get everything done, old and new.

Job Data

The actual, real-life purpose of The Grad School Experience image that I posted on Friday was an attempt-at-humor introduction to a discussion with my research group.

As part of this discussion about academia, careers, life etc., I presented some histograms that showed how many graduates from our research group were doing different types of jobs after obtaining a PhD or (graphed separately) MS. The categories for PhD graduates were Academia, Industry/Business, and Government; those 3 categories accounted for all PhD graduate students from this research group from the past 20 years. I then compared these data with those reported for PhDs in our general field of science, compiled from the NSF survey that tracks the careers of doctoral recipients.

The database for my research group represents the advisees of 4 faculty members in related fields from 1990 to 2010, and therefore consists of quite a few individuals. These data are not secret. My research group maintains an active, easily accessible directory of current and former graduate students and postdocs, including a listing of current employment. I don't think anyone had recently compiled it, though, so it was interesting to see and discuss the graphs.

There has been a lot of talk in the media/blogosphere about how graduate programs should show the current employment data of their alumni/ae so that prospective (and current) students will have a better idea of their chances for PhD-relevant employment, especially for academic jobs. The general idea has been that these statistics are grim, and therefore some potential grad students may be convinced to pursue a different education and/or career path.

But what if the data for a particular program show that 98% of graduates who wanted an academic job, no matter whether the PhD was obtained in 1990, 1999, or 2009, got an academic job? The danger there, of course, is that you will appear to be promising something that you (as an advisor or as a department) can't promise: that if a PhD graduate of that group wants an academic job, they will definitely get one.

Nevertheless, these data are real, the dataset includes a large number of individuals, and the results show that our graduates have been successful at obtaining academic jobs if they wanted that type of job. Perhaps owing to the nature of this particular research subfield, the % of graduates in academia is higher than the average for our general field of science. I have not yet broken out the data into finer-grained categories -- e.g., how many graduates from our group are at different types of academic institutions -- but that would be interesting to do as well.

It was also interesting to see that all of our former PhD students who are in non-academic employment sectors have careers that are relevant to their PhD training.

I think the data were useful to show, at least as a launching point for more in-depth discussions of career paths (academic or not) that have been taken by graduates of our research group. And I would go even further and say that these data were important to show because they indicate that getting a PhD in our research group/department/institution is worthwhile and is likely to lead to interesting and PhD-relevant career opportunities.

It is quite possible that not everyone will agree with me on that, so my question to readers is: Do you think that employment data such as these:

- should be shown whether or not they paint a grim or rosy picture of PhD-relevant employment opportunities: individuals can make their own interpretation and choices;

- should be shown if they indicate a slim chance of graduate degree-related employment, but not shown if they seem to give reason for optimism about employment (because that might be misleading and give false hopes and make the few who don't get their preferred job feel even worse?);

- should not be shown at all. Students and postdocs are responsible for educating themselves about career opportunities and/or it is irrelevant what other graduates of the same program have done in the past;

- other?

MoveOn Faculty

Today in Scientopia I revisit the topc of faculty moving from one institution to another.

Dear Search Committee

Last week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, there was an advice column that provided a how-to guide to writing a cover letter for applications for faculty positions. In this particular case, the focus was on 2-year colleges, institutions with which I have no direct experience. I have friends, colleagues, and former students who teach at such institutions, but have never worked at (or applied to work at) a 2-year college.

Perhaps this reflects my ignorance, but I was dismayed at some of the advice about writing cover letters. Some of it was excellent and practical -- don't emphasize your research when applying for a teaching position, do your homework about the institution, provide the most relevant information about your background etc. All of that is good.

This type of advice is what filled me with dismay:

Be sure to address the cover letter to a specific individual by name, even if no individual is named in the job ad or application instructions. Apparently, certain people, who are nameless, want candidates to seek out their identities so that the cover letter can be addressed to "Dear Ronald Zook" instead of "Dear Search Committee". If this information is not available on any webpage, applicants are supposed to make some phone calls.

Why do I hate this advice? I do not like the fact that someone on a hiring committee would really care about such a trivial issue. If you want the letter addressed to you by name, put your name somewhere prominent; don't play games. If there is an administrative reason why your name is not listed anywhere, then don't make it an issue. And why should the letter exclude the other members of the committee and be addressed only to you, the head of the committee? Does the greeting really affect your impression of a candidate? Is that reasonable? OK, maybe if the greeting is something like the e-mail we get from some of our students (e.g., Yo! Proff! or Hey!), maybe that would be unprofessional, but "Dear Search Committee" should not be a reason to start forming a negative impression of a candidate. "

Ask for an interview. I had no idea it was so easy. Actually, it seems that asking for an interview doesn't necessarily get you the interview, but not asking for one is apparently bad. How strange. I personally would find it obnoxious and pointless for someone to write in a cover letter (as advised in the column in question): "May I travel to [name the city] to discuss this position with you in person?". This would be seen as deeply strange in a cover letter to my department. Is there really such a difference between 2-year and 4-year institutions? I could be very wrong, but I would have thought that both get large numbers of applications for most positions and that this particular approach would not be fruitful. When someone applies to my institution, I assume they want the job unless there is other information that shows this is not the case.

I have saved the two weirdest ones for last:

Below your signature and printed name, type the word "Enclosures". Otherwise, the idiot search committee members may not know that you have included your CV and other application materials.

Print the letter in black ink on good-quality white or ivory paper. Paper? What is that?

I do not mean to denigrate this well-meaning writer who is seeking to help applicants, but I am bothered by the fact that some of the cover letter advice implies that hiring committees focus on minutiae and that an application can be downgraded by things that have nothing to do with the applicant's qualifications or degree of interest in the job. Applicants should not have to worry that committees are mulling over their choice of font or whether they get the greeting or sign-off words exactly right for the unknown preferences of the unknown persons who will be reading the application.

In my experience with hiring committees, it does not work that way. We look at the substance of the application, we make allowances for inexperienced applicants, and we expect there to be wide variation in the approach applicants take to their cover letter, from terse but informative to long, pleading, and repetitious.

Of course we want the cover letter to be articulate and useful, but beyond that, an applicant can go wild and use a sans serif font, sign off with "Warmest regards" instead of "Sincerely", and address us impersonally. Many (most?) of us won't notice, won't care, or will be able to deal with it without developing a deep loathing of the applicant. Just don't ask for an interview.

Required Suffering?

An offhand comment in an e-mail from a colleague contained the sentiment that it would be uncool to appear to enjoy the tenure-track and that nowadays it would be "suspicious" if someone made it obvious that they were not suffering before getting tenure.

Does anyone agree with that?

To agree with that opinion, you first have to believe that it is possible to enjoy being an Assistant Professor on the tenure track. Just based on my own experience, I know that it is possible to enjoy work and life before getting tenure. Enjoying your pre-tenure existence doesn't mean you aren't stressed out -- i.e., it doesn't mean you are totally confident and think you are a Gift to Science (or whatever) -- it just means that you aren't miserable most/all of the time, perhaps even questioning why you have devoted so many years to this stressful job that you might lose.

I was somewhat stressed out about getting tenure, especially since I changed institutions (to one with a higher standard for tenure), had a baby, had a series of dysfunctional graduate students and postdocs, and knew that at least one of my tenure letter-writers did not think much of my work. Overall, though, I enjoyed my work and life, and cannot say that I suffered unduly.

Of course I had to publish and get grants and have an international reputation and juggle live flaming iguanas while doing cartwheels, so I don't think the standards or general experience of attaining tenure have changed in the last ~10 years. Nevertheless, I found much to enjoy about my research and teaching, and most of my pre-tenure fellow travelers also seemed to share my mostly-positive attitude.

Have things changed? Would this semi-enjoyment of the pre-tenure life be totally uncool these days?

That is, does anyone agree with my colleague? When I was thinking about this, I wondered if our impressions are colored by the blogosphere. The prevalence of my-tenure-track-life blogs gives us all a much broader exposure to the varied experiences of tenure-track faculty in various fields and at various institutions, and blogs are a good place to rant, vent, complain, express outrage, share the stress etc. (and this blog is obviously no exception).

So, do blogs like this give us a more accurate impression of the tenure-track life or do they amplify the negative, leading some people to conclude that pre-tenure suffering is de rigueur?

There are several questions embedded in this discussion:

(1) Can one enjoy the tenure-track life? I say yes.

(2) Is it uncool or suspicious if you are not visibly suffering? I don't know, but sometimes it seems that way from reading various blogs.

(3) Is the blog-view of the tenure-track life a good representation of the typical experience (especially if you read a lot of blogs) or is the view skewed toward the negative owing to the nature of blogs and the people who write them? I don't know, but can anyone suggest a few mostly-uplifting, I-am-having-fun pre-tenure blogs -- and perhaps also their opposite? That is, which pre-tenure academic bloggers are having the most fun and which are the most miserable? Feel free to nominate your choices of blogs that characterize the ends of the pre-tenure blog spectrum.

No Gap

A graduating high school senior recently told me that she is taking a "gap year" before going to college or doing whatever comes after next year. "Gap year" is a nice, all-purpose term that can be used to describe a post-high-school, pre-everything-else year that some young people take before diving back into school or starting a job. The term makes the year seem rather alluring, possibly filled with adventure and personal growth experiences.

I have no worries about this particular young woman. She is very dynamic and involved in many activities. I am sure she will end up doing something interesting.

I applaud her gap year plans, even though I am not personally a gap year kind of person. I would have hated taking a gap year. I am too impatient for such things; actually, "impatient" is a nice way to describe what I am. I have never taken any "time off" to do anything else but be in academia as a student or researcher or professor, and that's exactly the way I have wanted it.

Oh, perhaps I would have benefited in some way from doing something outside academia for a while: volunteering in a school, standing on a street corner asking people if they have a minute for the environment, working on a cat ranch (they exist!). But I didn't want to. Once I took a course in my field of science during my freshman year of college, I knew what I wanted to do and I have never wanted to do anything else.

I reject the hypothesis that I would be a better person or adviser had I worked outside of academia, although I agree that it's good if a department has some faculty who have done so.

My personal rejection of the gap year concept doesn't mean that I look down on those who do take time off. I have advised students who had a gap year or six. That's fine. That's just not me. And I don't think I will freak out (too much) if my daughter decides to take a gap year when it is time for her to make decisions about her future.

The closest thing I had to a gappish year was a year spent abroad as a student. I did the backpacking through Europe thing for weeks at a time, living on $5/day, sleeping on trains, eating bread and cheese, meeting lots of interesting people, and realizing that traveling alone in some places was a really bad idea. I had a great time.

In between adventures, I went to my classes, of course; some were really good and some were really awful, but the entire experience was so exotic (big university in international city vs. small liberal arts college in the US), even the bad things were kind of interesting. [One exception: On the first day of a literature course, the professor announced that rape was the most heroic deed known to mankind and was much misunderstood throughout history. He was going to be our guide through rape scenes in literature, to explore the heroic elements of this act. I walked out of the class, dropped it, and took a course instead from a kindly old professor who loved architecture, art, and literature.]

So, I have been gapless, unless you count term leaves and sabbaticals. I guess these are sort of gap year-like in that they are for recharging and doing something different, in some cases in a different place. At the same time, they are not as open-ended as a "gap year" in which you don't really know what you'll be doing when the gap closes, so the comparison kind of falls apart there.

I think there are gap year kinds of people and non-gap year kinds of people. What is an excellent idea for some people would be torture for others. Whichever kind you are, I think it is important that we not make assumptions about the "other" kind: gap year people are not necessarily less serious than non-gappers, and non-gappers aren't necessarily one-dimensional monomaniacs who don't want to live in the "real" world.