I was vaguely offended by a recent Chronicle Careers section cover story praising LPUs ("least publishable units"):
Professor Up-and-Coming is, as I was, a young woman in her first tenure-track job, with two small children at home. Her husband, unlike mine, is also an academic in science, but at a different institution. She trained, as I did, in some of the best labs in the nation, with some of the biggest names in her field. Now she's working, as I was, at an institution very different from the ones where she trained, in a department that contains both friends and foes, and in a tenure system that doesn't allow much time for getting on your feet...
How is she supposed to balance all those conflicting factors?... How does she learn to love herself in her role as a faculty member/mom/wife/person in the larger world, without measuring herself always against the harsh standards of others?...
I submit ... that for Professor Up-and-Coming, the LPU can be a means of building self-confidence and self-worth as well as of building her CV and her tenure package... Writing that LPU can be a refuge from an angry spouse, a crying baby. An LPU, honestly produced, will stand as a symbol of progress.
It's not that I think there's anything wrong with LPUs, or with the pragmatic concerns generally used to defend them. (And yes, there's an egregious one in my dossier.) But why is so much of this piece about being female, being a wife, and being a mother?
I did an excellent job of wallowing in perfectionism and self-doubt at a disorienting new institution. Without any poopy diapers at all.
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