| Surviving and Thriving in Academia |
Most individuals in the Western culture are socialized to believe that to a large extent they are in control of and responsible for their destiny. This type of individualistic mentality does not give sufficient recognition or respect to systemic and situational factors that may determine what happens in a particular circumstance, nor does it consider the powerful impact of sexism, heterosexism, racism, and oppression that exist within the dominant culture, including academia. Although occasional feelings of self-blame and responsibility are probably unavoidable in the face of rejection for tenure or promotion, you need to be on guard that the normal tendency to ask "Why has this happened?" does not result in blaming yourself excessively.
The propensity to blame yourself may stem from the belief that there were things you could have done differently that might have influenced the outcome. This may be true. But a tenure situation often involves secrecy about how you are actually perceived and evaluated by your colleagues. Frequently, the individual is excluded from the very knowledge needed to effectively address any problem. It is also possible that even if you had done a specific thing differently, the outcome would have been the same because of decision factors beyond your control. The most sensible and reasonable approach is first to ask yourself what others could have done differently, particularly those in authority, such as the department chairperson, who has a responsibility to provide you with honest feedback concerning your performance. Furthermore, it is healthy to recall that the tenure decision was not yours to make and therefore your control over it was limited at best.
Avoiding self-blame is one key way to cope emotionally with the situation. Self-blame serves only to increase depression and feelings of low self-esteem. Research indicates that "characterological" self-blame (i.e., blaming the kind of person you are for the negative outcome) is especially debilitating (Janoff-Bulman, 1979). Self-blame, however, is different from taking responsibility for negative evaluations that have some legitimacy. This is a very important distinction. Be careful not to target yourself as the cause of the problem without a critical analysis of all the data to differentiate what is erroneous from what is not.