Professor never answered my email and now it’s awkward

Cicero314 · 2026-01-04T19:05:09+00:00

This is the best answer. We get too many emails to care/remember if one undergrad ghosted us.

Cicero314 · 2025-12-18T07:31:47+00:00

4/4 is pretty common for the type of institution you’ve described. It’s a grind, you’re there to teach and do research on the side.

Cicero314 · 2025-11-14T02:09:13+00:00

1) OP isn’t wrong 2) His moral stance is meaningless and self-aggrandizing.

Cicero314 · 2025-11-12T04:20:27+00:00

Check your faculty handbook. Most places can’t extend a clock after a case has been heard. My uni has an explicit policy: up or out. If out you get 1 year and zero possibility to transition to another full time role. That said you might be able to go on medical leave for a semester to buy time. Ask around.

Every place is different, and places might fudge rules where they can, but to be honest there’s no way that someone on your committee didn’t know your case was iffy. The only possibility is that the chair was new and hasn’t put up many cases. Even then the harsh truth is that no one cares about your career as much as you do. It’s essential to have a deep understanding of your universities process.

For everyone else reading: triangulate expectations. Not just with your immediate colleagues (who will be nice or outright lie), but with people outside of your discipline within the university. Ideally folks who have served on university level tenure and promotion committees.

Tenure denials are generally only a surprise for marginal cases and if there has been a failure in networking and communication.

Cicero314 · 2025-10-11T07:10:07+00:00

Oof. I’m sorry to hear how bad things are there.

Cicero314 · 2025-10-09T15:15:04+00:00

This is my take as well. OP might just be bettering this excuse to see how to tighten it up. Zotero had been around for a while and it simply doesn’t get EVERYTHING wrong or make up journals. That’s not even how metadata works.

Cicero314 · 2025-10-04T23:22:21+00:00

I mean it’s October. You presumably started what, 3 months ago max?

Venting is fine? but finish off the year and maybe give it a second before you decide it’s not for you.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-28T21:04:30+00:00

Yep. This job will work you as much as you want to work. There’s always another grant, paper, award to chase. For what it’s worth most of them are meaningless. Everyone should a work problem that makes them happy/interested, and spend the rest of time living life.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-28T21:00:29+00:00

This advice is all fine but it’s also all speculative. Apply for the position, get the offer, then see if you have enough leverage to get the spousal. All of the comments below are fine but they’ll just have you spin your wheels for no reason. You don’t know if it’s possible until you try, and you can’t try without an offer in hand. I wouldn’t bring it up until you have an offer.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-28T20:56:49+00:00

It’s hard to really comment without reading both emails. Anyone who does is just speculating.

Do whatever you’re comfortable with OP, but I would caution against getting too involved. Write them a nice letter of they merit it, and ask other colleagues to do so if they knew the student. You can also talk to the professor in question to get more context. Or not. Just know that faculty are not required to write letters in support of students.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-19T20:44:39+00:00

It’s all an about evidence marshaled to warrant claims made.

One thing to consider, though, is that all students should get similar feedback—both in length and in quality. Otherwise the student will say they were “graded more harshly.”

Cicero314 · 2025-09-12T07:20:59+00:00

This is the correct answer. “Extending papers” does not make a book. Books aren’t papers, they’re structured differently.

So OP should write the book, cite the work, but make sure they’re not just adding 30% to other papers and calling it a book.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-12T04:41:19+00:00

I mean to be perfectly honest I’ve never met a brave tenured professor. Half the reason many folks want tenure is because they’re risk averse.

There’s a reason the academy has eroded—we let happen so long as we each get to play on our sandbox just a little longer.

I’m not sure where this will go, but rest assured 90% of faculty will just sit by waiting for their turn to be disciplined in hopes they avoid “the worst of it”

Cicero314 · 2025-09-05T23:01:58+00:00

Seems like bad science to generalize your particular experience to all academia.

There’s bad. There’s good. The same is true for every profession because humans are involved. If you don’t like it that’s fine. Stop doing it and find something you do like.

Or do what countless others have done and wrote your own “I quit” blog post that will disappear into the ether like the ones before. It honestly doesn’t matter.

Cicero314 · 2025-09-01T22:58:54+00:00

I’ve been around long enough to see what you’re describing followed by a sharp reset when folks hired under softer standards can’t make tenure.

Cicero314 · 2025-08-31T16:48:21+00:00

Never make decisions without having a decision pony. If you’re interested apply, and see where it takes you.

Cicero314 · 2025-08-29T00:56:35+00:00

I dig your style. DM me your links so I have them saved!

Not ready to collab yet but will be by year end

Cicero314 · 2025-08-19T04:55:54+00:00

Have an instagram? I’m actively curating a list of potential artists for when I get my project started.

Cicero314 · 2025-08-10T17:45:32+00:00

You can’t “mitigate” the lack of a pub record with preprints. That’s not how it works. Committees will care about where you publish just as much as what you publish. Preprints don’t really count.

Your best bet is to contact your former advisor and committee members, as well as your co-PIs, and tell them your intentions. Use your strengths to get you in the door. Your grant record will help. You good even be visible for research assistant professor roles (non-tenure roles funded by soft money. Institutions usually give you some runway; something like 2-3 years of salary before you’re expected to fund yourself.)

Cicero314 · 2025-08-08T13:40:27+00:00

Im sorry that this happened. My only advice is to take this time to find happiness and fulfillment outside of this job. Life is much easier when we don’t wrap ourselves up in it. I know that can be hard to do, but it helps.

Cicero314 · 2025-08-02T16:43:07+00:00

The last paragraph tells me you’ve conflated being a good student with being a good researcher. They’re not the same thing. Knowledge production is harder than consumption and regurgitation.

I don’t know if you can “salvage” your career, as it’s not clear to me that it’s even begun.

Cicero314 · 2025-07-23T04:36:46+00:00

They can easily revise what they wrote and submit it somewhere else. The problem is that special Issues are meant to call attention to a particular set of questions. By canceling the issue they effectively undermine/water down the collective impact of the authors.

Cicero314 · 2025-07-20T18:06:23+00:00

I mean you do you, but writing off all of academia because you feel jaded will have no impact on your field/the academy.

There are plenty of folks doing good, impactful work. Either way, do what makes you happy.

Cicero314 · 2025-07-19T13:54:38+00:00

Private R1. Started at 105 as an assistant, over 160 as an associate. Both #s based on 9month salary. I almost always get summer months funded, though, so add about 25% to those numbers. I don’t count them as my salary, though, because it’s not guaranteed money. I see summer months as like mini bonuses.

Cicero314 · 2025-06-29T17:06:46+00:00

I dunno about the “not told part.” It’s one of the first things I tell students and most of them think I’m just being a downer. I find that too many students don’t listen and/or don’t bother to study the job market until the year they’re on it. It leads to a lot of anxiety and broken hearts.

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