How one prepares oneself

The tenure decision, round 2, should be out on Friday. Secret pull asides in the hall, smoke signals, bat signals and the like all seem pretty positive. I'm living under the highly annoying oath of silence designed to limit culpability for the individuals involved in the process, all the while maximizing stress for me. If I get tenure, stay in academia and get to run my own university, things would be different. I am trying to not make long-term plans, though. First I have to get through Friday.

I've prepared by

• Reading several articles on dealing with tenure denial
• Re-reading all of my own old posts tagged "tenure"
• Having repeated nightmares involving me having tasks to do but being lost in a weird airport/shopping mall hybrid with variations including discovering Donald Trump is a politically liberal woman (best. nightmare. ever.)
• Composing "suck it PrettyGood" type social media posts. With photos!
• Deciding that those are ungracious and unnecessary
• Getting a LinkedIn Pro account and poking my weak ties in the industrial side of basketweaving
• Checking local academic job listings (there are none)
• Thinking about the hardest parts of all of this. This will be a subject of a subsequent blog post.