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From terrified freshman to university president, here's what every rank in a university actually looks like.

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VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Freshman
2:55 The Sophomore
5:26 The Junior
7:35 The Senior
10:16 The Graduate Student
12:58 The Adjunct Professor
15:24 The Assistant Professor
17:50 The Tenured Professor
19:57 The Dean
22:38 The University President

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00Level 1. The Freshman
00:01You show up on a Sunday in August. Your parents drove you here.
00:06The car is packed so tight, the rearview mirror is useless.
00:09Your mother is already crying.
00:11She started crying at the gas station two hours ago and hasn't stopped.
00:15Your father is carrying a mini-fridge up three flights of stairs and pretending his back doesn't hurt.
00:21You stand in a hallway that smells like industrial cleaner and someone else's air freshener.
00:26Your room is the size of a parking space.
00:28Two beds, two desks, two strangers who are supposed to become something like family by December.
00:35Your roommate is already there.
00:37He shook your hand too hard and immediately started talking about his fantasy football league.
00:41You smiled and nodded and wondered if it was too late to request a transfer.
00:46It was.
00:47You unpack your things and arrange them in a way that feels temporary because everything about this feels temporary.
00:54Your parents leave.
00:55Your mother hugs you like she's not going to see you again.
00:58Your father shakes your hand and says something about making good decisions.
01:02The door closes.
01:04You are alone in a way you have never been alone before.
01:08You go to orientation.
01:09A woman with a lanyard and too much energy tells you about campus resources and academic integrity and the dining
01:16hall hours.
01:17She uses the word community 14 times.
01:20You sit in a lecture hall with 300 other freshmen who look exactly as terrified as you feel.
01:26Nobody admits it.
01:27Everyone is performing confidence they don't have.
01:30You make conversation with the person sitting next to you.
01:33You exchange phone numbers.
01:35You will never text them.
01:37You pick your classes.
01:39You don't know what you're doing.
01:40Your advisor spent four minutes with you and circled some course numbers on a sheet.
01:44You signed up for introduction to psychology because someone told you it was easy.
01:49You signed up for English composition because it was required.
01:52You signed up for a math class that meets at 8 a.m. because it was the only section open.
01:57You will attend that math class five times before you stop going.
02:02The first month is chaos.
02:04You eat alone more than you'll ever admit.
02:07You sit at tables in the dining hall with your phone propped up so you look busy.
02:11You join three clubs in the first week and quit two of them by October.
02:16You go to a party in a dorm room that's too loud and too crowded.
02:20You stand against a wall with a cup in your hand and pretend this is fun.
02:24You stay up until 3 a.m. because nobody is telling you not to.
02:28You sleep through your alarm.
02:30You miss deadlines.
02:32You write your first college paper the night before it's due and get a C-.
02:36The professor's comments are two sentences long and they sting more than any grade you got in high school.
02:42You call your mother and tell her everything is great.
02:46It isn't.
02:47But it will be.
02:48You don't know that yet.
02:50You just know the dining hall closes at 9 and you're already hungry again.
02:54Level 2.
02:55The sophomore.
02:57You know things now.
02:58You know which dining hall has the best food on Thursdays.
03:01You know which buildings have the cleanest bathrooms.
03:04You know which professors grade easy and which ones will make you earn every point.
03:09You know where to sit in a lecture hall so you can leave early without being noticed.
03:13You know which library floor is quiet and which one is social and which one smells like mold.
03:18You declared a major.
03:20You picked it because you liked one class freshman year and assumed that meant you'd like an entire career built
03:25around it.
03:26You might be right.
03:27You probably aren't.
03:29The form is signed.
03:31The advisor nodded.
03:32Now you're a biology major.
03:34Or a history major.
03:35Or a communications major.
03:37The whole thing feels more real than it did a year ago.
03:40Your parents ask about it every time you call.
03:43What are you going to do with that degree?
03:45You don't have an answer.
03:47You change the subject.
03:49You moved off campus.
03:50An apartment with three friends that was described as cozy in the listing and turned out to be small.
03:56The kitchen has two burners and a microwave.
03:58The sink drips.
04:00The walls are thin enough to hear your neighbor's alarm clock every morning at 6.
04:04The landlord has never answered a phone call on the first try.
04:08The rent is due on the first and you learn what it means to budget when nobody is buying your
04:12groceries anymore.
04:14You eat pasta four nights a week.
04:16You discover how expensive cheese is.
04:19You understand your parents in a way you never did before.
04:22You have a routine now.
04:24Classes in the morning.
04:25Library in the afternoon.
04:27Something social at night.
04:29You study more than you did freshman year because the classes got harder and the grades started to matter.
04:34You're pulling a 3.1 and it's not enough for the program you want.
04:38But it's not bad enough to panic.
04:40You're in the middle.
04:42Most people are in the middle.
04:44Nobody talks about the middle.
04:46You start to realize that college is not a meritocracy.
04:50It's a system.
04:51The students who do well aren't always the smartest.
04:54They're the ones who figured out the system first.
04:57Office hours.
04:58Study groups.
04:59Knowing which TA grades easier.
05:01You start figuring it out too.
05:04You get a part-time job at the campus bookstore or the rec center or the coffee shop on the
05:08corner.
05:0912 hours a week at minimum wage.
05:11It doesn't cover much, but it covers enough to make you feel like an adult.
05:16You put it on your resume even though it has nothing to do with your major.
05:20Everything goes on the resume now.
05:21You are building something.
05:23You just can't see it yet.
05:25Level 3.
05:27The junior.
05:27This is the year everything accelerates.
05:30The classes are smaller.
05:32The professors know your name.
05:33They know when you haven't done the reading.
05:36The work is harder.
05:37You're not memorizing facts anymore.
05:40You're analyzing.
05:41You're arguing.
05:42You're defending positions you aren't sure you believe in because the class requires it.
05:47You're writing 15-page papers and presenting research to rooms full of people who actually ask questions.
05:54You sit in seminars where your opinion matters.
05:57Where being wrong is part of the process.
06:00You start to understand what education actually is.
06:03It isn't answers.
06:04It's better questions.
06:05You start thinking about what comes after.
06:08Graduate school.
06:10Jobs.
06:11The real world that everyone keeps mentioning like a threat.
06:14You go to career fairs and shake hands with recruiters who collect your resume and never call.
06:20You update your LinkedIn for the first time and agonize over the headline.
06:24You apply for internships and get rejected 12 times before someone says yes.
06:29The internship pays nothing.
06:31You take it anyway because experience is worth more than money right now.
06:34At least that's what everyone tells you.
06:37You spend a summer filing papers in an office and calling it professional development.
06:42You put it on your resume and describe it in language that makes it sound important.
06:46You study abroad for a semester if your family can afford it.
06:49Spain.
06:50South Korea.
06:51England.
06:52You live in a country where nobody knows you and nothing works the way it does at home.
06:57You learn more in four months than you learned in two years of lectures.
07:01You come back different.
07:02You don't know how to explain it.
07:04You just know the campus feels smaller now.
07:07Your friend group has solidified.
07:09The 40 people you knew freshman year have become six people you actually trust.
07:13You've lost friends to transfers, to drama, to the slow drift that happens when people start
07:19becoming who they're actually going to be.
07:22Some friendships didn't survive the honesty of year three.
07:25You don't miss all of them.
07:27You miss some.
07:28You start to realize that college isn't forever.
07:36You are tired in a way that is different from every other kind of tired.
07:41Not sleep tired.
07:44Existentially tired.
07:46You have been in school for 16 consecutive years.
07:49Kindergarten through 12th grade and then four years of this.
07:53You are so close to the end that you can feel it and it terrifies you more than it excites
07:59you.
07:59You're applying to jobs or graduate programs or both.
08:03Your inbox is a graveyard of rejection emails.
08:07Thank you for your interest.
08:08We have decided to move forward with other candidates.
08:11Each one stings less than the last.
08:14You go to interviews in clothes you bought specifically for interviews.
08:18You answer questions about your strengths and weaknesses and where you see yourself in five years.
08:24You don't know where you see yourself in five months.
08:27You sit in waiting rooms with other candidates who look more prepared than you.
08:31They probably aren't.
08:33You all just look nervous in different ways.
08:36You start wondering if your major was a mistake.
08:39You start wondering if all of this was a mistake.
08:42Then a company calls back and offers you a job that has nothing to do with your degree but pays
08:48enough to cover rent.
08:49You take it.
08:51Everyone takes it.
08:53You finish your capstone project.
08:55A thesis.
08:56A portfolio.
08:57A final presentation that is supposed to represent everything you've learned.
09:02You stand in front of a room and talk for 20 minutes and answer questions.
09:06When it's over, your professor shakes your hand.
09:10That handshake means more than you expected it to.
09:13You walk out of the building and the campus looks different.
09:16The trees are the same.
09:18The buildings are the same.
09:19But you're not.
09:21Four years have passed and you barely noticed.
09:25Graduation day arrives.
09:27You wear a cap and gown that you rented for $60.
09:30You sit in a stadium with a thousand other seniors and listen to a speaker tell you to chase your
09:36dreams.
09:36The speech is forgettable.
09:38The moment isn't.
09:40Your family is in the stands.
09:42Your mother is crying again.
09:45Your name is called.
09:46You walk across the stage.
09:48Someone hands you a leather folder.
09:51The diploma isn't inside.
09:53They mail it later.
09:54But you hold the folder like it means something.
09:57Because it does.
09:59You take photos.
10:00You hug people you might not see again.
10:03You promise to stay in touch.
10:05And you mean it.
10:06You won't keep most of those promises.
10:09You are done.
10:10You are just starting.
10:12The two feelings are identical.
10:16Level 5.
10:17The graduate student.
10:18You came back.
10:20Not everyone does.
10:21But the job market was thin and your professor said you had potential.
10:25The program offered a stipend that was barely enough to live on.
10:28So here you are.
10:30Back on campus.
10:31But everything is different now.
10:33You're not a student the way you were before.
10:35You're a researcher.
10:37You have a desk and a lab or an office that you share with three other grad students.
10:42The desk has a computer and a stack of papers and a coffee mug that hasn't been washed in a
10:46week.
10:47You spend 10 hours a day reading articles that are 30 pages long and written in language designed to keep
10:53outsiders out.
10:54You highlight sentences.
10:56You take notes.
10:57You read the same paragraph four times and still aren't sure what it means.
11:01You start writing your own papers in that same dense language because that's what the field expects.
11:07Your advisor is the most important person in your life now.
11:10More important than your friends.
11:12More important than your family in some ways.
11:15Your advisor decides your research direction.
11:18Your advisor decides when you defend.
11:20Your advisor decides if your work is good enough.
11:22Your advisor writes the letters of recommendation that determine your career.
11:27If your advisor likes you, doors open.
11:30If your advisor doesn't, you're on your own.
11:34The relationship is part mentor, part boss, part gatekeeper.
11:38You've seen it happen to other students.
11:40They switch advisors or switch programs or leave entirely.
11:44The attrition rate in graduate school is something nobody tells you about during orientation.
11:49Half the people who start with you won't finish.
11:52You try not to think about whether you'll be one of them.
11:56You teach for the first time.
11:57A section of Introduction to Psychology or English Composition.
12:02The same classes you took as a freshman.
12:04Now you're standing at the front.
12:07Twenty faces staring at you.
12:09You are 24 years old and you don't feel old enough to be teaching anyone anything.
12:15You learn quickly that teaching is performance.
12:18You prepare for hours and deliver it in 50 minutes.
12:21Then you go home and grade papers until midnight.
12:24A student emails you to argue about a grade.
12:27Another student emails to say they can't make it to class for the third week in a row.
12:31You respond to both with more patience than you feel.
12:35They pay you $20,000 a year for this.
12:38You do the math on your hourly rate once and then never do it again.
12:42Your friends from college are making three times your salary at jobs with health insurance and weekends off.
12:48You try not to think about that.
12:50You tell yourself this is an investment.
12:53Some nights that feels true.
12:55Some nights it doesn't.
12:57Level 6.
12:59The adjunct professor.
13:00You finished your degree.
13:02Congratulations.
13:03You have a PhD.
13:05Six years of your life.
13:06You also have $40,000 in debt and no full-time job.
13:11The tenure-track positions you dreamed about don't exist anymore.
13:14Or they exist, but there are 300 applicants for every opening.
13:18You applied to 47 positions last year.
13:22You got two interviews.
13:23You got zero offers.
13:25You are overqualified for everything and underqualified for the one thing you want.
13:30So you adjunct.
13:32You teach three classes at two different universities.
13:35You drive between campuses with a bag full of student papers on the passenger seat.
13:39You eat lunch in your car in a parking lot between classes.
13:43You don't have an office.
13:44You hold office hours at a coffee shop.
13:47You grade at your kitchen table.
13:49You are paid per course.
13:51$3,000 per class.
13:54Maybe $4,000 if the school is generous.
13:57You teach the same load as a full-time professor and make a third of the salary with none of
14:02the benefits.
14:03No health insurance.
14:04No retirement.
14:06No job security.
14:07Your contract renews semester to semester.
14:10You find out if you have a job in August.
14:13Some semesters they cut a section and you lose a third of your income with two weeks' notice.
14:18You love the teaching.
14:20That's the cruel part.
14:21You love standing in front of a room and watching someone understand something for the first time.
14:26You love the conversations after class when a student stays behind and asks a question that shows they're actually thinking.
14:33You love seeing a student's writing improve over a semester.
14:38You love the emails from former students who tell you that your class changed something for them.
14:43The teaching is why you're here.
14:45The teaching is not enough to pay rent.
14:48Your students have no idea how much you make.
14:51If they knew, most of them would be horrified.
14:54You apply for full-time positions every fall.
14:57The cycle repeats.
14:59Applications.
15:00Rejections.
15:01Interviews that go well, but not well enough.
15:04You tell yourself next year will be different.
15:07You have been telling yourself that for three years.
15:10Some of your friends from graduate school have left academia entirely.
15:14They work in consulting or tech or government.
15:18They seem relieved.
15:19You start to wonder if the system is broken or if you are.
15:24Level 7.
15:25The assistant professor.
15:27Someone said yes.
15:28After years of applications and rejection and doubt that felt permanent,
15:33a university offered you a tenure-track position.
15:35You cried in your car in the parking lot of the grocery store when you got the call.
15:39You will never tell anyone that.
15:42You move to a city you've never been to for a job that will define the next seven years of
15:47your life.
15:47You don't know anyone.
15:49You rent an apartment sight unseen.
15:51You start over at 32 in a place where you have no friends and no history.
15:56The department welcomes you with a lunch.
15:58Everyone is polite.
15:59Everyone is busy.
16:01You learn quickly that academia is a lonely profession disguised as a social one.
16:06You are on the tenure clock now.
16:08Seven years to prove you belong.
16:10You must publish.
16:12You must teach.
16:13You must serve on committees.
16:15Publish or perish is not a joke.
16:17It is the most accurate description of your professional reality.
16:21You need articles in peer-reviewed journals.
16:23You need a book if you're in the humanities.
16:26You need grants if you're in the sciences.
16:28The grants are competitive.
16:30The rejection rate is 85%.
16:33You write proposals for months and most of them go nowhere.
16:37You rewrite them and submit them again.
16:39You learn that academic success is about persistence and the ability to absorb rejection without stopping.
16:46You teach two or three courses a semester.
16:48You advise students.
16:50You sit on thesis committees.
16:51You attend faculty meetings that last two hours and accomplish nothing.
16:55You serve on the hiring committee and the curriculum committee and the assessment committee.
17:00You review papers for journals.
17:02You present at conferences in cities you see only from the inside of a hotel and a convention center.
17:07You network with people who might review your tenure file someday.
17:11Every conversation is partially strategic.
17:14You hate that about yourself.
17:17You miss the version of you that got into this because you loved ideas.
17:21That version feels far away now.
17:24Your tenure file is a document that will contain every publication, every teaching evaluation, every committee assignment.
17:31Outside reviewers will judge whether your research matters.
17:34You build that file one line at a time over seven years.
17:39Every semester you wonder if it's enough.
17:41Your spouse wonders when you'll be home for dinner.
17:44Your friends wonder why you never call.
17:47You won't know if it was worth it until the committee votes.
17:50Level 8.
17:51The tenured professor.
17:53They voted yes.
17:54You have tenure.
17:56The most coveted word in higher education.
17:58It means they can't fire you.
18:00Not easily.
18:02Not without cause.
18:03It means job security that almost no other profession on earth provides.
18:07It means you can research what you want.
18:09It means you can say what you think.
18:11It means you can stop performing.
18:13You exhale for the first time in seven years.
18:16The relief is physical.
18:18You feel it in your shoulders.
18:20You feel it in your sleep.
18:21You've been at this university for 12 years now.
18:24You are a full professor.
18:25You teach upper-level courses and graduate seminars.
18:29Your classes are smaller.
18:31Your students are better.
18:32The conversations are deeper.
18:34You've published four books and dozens of articles.
18:37People cite your work.
18:38They disagree with it publicly at conferences.
18:41That means it matters.
18:43Your name means something in your field.
18:45Not fame.
18:46Academics don't get fame.
18:48But recognition.
18:49Respect from people whose work you've been reading for 20 years.
18:52You mentor junior faculty who remind you of yourself 15 years ago.
18:57Nervous.
18:58Ambitious.
18:59Terrified of the tenure clock.
19:01You tell them it gets better.
19:02You mean it.
19:03You also know it gets different in ways that nobody warns you about.
19:07The loneliness of expertise.
19:09The isolation of knowing more and more about less and less.
19:12The distance between you and the undergraduates who look at you like you've always been this old.
19:17You wonder sometimes when you stopped being the young professor.
19:20You don't remember the exact moment.
19:23It just happened.
19:24You serve on the tenure committee now.
19:26You vote on other people's careers.
19:28You read their files and judge their work.
19:30And make decisions that will change their lives.
19:33Some votes are easy.
19:35Some keep you up at night.
19:36You remember what it felt like to wait for that vote.
19:39You try to be fair.
19:40You hope you are.
19:42You also sit on the search committee that hires new faculty.
19:45You read 200 applications for a single position.
19:48Most of them are brilliant.
19:49Most of them will not get the job.
19:51The math is brutal.
19:53You know because you were once one of those 200 names.
19:57Level 9.
19:58The Dean.
19:59You stopped teaching.
20:00You didn't plan to.
20:02Nobody becomes a dean because they wanted to stop teaching.
20:04You became a dean because someone asked.
20:07And you said yes.
20:08Now you run an entire college within the university.
20:11Arts and sciences.
20:13Engineering.
20:14Business.
20:15Whatever the college, it's yours.
20:17You manage budgets in the tens of millions.
20:20You hire department chairs.
20:21You mediate disputes between faculty members who haven't spoken in years over disagreements
20:26about curriculum.
20:27You meet with donors who want buildings named after them.
20:30You meet with parents who are angry about something their child told them.
20:34You meet with students who are struggling and need exceptions to policies you didn't write
20:38but have to enforce.
20:40You meet with the provost every week to discuss enrollment numbers that determine everything.
20:45Enrollment is down in the humanities.
20:46Enrollment is up in computer science.
20:49The numbers tell a story about what society values.
20:52You don't always like the story.
20:54You make decisions that affect thousands of students and hundreds of faculty.
20:58You cut programs that aren't enrolling enough students.
21:01You sit in a room and look at a spreadsheet and decide that a department with three professors
21:06and 12 majors can't justify its budget anymore.
21:09You watch professors who dedicated their lives to a department pack up their offices because
21:14the numbers didn't work.
21:16Some of them have been here longer than you.
21:18Some of them taught you when you were a student.
21:21You approve new programs that might succeed or might fail.
21:25Either way, you're responsible.
21:28You sign off on budgets knowing that every dollar you spend on one thing is a dollar you
21:32can't spend on something else.
21:34Those trade-offs follow you home.
21:37The politics are constant.
21:39Faculty want more funding.
21:41Students want more services.
21:43The board wants lower costs.
21:45Alumni want tradition.
21:47The state legislature wants accountability.
21:49The federal government wants compliance.
21:52Everyone wants something, and the budget can't give everyone what they want.
21:57You say no more than you say yes.
21:59You become an expert at saying no in ways that sound like maybe.
22:04You develop a vocabulary of strategic vagueness that would have embarrassed you 10 years ago.
22:09You miss the classroom.
22:11You miss it more than you expected.
22:14You work 60 hours a week.
22:15You attend galas and fundraisers and ribbon cuttings.
22:19You give speeches about the transformative power of education, and you believe every word.
22:24You also know that the institution is a machine.
22:28A beautiful, complicated machine.
22:30It runs on money and reputation, and the labor of people who love their work too much to demand
22:36what it's worth.
22:38Level 10, the university president.
22:41You are the face of the institution.
22:44Your name is on the letterhead.
22:46Your photograph hangs at the administration building.
22:48Your salary is public record, and people have opinions about it.
22:52You manage a budget that can exceed a billion dollars.
22:55You oversee tens of thousands of students and thousands of faculty and staff.
23:00You are responsible for the academic mission, and the athletic program, and the research
23:05enterprise, and the fundraising operation.
23:08You report to a board of trustees who are mostly wealthy alumni, with strong opinions about
23:13how a university should run.
23:14They want the football team to win.
23:17They want the rankings to go up.
23:19They want costs to go down.
23:22They want all of this simultaneously.
23:24You are a CEO who is also a diplomat, who is also a politician.
23:29You are all of these things, and none of them fully.
23:33You meet with governors.
23:34You testify before state legislatures.
23:37You negotiate with unions.
23:39You call donors, whose single gift can fund an entire building.
23:43You sit across from a billionaire at dinner and make the case for why their money should
23:48come here.
23:49You have become very good at asking for money.
23:52You never imagined that would be your primary skill.
23:56You manage crises.
23:58A scandal in the athletic department.
24:00A professor who said something on social media that went viral.
24:03A student death that shakes the campus to its core.
24:07A protest that shuts down a building.
24:09A pandemic that closes everything.
24:12A lawsuit that could cost the university millions.
24:16Each crisis lands on your desk.
24:19Each one demands a statement, a plan, a decision that will be judged by people who weren't in
24:24the room when you made it.
24:25You have six hours to get it right.
24:28Sometimes less.
24:30You know you won't please everyone.
24:32You try to please the people who matter and hope history agrees with your definition of
24:37who mattered.
24:38You raise money.
24:40This is your real job.
24:41Not the speeches about education.
24:44Not the meetings about curriculum.
24:46Money.
24:47The endowment.
24:48The capital campaign.
24:50The naming rights.
24:51You spend half your time traveling to cities where alumni live and asking them to write
24:56checks.
24:57Some of them do.
24:59Some of them want something in return.
25:01A building.
25:02A program.
25:03An admissions favor for a grandchild.
25:05You navigate all of it carefully.
25:08The line between gratitude and corruption is thinner than anyone on the outside realizes.
25:14Your legacy will be measured in buildings and endowment growth and ranking positions.
25:19Not in the students whose lives were changed.
25:22Not in the research that shifted how we understand the world.
25:25Those things matter more, but they don't fit on a plaque.
25:29You know this.
25:30It bothers you some nights.
25:32It doesn't change anything.
25:35You have given your life to this institution.
25:38You missed your children's games and recitals.
25:41You were always at a fundraiser or a board meeting or on a plane.
25:45Your spouse learned to attend things alone.
25:48You told yourself it was temporary.
25:50It was never temporary.
25:52You retire after a decade.
25:55They name something after you.
25:57A library.
25:58A plaza.
25:59A scholarship fund.
26:01You attend the ceremony and shake hands and give a speech about the future.
26:05Then you go home.
26:07The next president is already being selected.
26:10The search committee is meeting in a conference room you used to own.
26:14They'll pick someone new.
26:16Someone with new ideas and new energy.
26:19And no idea how heavy the chair actually is.
26:23The institution will continue because it was never really about you.
26:27It was always about the students.
26:30Somewhere right now, an 18-year-old is stepping out of a car packed too tight in a parking lot
26:36outside a dormitory.
26:37Their parents are helping them carry boxes up the stairs.
26:40Their mother is crying.
26:42Their father is pretending his back doesn't hurt.
26:45The hallway smells like industrial cleaner and someone else's air freshener.
26:50They don't know anyone.
26:52They don't know what the next four years will cost them or teach them or turn them into.
26:58They don't know about the late nights and the rejection emails and the papers written at 2 a.m.
27:04They don't know about the friendships that will shape their lives or the loneliness that nobody warned them about.
27:10They'll figure it out.
27:12They always do.
27:13The cycle continues.
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