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| Tai Mendenhall 2014 |
My name is Tai Mendenhall; I am an associate professor here
at the University of Minnesota. I did my undergraduate here in Family Social Science,
then went away for my master-degree, and then came back for my Ph.D. I went away again for my clinical internship
in a residency/medical family therapy training site. I originally joined the
University of Minnesota as a faculty member in a research associate post in the
Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (in the Medical School);
that was in 2003. I later transitioned to an assistant professor in there, and
was then courted back to Family Social Science in 2012 (in the College of
Education and Human Development). In 2015, I was promoted to associate
professor.
Image References (in
order of appearance):
Kyle McEachran
"All I did was school"
When I first started undergrad I was kind of like a lot of
18 year olds with a Y-chromosome. I mean, I wasn’t ready for college, and I
didn’t do so well with my grades. I ended up dropping out for a couple
semesters to grow up, and when I came back I really did well in terms of my
motivation and direction. And while I didn’t know it yet, I went over to the
other extreme. All I did was school; I was a straight “A” student. I was
involved in research and I was doing x, y and z extra. I was a rising star; I was
going to get into graduate school and I was going to just be this amazing
person.
Alright, that was the plan, and it was working. I remember
as an undergrad I even got published as a first author in a refereed journal,
and I was speaking at different conferences. I was doing all this great stuff,
but I was completely neglecting myself. I wasn’t eating because that was too
inconvenient, and I wasn’t sleeping because that took time away from work. I
wasn’t socializing. All I did was school, and what was happening was that I was
basically malnourishing and sleep depriving my body. My potassium levels were
dropping and I didn’t know it. They kept dropping and one day I literally just
fell over. It was almost a heart attack, but not quite, because my blood
pressure dropped so low. I was standing over concrete at the time, and
sustained a five inch occipital fracture on the back of my skull. I basically broke
my head in half. For months, I struggled with memory problems, concentration
problems, and I couldn’t engage or stay with anything “new” or academic. Not like I’m this good, but I kind of felt
like an Olympic athlete who was now in a wheelchair – because now: hell if I
was going to go to graduate school!
Slowly my brain just kind of put itself back together. I
mean, I missed-out on like a year of my life, but I was able to finish school
and go to graduate school. But that really shook me, because I’m like, “Oh my
God, I can’t work like that." So all through my master’s program I
actually did very well with self-care. I mean every single weekend I was
socializing with friends, I exercised, and I saw my own therapist (because in
therapy school they encourage that). I actually think I did it very well.
But when I started my Ph.D. program – and Ph.D. programs are
harder, like a lot harder than master’s programs – I slowly got back into the
workaholism that I had during undergrad. But what really tore me apart then,
from my perspective, and I want be fair to everybody involved (I mean I’m only
one perspective)... But from my perspective, out of nowhere, my wife left me. I
mean, we were even on the phone earlier that day about plans for that night. And I came home and she and her dad were
there with divorce papers. And I
literally never saw her again after that night. That destroyed me. And it took
me a couple of years, I think, to hold myself accountable for that. I don’t think that any break-up is a one way
street; I think most in break-ups, both people are responsible for different
goods or the bads that happen. But I took responsibility, in that I think I was
neglecting her because I was more “married” to my school. I think that she was in the right to leave
me. I think she deserved better than that; I think anybody deserved better than
that.
Moving forward, I knew that when you finish your Ph.D., you
have no idea where you’re going to work. I made a decision in that chapter of my life
to not get into any serious relationships again until I was done with graduate
school because, first of all, it wasn’t fair to my own heart because it took me
a long time to get over my wife leaving me (because I adored her). With all of
my heart, I adored her. That was a horrible loss. But I also knew that it
wasn’t fair to my heart – or somebody else’s heart – to be in a new
relationship and say, “Hey, the best job for me now is in Timbuktu!”
"God was up there, lining up the stars"
The year that I graduated, I applied to different faculty
posts all over the country and the best one was back here at Minnesota.
Frankly, I didn’t want to move back to Minnesota. I went to North Carolina for
my internship, and I had I sold my Minnesota house. I good-willed all of my
winter clothes, and I talked a lot of smack about never doing another Minnesota
winter again. I had absolutely no intention to move back, because I had been
told that it was really unlikely that I would be hired by the same University I
earned my degree(s) from. I’m sure that God was up there lining up the stars,
listening to me talk smack about not going back to Minnesota, when I was offered
the best job. And so, Minnesota: that’s where I came. But it was before the
housing bubble broke; when I returned I couldn’t even afford my own (old) house
anymore; everything was still going up. I had to buy a whole 'nother wardrobe
of winter clothes. I came here because that’s where the best job was (is), and
that’s what you do when you have a Ph.D. and want to work in academia.
I was hired and then transitioned to what's called a “tenure-track”
position. That means that you're under a microscope for the next, usually, six
years. At the Medical School it’s nine. And every year they’re going to
evaluate you and decide whether to keep you. A lot of people don't understand
this, because they think that once you have a Ph.D., it’s like “Oh my god, you
must make a lot of money and have a lot of job security!” – but we’re actually scared
as hell. For the next six years, at least, administration decides whether or
not they’re going to keep you based on how grant dollars you're bringing in,
how many research papers your publishing, etc. Maybe you have the term “publish
or perish” … the will let you go if you're not publishing enough and/or if
you're not producing the research (that informs what you publish). At a Research-1
school like the University of Minnesota, teaching is important – but it’s a lot
less important. So they'll look at your teaching evaluations, and as long as
nobody's screaming from the rooftops that you're horrible, you're probably
okay. It's primarily about the research, so for the next six years you hope
that you're well enough, you know?
I think that the pre-tenure years for me were
extraordinarily intense. I mean, at the Medical School the reason it's a nine-year
program is because you’re so involved clinically. So, I was balancing a pretty
much half-time clinical post at the same time I was aiming to get grants out
the door. They say, whoever “they” is, that if you’re publishing three papers a
year, and you get one grant out the door per year, that that’s “good enough.”
That is NOT good enough. Because, if that is what you do, you’re going to sit
down at your annual review and you’re going to be told you’re not succeeding
yet. I don’t think I’ve ever only published three things in one year. One grant
per a year is not-enough. But, early on you are a brand-new person, fresh out
of the gate. Nobody knows your name yet. You don’t have a whole lot of
credibility or credentials yet, so it's really hard to get your foot in the
door – especially with preferred funders (like the NIH). You’re counting every dollar and every
publication – everything – because you want to get that good review at the end
of each year. But along the way you can never feel settled, and I think that’s
probably the biggest part of it psychologically.
At the University of Minnesota, I served on the IRB for a
number of years. Probably one of the more visible ways that I’ve been connected
to the University, though, is through the Office of Emergency Response and the Medical
Reserve Corps. Because my one of my clinical specialties is in trauma and
trauma response teams, I direct the mental health teams on our MRC. We respond
to large-scale and small-scale events. Now that we’re partnered with the Minnesota
Department of Health and the School of Public Health, we’ve invented self-care
apps for the cellphone. I’m also involved in a student organization called “To
Write Love on Her Arms.” It’s an undergrad organization, and I’ve been a
faculty advocate for it. I helped them to get it off the ground. I’m also currently on a search committee for
a new faculty member in another department.
 |
| Tai and Ling (wife) on motorcycle trip. |
A good question often comes up about University faculty, and
that is: “Why the hell did you do it?” I
mean, the average workweek for a university professor in a R1 school fifty to sixty-five
hours a week! Why do faculty put themselves through that? They’re on salary,
they’re not paid by the hour… it doesn’t make sense.
Even though, as a faculty member, you have to work a lot,
you run your own show. The University doesn’t give a damn if I’m here at three o’clock
in the morning or three o’clock in the afternoon. I’m not punching a time clock. I’m not doing anything outside of what I set
up for myself, and at the end of the year they’re going to look at how many
grant dollars I have brought in and how many papers I’ve published. That’s all.
And I can do that from home. I can do that
at night. I can do that on an airplane. I can do that on a beach with my laptop. And the fact that I have that kind of latitude
really makes sixty-five hours a week not really feel like that all that. If I’m
tired or stressed, I can get up and I leave! I go home. I’m not going to have my department head
chase me down going, “It’s not five o’clock yet!” And some days I do just go home. I have a little sailboat that I play with on
Lake Calhoun. I have my Harley, and my wife has her Harley, and sometimes we
just say, you know, “Let’s go play!” The
University doesn’t micro-manage me. What it cares about is: Am I producing
knowledge? Am I engaging students around that knowledge? I adore this work. I love my research. I love to write. I love my students, and it
is so inspiring for me to engage with them.
And I think that they teach me more than I ever teach them.
1. Mendenhall, Tai.
“Tai Mendenhall 2014” Personal Photo. 2014. JPG file. Provided: Oct. 7 2015
2. Mendenhall, Tai. “Tai and Ling (Wife) on motorcycle trip”
Personal Photo. Approx. 2013. JPG file. Provided: Oct. 7 2015
Story Contributors:
Amanda Richter
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