Time's up

In my email box today:

This is a friendly reminder that your tenure "folders" are due by 5:00 PM today.

My tenure clock has now timed out. I either get tenure and promotion or I get fired.

Looking at where I was hoping to be when I interviewed and where I am?

I was expecting that we would have a Ph.D. program by now. When I interviewed, several people said, "Ph.D. in biology in about five years." Here it is, five years later, and we're further from a Ph.D. than when I interviewed.

I really thought that I would have an external grant by now. I suppose I sort of do, since I'm co-PI on an equipment grant, but I thought I would have some sort of money of my own. Unfortunately, I have no promising leads in that department. No encouragement at all.

I thought I would have more research papers published. I've been publishing consistently, but a lot of that was getting stuff out where the data were actually collected during my highly productive last post-doc. I've published two papers based on stuff since moving to Texas (which is the minimum required), and only one of them has actual data. I do have two papers on editor's desks under review, however, and that makes me feel a little better, though not much. I had expected to have the final word on one of them by now; it would be nice to be slightly higher then the minimum. Apparently, I can update by folder before final review.

And I haven't worked on my book mauscript in months.