I’ve recently been offered a leadership position. It comes with some (rather small) salary benefits, but it’s a position with specific deadlines, plenty of busy work, and a lot of cat herding.

Objectively, I know I shouldn’t take it. The position doesn’t require a PhD, just someone with decent organizational skills, but the same can be said for most institutional service and leadership positions, and much of undergraduate teaching.

Pro: I would probably do a good job at it, likely significantly better than my predecessor, which is why I was tapped for it

Con: I am afraid it will obliterate my research program. Not that I am not already suffering from mid-career malaise, including boredom over revising the umpteenth manuscript or writing yet another grant. I’m cheering myself up with my creative extracurriculars. But if I end up having to do more busy work, I am afraid I will end up even more disengaged from my technical work, and I’ve got grants to write and students to feed. (If I were someone who no longer wrote grants or advised students, the position might be a godsend as it’s undoubtedly important for the functioning of the department; however, that’s not where I am right now.)

Pro: Whoever else ends up doing the job might do a crappier job and that might be a disaster for a lot of people

Con: I would end up no longer engaged in some service tasks, which, while being labor-intensive, do require technical expertise and accumulated institutional knowledge I now possess, and I happen to find them important and meaningful

Pro: It’s a challenge, and I love a challenge. I (unhealthily) crave overwork (those yummy elevated levels of adrenaline and cortisol), then obviously bitch and moan about being overworked. That last sentence is probably more of a con

Con: It will reduce my available time for my beloved extracurriculars, and will hinder my multiyear plan to achieve world domination (i.e., serious fiction sales)

What do you say, blogosphere? How have you wrestled with possible or actual service or leadership obligations? Have they been worth it (the time, the money)? Have you regretted them? Any words of wisdom? 

Happy Independence Day to US readers!