ADVICE TO YOUNG — AND NOT-SO-YOUNG PROFESSORS: When I was just starting out, an older colleague advised me to save everything — clippings of newspaper articles mentioning me, thank-you notes from undergraduate classes that I guest-lectured to, letters from people who liked my scholarship, etc. Thank goodness I did, because putting together your tenure “file” (usually several fat binders) is a lot easier when you have all that stuff in one place.

And then keep the file! I just needed a copy of something from 1989, and though I’m sure I have other copies somewhere, it was easy to just pull the tenure binder off the shelf and make a copy. No digging necessary.