Kathleen McEvoy describes her experience after achieving tenure at Washington & Jefferson College (Pennsylvania). She reflects on how she could have better prepared for her post-tenure academic existence and how the teaching profession could do a better job managing the earning of tenure. In retrospect she realizes that she may have been able to avoid experiencing post-tenure malaise--a quite common syndrome--had she taken more time with her career panning and had been more critical of her choices as she made them. She advises that tenure plans should fit into a professor's overall career plans. Those who are working to achieve tenure should think about all three major aspects of academic life--teaching, scholarship, and service--and plan for each, as parts and together. On the side of the profession, standards should be clear, logical, and entirely transparent. Tenure candidates should know from the time they arrive on campus what is expected of them concerning their tenure case. By their third or fourth year, they should be told, honestly, whether their application is moving along smoothly or whether there are problems.