But really, unless you are one of those high-impact people, you aren't getting tenure. This really depends on where you are looking for tenure. If you're at, s

But really, unless you are one of those high-impact people, you aren't getting tenure. This really depends on where you are looking for tenure. If you're at, say, a top-30 research-focused institution, then yes, that's what they angle for: big grants and "high-impact research". But if you enjoy and/or are good at teaching (obviously not all researchers do or are), there are a lot of places where getting tenure is more a matter of doing some interesting research, combined with teaching at least fairly well, and being perceived as an asset to your department/university's community (ideally excelling in one of those three areas, but not necessarily all three). To pick some examples: tenure at, say, UT-Dallas, Cal Poly, or Occidental College is totally different from tenure at Stanford, UIUC, or MIT.