Looking Back at Year One

This fall marks the start of my second year on the tenure track.  This means that the newest element of my job is that I’m not “new” anymore – I have colleagues starting their first year, and I can answer at least some of the questions they are encountering for the first time.  I know what policies need to go on my syllabus.  I know where to find (most) things, and I’ve met the majority of our English majors.  I even have “repeat offenders,” students who have signed up for a second (or third! or fourth!) course with me.  In many ways, of course, I am still quite new – taking on new course preps and even some committee work while fiercely carving out time in the week to research and write.  As I prepare my materials for initial review, I’ve had space to be reflective about what went well last year, what I wish I’d realized, and what my still-limited experience has taught me already.

Many people with far more experience than me have offered excellent advice for new faculty members, but now that most of us are a month (or more!) into the semester, I thought I would share the best advice I was given in my own first year.  It’s deceptively simple, but perhaps especially important as the rush of mid-semester looms:

You don’t earn tenure in a year.

This is certainly obvious, but I think it bears repeating for many of us who have come off the current market.  Given the overabundance of pieces detailing the humanities in crisis and the dismal outcomes for humanities PhDs, as well as watching beloved friends and colleagues struggle through fear, anxiety, and depression on the market, I think those of us who find ourselves in that shiny new Assistant Professor position are sometimes not quite sure how it happened. When I got my position, I certainly felt relief and joy, but a tiny piece of me was also certain some mistake had been made – I got that elusive tenure-track position?  At an institution I really like?  With supportive colleagues in my department and across the college?  I have to assume I wasn’t – and am not – the only new faculty member to arrive on campus not entirely sure it isn’t all a wild dream of some kind, amazed that it was my name on the office door, on the faculty ID, on the campus parking pass.  I think it’s tempting to feel that you have to continue to prove you deserve the job, even once it’s yours.

But while the tenure clock often feels short, it’s a longer game than it first seems.  So here’s what “you don’t earn tenure in a year” means:

• No one expects you to have your book in hand, hot off the press by January.  (Unless, of course, it was already at the press before you arrived.  On the other hand, if you successfully get your book in hand by the end of your first semester, PLEASE e-mail me and tell me how you have done this.)
• No one expects you to know everything.  Your colleagues are aware that you are adjusting to a new institutional context, new students, and a new home.  All of them did it, too.
•  No one expects you will adjust magically without any hiccups or questions.  Some of them will be small, such as how to fix the copier. Some might be bigger, and that’s okay, too.

The first year – my first year – was exciting, wonderful, exhausting, and overwhelming in turns.  It was usually more than one of those things at once.  You should, as much as you’re able to, enjoy it.  Enjoy meeting your new students, especially majors.  Enjoy the moment when you don’t have to look at the MLA job list the instant it drops.  Perhaps more importantly, be a listening ear and a supportive reader for those who do.  

• Be strategic.  You’re probably eager to get engaged, and that’s wonderful.  But you can’t do everything – which I have discovered from trying!  Consider how the new commitments you’re taking on fit with your long-term plans.  Run new opportunities by senior colleagues who can help you think through what will move you forward and what will devour your time.
• Do things on campus.  Go to events, socials, campus theater productions, whatever.  This is the best way to learn the culture, and it can also give you a broad sense of what kinds of cool things are happening on campus.
•   Meet people.  You need mentors, co-conspirators in your own cohort, and friends.  Your department might assign you a mentor – mine did, and she is marvelous – but find others, as well, including people who aren’t in your home department.  If you can work with your office door open, keep your office door open.  Befriend the department admin.  (Mine likes cookies.)  See if there’s support for research on campus, such as faculty writing groups.  If not, try starting one.
• Do things off campus.  Sign up for Groupon-like services in your new neighborhood as a way to find restaurants and things to do.  Find your new doctor, gym, salon, and the like.  If things go as you hope, you're going to be living here for a while.

The Book Proposal: A (Brief) List of Resources

One of my goals for this week is to complete a draft (however rough) of my book proposal. Up until a few days ago, I'd done more reading up on the process than writing, and I sought out a wide array of advice to help me get a sense of how to tackle this particular project. As is the case with so many things at this stage of my career, this style of writing is entirely new to me. I have, however, found the writing to be at least a little easier than the cover letter for the job market, my feelings for which were  captured in a Facebook update from this past Fall:









The book proposal is a strange beast for a lot of reasons, but I've found the writing to be incredibly helpful. Among other things, it's forcing me to find succinct ways to describe my book and why it matters, painful as that process might be.

I'll be writing a lot more about this entire dissertation-to-book process in the months (and, most likely, years) to come, and I hope to have actual advice to impart once I get further into it. For right now though, I thought I'd share a list of the readings I've found to be the most helpful and/or eye-opening:

1. "How to write a book proposal for an academic press." From Get a Life, Ph.D., a blog authored by Tanya Maria Golash-Boza.

[I've referred back to this post more than any other source so far. Her advice is rooted in extensive experience, and I appreciate her candor and her collegial approach. She speaks to you as a fellow professional, and the impeccably organized path that she lays out here has been incredibly helpful to me in the drafting process. Her advice to write the chapter descriptions first is a fantastic one, by the way: I tried it out and it definitely helped to jumpstart my writing.]

2. "How to Write a Book Proposal." From The Professor Is In, a blog authored by Dr. Karen Kelsky. 

[Dr. Karen's advice here, as elsewhere, is incredibly helpful and thorough. Just be prepared for her characteristic bluntness! She goes into considerable detail in this post, but I was very struck by her emphasis on confidence — essentially, that the proposal can't afford to betray any lingering insecurity. I'll be returning to the final two paragraphs multiple times in the next several days to remind myself of that!]  

3. "The Reality of Writing a Good Book Proposal," From The Chronicle of Higher Education, authored by Rachel Toor. 

[This post was written from the editor's perspective rather than the author's, and it's a fantastic read for that reason. It confirms what posts 1 and 2 have to say, but also offers up some unique advice as well. For instance, I found the suggestion to fill out the author questionnaire before writing the bulk of the proposal to be incredibly helpful (here's one of many good templates). It's made certain sections of the proposal far less daunting.]

4. "From Dissertation to Book." From The Chronicle of Higher Education, authored by Leonard Cassuto.

[Lots of good advice in here as well, but the main thing that makes this post stand out from the others is the advice to avoid publishing too much of your dissertation in journals if you want to publish an overhauled version as a book.]

5. The Thesis and the Book. Edited by Eleanor Harman, et al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

[If you're looking for lists of things to avoid when trying to prepare your dissertation for book publication, then this book will be helpful. Moreover, the "author's checklist" in Chapter 6 is also a great thing that I'll likely return to as I move forward. That said, I couldn't believe the smugness and condescension that occasionally oozed from the pages. There are some fantastic and collegial chapters in here (Chapters 4 and 5 stood out to me in that regard), but the second and third nearly turned me off of the book altogether. Chapter 2 was entitled "The Dissertation's Deadly Sins," for instance. It begins by stating: "The dissertation system must have laid at its door an enormous squandering of creativity, youth, time, and money each year upon the execution of prose works that do not communicate significantly and are therefore dysfunctional." (Are you not INSPIRED?) And it then goes on to assault your eyes with phrases like "A second characteristic of the system makes the situation of doctoral candidates even more hopeless,"  "the dissertation's amateurishness further reveals itself in pedantry and cowardice," and "editors are accustomed to the juvenescent tantrums of neurotics." I am FULLY aware that I am new to this process and that I have an enormous amount to learn (and an equally enormous amount of work to do) before I submit a text to an academic press. I do not, however, appreciate having that lack of experience rubbed in my face (by way of a thesaurus) over the course of twenty pages. I especially don't appreciate having someone who repeatedly uses patroningzly alliterative phrases ("the pusillanimous passive," anyone?) lecture me on the importance of clear and approachable language. The sad thing is that these chapters (two and three) DO contain excellent pointers, but they're almost entirely lost in the vitriol. 

With that said, the book as a whole is definitely worth a read because it contains a wealth of useful information — and, to be fair, some truly approachable and collegial chapters. Just try and resist the (not so occasional) urge to chuck the book across the room as you make your way towards those chapters.] 

Each of these five sources has proved helpful and enlightening, if at times a bit frustrating due to tone and approach. The tendency among some of these authors towards condescension continues to mystify me, and reminded me of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's past arguments against infantilizing graduate students and junior scholars. As he put it:

"The enduring ardor for hierarchy endemic to our profession puzzles me. Graduate students and faculty are colleagues engaged in a mutual enterprise. The commitment to study for an advanced humanities degree is a brave and perilous one, because the road is difficult and the destination extremely uncertain. Those who undertake such a commitment should be honored and cultivated for that choice, not made to feel like kids who need a strong dose of paternalism to keep them from overstepping."

In like fashion, I remain puzzled by the choice of some of these authors to infantilize their audience — especially since their work is (ostensibly) trying to encourage those very readers to act and write like professionals and not as students. Golash-Boza's perspective, after wading through The Thesis and the Book, was beyond a breath of fresh air as a result.

I'll be updating this list as I find more sources that prove helpful. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your recommendations and thoughts: what guidelines, books, articles, and/or blog posts have been helpful to you in this stage of the process?