This is what, as I enter my 8th year of graduate school (shame on me!), I wish I had heard (listened to?) when I started my climb up the Ivory Tower:
- Publish. No, really. Publish. Frequently. (Read: Even if it won't count towards your future pursuit of tenure, and totally tip your hand research-wise, do it anyway.)
- Finish as fast as you can. Is normative time 5 years? Then finish in five years. (Read: Don't linger. It makes you look lazy.)
- A solid dissertation is just as good as an ingenious one. (Read: there's time for you to be innovative later. Land the job first.)
- Read your student evaluations... very very carefully. (Read: otherwise you'll get stuck and be making the same mistakes over and over again. Then you'll make them in a job interview, and feel like a total ass when you realize that your fatal flaw is something you could have corrected 7 semesters ago.)
- Your students are not your friends. (Read: Which is why you shouldn't take them personally. If you do, you will inevitably look like an ass when you go for that job interview. See #4.)
- "Creativity" gets you relatively nowhere. (Read: play by the rules, and only every now and then reveal how brilliant you actually are... or rather, pretend to be.)
- Fake it 'til you make it. (Read: Look great for your classes--taught and taken--, meetings with faculty, your exams, everything up to your job interview; be on time, smell nice, and smile, dammit. Everyone knows you're surly and scared, no need to belabor the point.)
- Read extensively all the time even when you don't care or don't want to. (Read: you never know when you'll be asked to teach something you know nothing about. So keep up that subscription to Obscure Research Journal of Relatively Little Interest.)
- Subscribe to professional periodicals about the state of education (Read: Please follow instructions thoroughly before attempting to scale the Ivory Tower. It is an inhospitable peak on which many people find their demise ever so rapidly. Come prepared. Bring Merlot.)
- Don't show fear. Ever. (Read: Gotcha.)
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Comments
Taking student evaluations seriously is a very good point. So is reading extensively. But my opinion is that a general stance of defensiveness and wariness is exhausting and ultimately counter-productive.
@Brooklynite -- Indeed. That point was hammered home recently with my research debacle, in which a 2006 article I *should have known about* absolutely ruined a section of my dissertation. Read. A lot. And know the field. Very good point.
My point here isn't to be pessimistic about academics. Actually, it's the opposite. In fact, most of the satisfaction that people derive from academic work is "internal." It's working on materials you love, developing your own talents and abilities, helping students move forward, and things like that. Academic work is often intensely satisfying in these ways. I just love it. I have a kind of relentless enthusiasm for my job and am extremely happy I made the sacrifices I made to have an academic career.
But I don't think that academics isn't worth it if someone doesn't have those kinds of satisfactions and I just wanted to caution you about falling into the rut of sacrificing things that are extremely important.
My understanding is that tenure track jobs are very hard to get in English because of the intense competition in a heavily over-crowded field.
I know about the prima donnas-- there was one in our department that did some serious damage before s/he left for greener pastures-- and hopefully I won't end up being one of them.
And, thankfully, I'm not in English. I'm in another field that is suffering a bit less than English is, but suffering nonetheless. It's a rough year all around for everyone who is attempting this route which I regard as the road less traveled. Perhaps I should start posting about the bright spots I'm seeing, rather than projecting my fears onto cyberspace.
...If only I were seeing any bright spots. Even one would suffice.
Obviously, you have to do what you have to do to get a job and I wouldn't want you or anyone to undercut themselves. But deriving "a fine modicum of satisfaction" from your research and intellectual creativity is a great thing--really one of the high points of being human. I think it would be a huge bright spot in anyone's life and shouldn't be underestimated.
End of sermon. Maybe I've been living in the Bible Belt too long.