Dispatches from the First Year

The thought occurred to me when I got the key to my office. When I opened my first direct-deposit notice. When I entered my final grades. When I shook students’ hands at graduation. At those moments and at many others in my first year in a tenure-track job, I kept thinking, “This is nothing like graduate school.”

At times, I wanted to weep with joy over the contrast.

I often say -- not entirely hyperbolically -- that graduate school was the worst experience of my life. It was very long, and the day-to-day satisfactions were few. It was ego-eroding, as everyone around me seemed to be smarter, to have read more, and to be writing a better dissertation more efficiently. It was also expensive, because my studies were not funded every year.

The sporadic misery born of my love/hate relationship with my dissertation seems distant now. Sure, parts of my job are disheartening -- dealing with student plagiarism springs immediately to mind -- but much more often than not, I walk home from work happy.

The three biggest contrasts I found between graduate school and the tenure track were in the areas of teaching, research, and collegiality. (That’s 90 percent of what academics do, so yes, the contrasts were everywhere.) With my now-extensive experience in the lofty perch of the assistant professoriate, I hope that a review of those three areas can give late-stage graduate students gearing up for the job search an idea of what might await them in another year.

Teaching. It took time to get used to the fact that my classes were entirely mine. Now that I was not a teaching assistant anymore, I no longer had the safety net of the professor, but I also no longer had to adhere to someone else’s vision for the class. When I went to my department chairman with one of the innumerable issues related to teaching and class management that arose, he always offered advice, but he also always concluded by reminding me that my class was my own, that I could conduct it how I liked.

I probably still taught my classes very much as my faculty mentors did when I was their TA, but the graduate-student subservient mentality began to slip away. That translated into greater confidence and, I hope, better teaching.

I also encountered “cultural” differences in switching from teaching at a large flagship state university to a small private college with a regional reputation. For instance, religious studies was an elective at the university where I got my degree; any student in my classroom was there because he or she wanted to be there (in principle, at least).

That is not the case at the Roman Catholic college where I teach now. Every student has to take theology. Simply because my class is required, the students resent having to take it. They would probably resent a course in comparative video-gaming if it became part of the core curriculum. Students also seem to expect that my class should be easy, because, after all, “it’s only a core class.”

The fact that few of my students would study my subject if they didn’t have to makes the moments when they are surprised by how interesting the field can be that much sweeter. When a student told me, “I’m going to keep the books from this class,” I knew I had struck a chord with him that he didn’t even know he could sound.

Research. Graduate students in the humanities -- where your research tends to be your own more than in other fields -- have tremendous freedom and limitless time to work on their dissertations.

The constraints on faculty members’ time, at any type of institution, are much greater. At colleges like mine, where teaching is unmistakably the first priority, faculty members are not expected to put much time into research that does not directly relate to teaching.

Before I started the job, people at my graduate institution told me that I wouldn’t have time in my first year in a job with a four-four teaching load to read a book, much less write one. After I arrived at my new campus, someone in my faculty orientation said that new hires shouldn’t even think about research for a year or two. Getting acclimated to the job and figuring out how to teach, I was told, would take up all of my time.

Well, I did think about research, and I am glad I did. I like research and writing, so I made time for it -- even 15 minutes on an otherwise busy day of teaching, grading, and preparing for class maintained my research momentum.

I even found myself with pockets of time to read for pleasure, something that, paradoxically, I felt I never had in graduate school, despite having far fewer demands on my time then.

Part of what made a difference in my research this past year was having many small things to do -- a book review, a short conference paper -- rather than having only one huge thing to do, as I had when I was writing my dissertation. For the first time I began to see research as an enjoyable indulgence, rather than as a long, wearying slog toward a credential that offers few concrete guarantees.

Collegiality. The most consistently rewarding part of graduate school was the friendship of other students. I learned at least as much in the hours after my classes let out as I did in the seminars themselves, as I met informally with fellow students to discuss the issues raised in our classes. (That aspect of graduate school means it can be a good idea to find a program in a region blessed with spectacular spring and fall weather and plenty of outdoor seating at its coffee shops.)

I assumed I would have many similar unhurried conversations when I became a professor. More than a year ago, before I was offered a job, I wrote in these pages in defense of academic leisure, arguing that professors contribute to the culture as much through our scholarly inactivity as through our activity.

I wrote that I hoped I would be the kind of professor who teaches and learns from his colleagues. I imagined myself sitting in a chair in a colleague’s office, chatting about books and ideas for hours, until either the coffee went cold or I glanced at my watch, exclaimed, “Holy cow, I have to go teach!” and dashed out, asking if we could pick up where we left off in a day or two.

I didn’t end up doing that. I ate lunch alone at my desk most of the time, sometimes catching up on work, but probably more often mindlessly scanning my favorite Web sites. There are plenty of people at the college whose company and conversation I would do well to share. Maybe I need to make a new-academic-year resolution to take more time to get to know them. After all, if I meant what I wrote last year, our culture hangs in the balance!

In the switch from graduate school to full-time teaching, we exchange time for autonomy. There is rarely an absolute deadline for the completion of a dissertation in the humanities; as long as you can tolerate your status as a graduate student, you can keep on revising and revising. Indeed, your dissertation adviser might direct you to do just that. Taking time isn’t necessarily a sign of sloth, either. Learning how to conduct research and write well are not easy.

As an assistant professor, I have found that I have greater autonomy and authority in teaching, but less time for research and leisurely conversation. The constraints on my time have made me value the time I spend on research all the more, however. I suppose I’ll have to take my leisure when I can get it.

I’m much happier professionally now than I ever was in graduate school. But before I start congratulating myself, I need to remember the close relationship between happiness and luck. Without a generous helping of dumb luck, I don’t think I would have gotten the job in the first place.