I began this academic year just the way I began the previous one -- attending two days of information overload that wears the more benign title, "new faculty orientation."
Last year, I needed all the orientation I could get. I was beginning my first term as a full-time, albeit non-tenure-track faculty member, and while the orientation wasn't explicitly mandatory, I thought skipping it would have smacked of arrogance.
This year, although I'm no longer a rookie faculty member, I am a rookie on my new campus, having landed my first tenure-track job in biology. So I attended orientation again. Although the general theme remains the same from one campus to the next, the names, faces, and details are all different. Besides, I couldn't sign up for my benefits package until the end of the orientation.
I can't help but think that these sessions, much like freshman orientation, are at once necessary and ill-timed. They are necessary because new faculty members, like new students, need to know where to find the people who can solve problems. But, for all they are worth, the orientations are ill-timed because the information that gets piled on is just about the last thing on the mind of new professors.
For most of my colleagues, August is usually consumed by preparing syllabuses, writing (or rewriting) lectures, and scheduling laboratories. But that's just the start of it when you begin a new job. For the last two Augusts, I was also busy unpacking my notes, journals, papers, and books in a new office; attempting to learn the ins and outs of a new campus (both physically and bureaucratically); and committing to memory the names of new administrators, staff members, and colleagues, not to mention the students who will populate my courses until December. Another academic year, another academic institution.
That's only the beginning of the symmetry between my Augusts, this year and last. When I completed my doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology in May 2000, I passed on a research postdoctoral position in favor of a one-year appointment at a liberal-arts college. My plan was to increase my teaching experience in advance of entering the academic job market in earnest. I was one of five new faculty members in a department that numbered only 13. In a pleasant turn of events, my plan worked like a charm, and last winter I was offered a tenure-track position at exactly the type of institution I was aiming for -- a small private university emphasizing undergraduate liberal education.
This year I find myself one of six new faculty members, including two others on the tenure track, in a department of 14. Both this year and last I arrived just as a new chairman took the reins of the department. And this year, like the last, I am excited about the place I am working, the people I am working with, and the classes I am teaching (many of which are the same).
Contrary to what you might otherwise think, however, I haven't the faintest feeling of déjà vu. I have definitely been here before, but the feeling is completely different.
Last year, having landed a position just a few days after my dissertation defense, I was grateful to have a job -- any job -- in academe. I was no stranger to the fact that many well-qualified new Ph.D.'s spend several years looking for an adequate tenure-track position in their fields. So, upon being offered the one-year appointment, I was relieved to know that I would be able to support my family in my chosen vocation, at least for a year.
As relieved as I was, I knew that a guarantee of only one year's employment meant I could not afford to slacken in my weekly vigil of scouring the job ads. No sooner had my first "real" job begun than I was off looking for another one. The most active part of the job-search season coincided with the start of the term. I did my best to conserve my energies in the search, opting for a marksman's approach rather than a shotgun technique. I applied only for those that fit my talents and interests and also fell within my favored geographic regions.
Of the hundreds of ads, I sent out five applications. This was a practical approach because I simply didn't have the time to prepare scores of application packets while wrestling with a full-time teaching load for the first time. I was also judicious in unpacking my office belongings; journals and books made it out of boxes, research equipment and supplies did not. A few students approached me to work as their research adviser, and while the spirit was willing, I couldn't be sure that the flesh would be able. More to the point, I didn't know if the flesh would even be there. I ended up declining to direct student research because I didn't know if I would be present to see the projects to completion.
The uncertainty was really nothing new for me. I had been something of an itinerant teacher for most of the last decade, climbing the ladder in higher education, never staying in the same place too long.
A tenure-track position is not necessarily permanent, but implicit in the agreement between my new employer and me is the understanding that there is potential for a mutually satisfying long-term relationship. My job actually tastes of stability. Perhaps I am naïve -- after all, I did sign a contract for only two years, and my application for tenure and any real permanence is a good five years or more down the road. However, compared with my previous jobs, they might as well have added my name to the university seal.
The tenure-track job came with a nice start-up package for getting my lab equipped and my research program off the ground; the non-tenure track required no research activity, and accordingly, there was no monetary support for it. My new office came complete with a superfast, all-the-bells-and-whistles computer; last year, for fun, I would engage in (and occasionally win) long-division races with the computer provided by the department. In a few weeks, the new desk and chair I ordered for my office will arrive, helping to erase the painful memory of my old desk chairs. The memory is painful, because the chairs (yes, more than one) featured springs that had broken free of the circa 1960s faux leather and found not only the outside world, but also my pants and accompanying backside on more than one occasion.
I certainly appreciate the tangible, if not downright materialistic, differences between the tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. However, the biggest difference between this year and the last is in my attitude. Until now, by necessity, I viewed each job as just a steppingstone to the next one. That isn't necessarily so any longer. The people who hired me did so with the expectation that I have what it takes to stay a good long time and become a part of the institution rather than a hired gun engaged in a mutually parasitic relationship. My weekly job-ad vigil is over.
I am now taking the long view. In what still seems like a radical move, my wife and I decided to buy a house rather than rent one. (When we celebrated our seventh anniversary at the beginning of August, we had just completed moving in to the fifth domicile, in four different states, of our wedded lives.) Goodbye rent, hello mortgage.
When I have a minute to gather my thoughts later this semester, I have every intention of assigning every scrap of equipment I own to a particular spot in my lab, and then I am going to buy some more. Boxes be damned. I am here to stay -- at least for more than just 12 months.
