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[anon247]

The best thing I did was make friends with people in other departments who share my academic interests.
I wish that I had never opened my mouth in faculty meetings.
Congratulations and good luck!

The best thing I did was arrive 2 weeks before I told anyone I was going to be there and spent the time making friends who didn't even work at the university.      I don't know how many times I have benefited from the sound, sane advice of friends who don't have any sort of connection to the politics.

I wish I had followed the advice of not providing too much info.  You know how the person who comes running to greet you is the one to avoid?  It also turns out that the person who is the most interested in you and your work actually has a serious personality disorder!

[sabovision]

Show up for everything, keep your head down and mouth shut.

[rizzy]

I did a fast free write on this.  Here are some ideas, and feel free to ignore what would not apply to your situation:

1. Stay on the person who processes your paperwork to make sure it gets processed by early August.  You are going to need your ID, access to the library, and your paycheck on time. 

2. Find out if there are any offices on campus designed to assist teachers with teaching, technology, etc.  They may have people available to show you the computer system and to help you to figure out best ways to use group work, etc.

3. Ask colleagues for syllabi so that you can see their policies.  Policies are so important.  Have good policies for: absence penalties, administrative drop, lateness, handing in papers late, not posting handouts and notes on whatever computer system they have there, when you will check your email (in next year's syllabi I am going to stipulate that I will only respond to student emails during your office hours), PLAGIARISM (this is super important and if your school has signed up for turnitin.com use it), regular quizzing.  Make sure you stipulate on your syllabus that you will give regular quizzes and then give them a heads up a week in advance.

4. Realize that you may not be able to lecture; I had to move away from lecture mode and break that up with lots of group work, quizzes, in class writing, multimedia.  If you use group work, how will that be graded?  Think about end-of-semester presentations -- they really can work well.  Ask people at whatever kind of teaching center your u has about group work, and use some of what they tell you.

5. Remember to put your final exam day and time on your syllabus. 

6. If you can, organize your notes from grad school so that they are handy.  Mine are still in boxes and I can't find stuff when I need it.  There have been times I've needed to create a handout on X set of materials that I read and was taught in grad school and I had to make it up from scratch, which took more time.  Also, Robert Boice recommends that you get 2-3 other intro textbooks in the field that you're teaching and use those to help with course prep.

7. Consider using some form of scheduling tool and plan out your weeks using that.  Make time for course prep, grading, office hours and most importantly, your research.  I planned out research time in the fall semester but not this one and unfortunately haven't touched it in two months (as I recently confessed on another thread, filled with a heavy sense of foreboding).

8. Be prepared to leave your dissertation advisor.  This is a big deal --hu is now going to be busy trying to get hu's other grad students prepared to find jobs.  Try to develop relationships with other people in your field.

9. Keep up with your hobbies.  I let mine go by the wayside and now feel sad that I have lost the time.

10. Check how long the break is in between your fall and spring semesters.  In some cases this can be as little as two weeks.  Two weeks is not long enough to do a good job with new preps in Spring, if you have any.  This needs to be factored into your scheduling during the fall (and BTW during the time when you are most busy).

11. You are in a marathon not a sprint.  Be sure not to compromise your rest and get vitamins.  You really need to take care of yourself.  Don't go so overboard at first, err in favor of taking care of yourself instead of overpreparing so much (read Boice and read it sooner rather than later).

12. Remember that you have studied for years and that even though you may feel like an imposter once the semester starts, you have had many times over the amount of school/research/writing/project experience that these individuals have had.  You are qualified for your position and once you start getting back work from the students that will be very clear.

13. In the spring you may be hit with unexpected service obligations relating to annual reporting, search committees and the like, so realize that you may not have a lot of time in the early months of the year, depending on your institution and how it works.

14. If you use your current university's email account, start transitioning out of that now toward a permanent one such as google, yahoo, etc.  It can be very disorienting in the busy weeks of the new semester to have to switch over everything to the new email account at new U.  If you can take care of this now and notify your personal friends, at least, it will save a lot of work.  Takes you back to #1 (you can't get new email account until all paperwork is processed).

Best of luck to you.

[rizzy]

Hi - I read your posting again and see we're at different kinds of institutions and fields, so you may find that some of the things I wrote above don't apply to your situation.  Best of luck!

[gollum]

Show up for everything, keep your head down and mouth shut.

Excellent advice.  I wish I had followed it.  If I had, my contract might have been renewed.

Gollum

[seventhyear]

3. Ask colleagues for syllabi so that you can see their policies.  Policies are so important.  Have good policies for: , PLAGIARISM (this is super important and if your school has signed up for turnitin.com use it),
4. Realize that you may not be able to lecture; I
5. Remember to put your final exam day and time on your syllabus.

9. Keep up with your hobbies.  I let mine go by the wayside and now feel sad that I have lost the time.

Just a few notes

Re #3-if your school has an Honor Code, you need to know how that works before you work it into the syllabus.  At some schools how you proceed with the Honor Council is very codified and a misstep can result in your case being thrown out.

#4 Check out your classrooms that you are assigned to.

#9 Definitely make finding out how to do the non-work parts of your life just as important as the work parts.  Find the coffee house, gym, house of worship, bike shop, running trail, shoe store, public library, hairstylist or WHATEVER it is that you do to keep from being lost in work and get that on line before classes start.  If grad school left you hobby-less, work on finding a new one.  It is way too easy to procrastinate those aspects of your life.

Find out who it is that you ask questions to (hopefully someone in your department or your admin assistant) and try to ask questions first.  Find some second or third year faculty and ask them "what do you wish you knew your first year". 

[engineer_adrift]

This is all excellent advice. 

I'd add:

1)  Know what the policies are for interim review at your school.  Plan for them.

2)  Ask for and respond to mentoring from your chair. I say this as a chair.

3)  Know what you must provide at your school for the tenure packet, and start planning to provide it.

4)  It has been said, but WRITE!  Nothing else will take the place of good pubs. 

Good luck, and congratulations.

[hal2001]

Get at least one major publication out for review by Christmas of Year 1 and one more by Summer at the end of Year 1.  I know this echoes some advice above, but I have heard this in so many places it is worth repeating.

[seventhyear]

Get at least one major publication out for review by Christmas of Year 1 and one more by Summer at the end of Year 1.  I know this echoes some advice above, but I have heard this in so many places it is worth repeating.

Adjust these deadlines accordingly for your discipline and circumstance.  If you're pushing pubs out from your dissertation these are good guuidelines.  If you are setting up a lab, recruiting students and starting a new line of research these guidlines will give you an ulcer.

[hal2001]

Fair enough.  One also needs to keep in mind that in disciplines outside of the hard sciences, different fields and departments value books and articles differently.  In a truly book-driven field/department, what I just mentioned would also probably be a bit too much too fast.  In a completely article-driven field/department, though, you might need a third or evena  fourth piece out the door before the start of Year 2.

[chigagolake]

Take a hour and do this RIGHT NOW. Get a pile of hanging file folders, tabs, and your guidelines for tenure AND a set of guidelines for two SCHOOLS THAT ARE BETTER THAN YOURS. Google these.

If these guidelines look like any I saw, they probably have a chart or list though it might be vague.

Make a file folder for each item on the list and dump these folders in your cabinet (preferably a drawer just for tenure stuff). Each time you have something that you might need as the years go by (flyer from your book coming out, thank you emails from a colleague in the field, letter asking you to be on editorial board, etc. ANYTHING) dump it in. I had proposals for new courses, Dean's evaluations, letters of classroom observation, acceptance letters for publications and conferences, etc. in mine. I didn't use all of it, but it really was nice to have it all there to choose from to make my case.

Make sure you put the files in order of importance with the most important in the front of the drawer, so if you are forced to make choices, you know what file folder you constantly need to be adding to. For nearly all of us, that probably is publications. I made subfolders for more specifics like edited book chapters and peer reviewed articles. I also used separate folders for semester course evals so all the evals from Spring 2007 would get their own folder.

I added extra folders for 5-6 other things or more specific items that better schools than mine wanted, so in case I wanted to go somewhere else, I can prove I met not only my requirements but top tier schools such as XYZ too.  For example, one better school wanted grant work, but my school didn't even have a category for that so I made an extra folder.

If you aren't sure where something goes, make copies and dump a copy in any file you think you might need it. For example, if you are wondering if an article published with students counts as research or teaching, put it in both places.

Digital stuff can be put on CD and put in the folder.

Organization can save you a lot of panicking when you are trying to get everything together in year 6. I was fairly relaxed (if anyone really can be) about putting mine together since I had absolutely everything right there.

Each May or June before you pass out from the semester give your files a quick glance. If you see any folder is empty, try to find a way to fill it prior to August of the next year if you can. Same thing in August when you come back.

Also, I put a star on my calendar on the first Monday of the month to check the file cabinet so I could keep tabs on how I was doing. I just took  a five minute check...not pulling anything out unless I had a question but just giving the folders an eyeball to see which ones were growing thicker and which were still empty.

A faculty person I am mentoring told me she has two meetings with a half hour break between each month. She uses that twenty minutes of "wasted" time to give the drawer a glance to see what she has and what she needs and to put in monthly reminders to hersellf in her planner to have certain goals accomplished. It seems to be working for her as she sailed through her third year review.

[shrek]

I did something similar to chigagolake's method. But, my files are organized by academic year, and within those I have three files: teaching, research, and service. I put each paper, letter, accemptance for a publication, final copy of pub, letter from my dean, award letters, notes from students, etc. into one of those three files each year. At the end of each year I have all I need for my annual report (I keep copies of those in one of the files too). When I went up for tenure I had everything at my fingertips and I had these also for when I went up for full.

[pastafarian]

Something that often gets lost in the shuffle: Enjoy yourself.  Working your way up to a tenure-track job is long and draining.  Now you've made it, bask in the opportunities that come your way.

Second the other advice about studying the lay of the land, and avoid politicking for at least the first two years or so.  Ask lots of questions.  Impress upon others your willingness to work with them but follow up on the pitches you made during the hiring process.

Hit the ground running: Don't let an energy lull creep up on you.  Get projects up and running, as publication takes ages and you'll need irons in the fire.

[dr_stones]

The above post gets to the core of the thing ... this is what you busted your hump to attain, now go enjoy it.  The job is the reward ...

[hal2001]

Sure, the job is the reward, but it is tenure that lets you hold onto it.  It's pretty neat that we can get paid (and sometimes even get pretty decent benefits compared with other lines of work) to do basically what we want and like on pretty much our own schedules.  It is easy to lose sight of this when stressing about tenure, but even reminding oneself of how good it is to be a TT faculty member does not take away the very real stress of the "up or out" process.