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Previous "First Person" Columns
Academics share their personal experiences
First Person
The rigid standards of hiring and tenure are all that stand in the way of the humanities professor as thriving public scholar, writes Patricia Nelson Limerick.
First Person
A Ph.D. in geological sciences always knew he wanted to teach; so how did his career get so focused on research?
First Person
Contrary to popular belief, the faculty-career route is not disproportionately paved with peril.
First Person
Everything you need to know about your role as a commentator or a member of the audience.
First Person
After her third try on the academic market falls short, a D.M.A. begins to reconsider her career options.
First Person
For junior faculty members, the best place to focus on research may not be at a research university.
First Person
Here's why it's usually a bad idea to promote assistant professors before the six-year mark.
First Person
A Ph.D. who returned to graduate school after working in publishing runs the interview gantlet at academic libraries.
First Person
A devoted blogger confronts his fear that his virtual life is damaging his career prospects in academe.
First Person
Tired of being typecast as an aging adjunct, a job candidate turns to Botox.
First Person
Three first-year professors tackle the conflicts between their career aspirations and their private lives.
First Person
The conflicts of academic life are not always vicious, but they may well be unavoidable.
First Person
Three professors explain their rationales for writing about academic life under a pseudonym.
First Person
Why it's a mistake for academics to tell their stories using a pseudonym.
First Person
Working outside the university before graduate school cultivates habits that will serve you well inside the university.
First Person
Being a professor is still important enough to merit admiration; so why doesn't it merit a good salary?
First Person
Everything you need to know about presenting a scholarly paper in public.
First Person
Racial incidents are bound to occur in academe, but they are usually sparked by innocent gaffes rather than ill will.
First Person
A specialist on job hunting in the corporate world finds she's out of her element in her search for an academic job.
First Person
What does a dean at a small Illinois college have in common with an aging rock star?
First Person
Everything you need to know about introducing speakers and running a panel discussion.
First Person
Even assistant professors with no family obligations struggle for the right balance between their personal and professional lives.
First Person
As the dorms lay in ruins, most students just wanted to see their parents.
First Person
A Ph.D. in biological sciences weighs the advantages of a job offer in industry versus one in academe.
First Person
Three new assistant professors of teaching and learning at Northern Illinois U. react to the campus killings.
First Person
Those who have found a home in academe are only able to give you a map to their own front door.
First Person
Yes, we know search committees are made up of busy people, but does that really excuse incivility?
First Person
A professor assigns a group project in a graduate seminar and confronts a wave of resentment.
First Person
Geography guides a Ph.D. in his decision about his first postdoctoral job.
First Person
What are the odds that seven conference interviews will lead to any campus visits?
First Person
A Ph.D. hits the road to promote her crossover book about the Blue Ridge Parkway.
First Person
A perennial applicant sitting on his first hiring committee gains a new perspective on the search process.
First Person
An economist sets out to see the world, meet people, and persuade them to hire him.
First Person
A Ph.D. in sociology dreams of finding a single search engine that would include job openings across the continent.
First Person
The life of a parent and the life of a graduate student were never intended to overlap.
First Person
Three newcomers to the tenure track begin the process of becoming professors.
First Person
What would happen if academics acted like other employees and took time off during the semester?
First Person
How many times have you asked yourself, "Did I really need to fly to New York to hear that?"
First Person
Job interviews, even when they end in disappointment, can yield unexpected results.
First Person
A look at how getting and running a big-grant program fit into a faculty career.
First Person
Once you're done writing a book, part of your job is to promote it.
First Person
Should I be advertising to potential employers that I eventually hope to shift from pure research to real-world problems?
First Person
Academe does a better job at creating the illusion of the perfect fit than actually fulfilling it.
First Person
An administrator wonders if he has reached the tipping point, where remaining in academe seems worse than leaving it.
First Person
If you make the transition from teacher to librarian, will you be eligible for tenure?
First Person
If you're completely unsuitable for a particular job, you shouldn't apply. But what if you're halfway suitable?
First Person
A look at the many ways in which academics manage to undermine their own presentations.
First Person
A Ph.D. in history adds another graduate-school cliché to his collection.
First Person
The pragmatic demands of academic life mean that church-related colleges can't always demonstrate compassionate Christianity.
First Person
She had hoped to be treated as a qualified academic, not as the female remainder of a partnership that fell apart.
First Person
At 48, a new Ph.D. in biological sciences searches for his first postdoctoral job.
First Person
A Ph.D. charts her history through academe by the kind of motorcycle she drove.
First Person
Who knew that working together to raise the profile of a half-forgotten author could be so much fun?
First Person
What if your background is in one type of professional school but you fit better in another?
First Person
Amid administrative cheerleading about institutional excellence, a professor just wishes the faucets would work.
First Person
A Ph.D. candidate in economics hopes his applications are sending the right message to hiring committees.
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Professional performer seeks tenure-track job; can read and write.
First Person
When it comes to many digital archives, scholars at small institutions are the have-nots.
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A Ph.D. in archaeology searches for her first job as an academic librarian.
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A new director of faculty relations takes on the sort of conflicts that don't lend themselves to mediation.
First Person
They're not really about getting things done, they're about appreciating your colleagues in all their wondrous variety.
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What do you do if your heart lies in one country and your academic future in another?
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Shouldn't untenured junior faculty members be writing books, not editing them?
First Person
A department head at a large distance-education program plots her return to the nonprofit world.
First Person
Is it a stretch to imagine that, just as students have different learning styles, instructors might have different teaching styles?
First Person
After spending 25 years working with graduate students, a professor concludes it's not all it's cracked up to be.
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Pressured to be seen at certain college events, a black professor decides to redefine his role on the campus.
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Should a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology pursue a career in private practice or academe?
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Sure, clichés make for weak writing, but a Ph.D. candidate in English finds they come in handy while preparing for an academic job search.
First Person
Want to know what an editor is really thinking when he's reading that article you submitted?
First Person
At 36, an aspiring senior administrator finds that her age tips the balance against her candidacy.
First Person
A Ph.D. in the geological sciences who has had great success in research nonetheless hopes to land a job at a place where teaching matters.
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The not-quite-mutual decision of college and scholar to part ways can sour you on the prospect of finding the perfect academic "fit."
First Person
Here's a guide for entry-level administrators as they embark on careers in higher education.
First Person
In his first years in office, a new president learns to expect the unexpected.
First Person
On the continuum from purist to profligate, where do most academics fall when it comes to selling desk copies?
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Exactly what kind of work are faculty members doing when no one's watching?
First Person
The tenure process is a lot like exercise. You don't make the effort because you enjoy it. You do it because it will pay off in the long run.
First Person
After a year on the job, an associate dean reflects on the differences between faculty and administrative life.
First Person
By recognizing the parallels between success in business and in academe, you may be able to avoid the pitfalls that come with being your own boss.
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A new doctoral student mulls the logistics of pursuing his studies with two young children in tow.
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Unlike riding a bike, writing seems like something you can spend a lifetime learning and an eternity trying to teach.
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A scholar who earned tenure but not promotion to associate professor changes his strategy.
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A dean of students escorts his high-school-aged daughter on that time-honored ritual, the college visit.
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Passed over for the chairmanship, a professor of sociology seeks solace by managing his doormat men's team.
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A graduate student is waylaid by a little-diagnosed but apparently widespread disease: the chronic misuse of footnotes.
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A look at how working with students outside of the classroom helped a young professor become a better teacher.
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An administrator reflects on making the transition from a wealthy private university to a public institution.
First Person
A new dean gets a lesson in the surprising and often underestimated power of organizational inertia.
First Person
Many incidents of aggressive student behavior do not end in tragedy but can, nonetheless, affect the lives of faculty members.
First Person
A syllabus, like any other text, cannot be separated from its author; nor is it above scrutiny and deconstruction.
First Person
An assistant professor discovers that some major scholars have plagiarized his online work.
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An assistant professor tries to find the right way to break up with her college.
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A Ph.D. in the biological sciences starts to question every decision she ever made to broaden her CV.
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A job candidate fears that her religious garb has an undue, and illegal, influence on search committees.
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After years of addressing students by their first names and asking them to use hers, an associate professor experiments with courtesy titles in the classroom.
First Person
The death of a beloved colleague can only complicate the search for her replacement.
First Person
Untenured faculty members are told to keep quiet, lie low. But an assistant professor finds himself drawn into more arguments than ever before.
First Person
An academic couple comes up short on the job market but learns a few lessons about what not to do next year.
First Person
A look at how one group of colleagues is attempting to cut back its consumption of paper and energy.
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It turns out that what a retired professor loves most about academe is not leading a classroom but learning.
First Person
An assistant professor finds his nomination for a campus award derailed by a colleague.
First Person
The campus interview marks the point where flaws in the conception and conduct of a search are most likely to surface.
First Person
Offered a job in journalism and one in academe, a Ph.D. realizes it's time to make a choice.
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Hint: What you are told during your campus job interview is not always true.
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A Ph.D. from an Ivy League university encountered that question when she interviewed at lower-ranked institutions.
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A married couple in law secure a tenure-track job for him and a non-tenure-track one for her.
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A former department chairman who quit academe finds his way back to teaching.
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An assistant professor in the sciences resurrects his career after being denied tenure.
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An academic librarian offers his wish list of four traits that would make his profession happier and more productive.
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Is it so wrong to offer more attention, more feedback, to the student who seems to have the best chance of success?
First Person
Burned out midcareer, a faculty member takes a two-year leave to rethink his chosen profession.
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Bombarded by more information than he can possibly absorb, a professor quits trying and turns to technology.
First Person
Two troubling incidents of copyright violation and fraud raise questions about the ethics of the profession.
First Person
The tenure-and-promotion clock doesn't take a holiday as the lazy days of summer drift by.
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An associate professor's quest to escape academe's D list falls short, but he's not giving up yet.
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Before you go on to graduate school, take a gap year and work in publishing.
First Person
By this time last year, a doctoral candidate in English already knew she wouldn't be getting a job offer.
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To suggest a married couple of professors will "vote as one" in a department's policy and tenure decisions is offensive.
First Person
Holding his father's 1952 dissertation in hand helps a scholar understand the importance of taking the long view of an academic career.
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A postdoc loses out on a job because her scholarship isn't attracting big grant money.
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She hadn't planned to scuttle her husband's quest for a presidency. Then again, she hadn't planned on becoming a First Spouse.
First Person
A new instructor falls short on the job market and finally understands her professor's warning about spending too much time on her teaching.
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Why would a professor subject herself to the scrutiny and anxiety of the tenure process more than once?
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Academe's approach to diversity is doomed to failure, and the evidence is all around us.
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A chairman argues for limiting the number of academic couples hired by a single department.
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What does a Ph.D. who left academe miss most? Being part of an environment where people have a certain respect for verifiable knowledge.
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A Ph.D. in sociology makes the transition from part-time instructor to a tenure-track professor.
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An assistant professor who has been chatty in department meetings wonders if he has said too much.
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A tenured professor offers a warning about the dangers of organizing your career too ruthlessly around short-term success.
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No matter how hard we try, we can't force life to conform exactly to our detailed career plans.
First Person
Sure, reviewing the academic program of another department is complicated and time-consuming. It's also sort of fun.
First Person
In the time it takes to send an e-mail message, you can protect your creative rights as a faculty author.
First Person
When her overseas college closed, a faculty member in English turned to a career in administration.
First Person
To become a scholar is the work of a lifetime, and that work continues no matter where you hang your hat.
First Person
Why not assign the same importance to the routine report you turn in on your teaching as you do to the ones you submit about research and service?
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A professor rarely noticed where the books she requested via interlibrary loan came from, until one day she got a big bill.
First Person
How the first person to walk the length of the Appalachian Trail helped a graduate student finish his dissertation.
First Person
An administrator seeking to move up sees the game of Chutes and Ladders as an apt metaphor for career advancement in academe.
First Person
In a tough market, should a doctoral student turn down a tenure-track offer at a little-known university for a prestigious fellowship?
First Person
An academic couple turns down the perfect job for him because the university had nothing to offer her.
First Person
Before you rail against your students' intellectual and ethical inadequacies, take some time to recall your own.
First Person
Save that giant tenure file, and keep adding to it, because when the unexpected call comes, you will need to act fast.
First Person
Like countless other assistant professors before me, I walked right into the trap.
First Person
A random encounter sets off a string of events that lead a social-science researcher to a new job.
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What does the growing generation gap among their employees mean for academic research libraries and the profession?
First Person
A job candidate learns that most institutions do not grant the benefit of the doubt to applicants who have been denied tenure. But some do.
First Person
It's all too easy to see a poor showing on the job market as a measure of your personal worth.
First Person
He typed his information into the online application, hit the "submit" button, and everything was deleted. Had it been sent? Hello? Anyone?
First Person
He tried personal anecdotes, quotations, parody, aphorisms, wit. Why did none of it seem to work?
First Person
In this season of interviews and influenza, a job candidate is unlucky enough to experience both at the same time.
First Person
An associate professor and devoted reader of blogs finds that requiring students to create one produced the wrong kind of buzz.
First Person
Getting your students' attention may be as simple as requiring them to turn off the technology.
First Person
A would-be dean decides to challenge the conventional wisdom that to move up administratively, you have to move down the academic hierarchy.
First Person
For nearly a decade, her husband has been on the market in English. She's ready to call it quits.
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It was time to step away from the computer, turn off the flood of online advice, and reflect on what I had learned about the academic hiring process.
First Person
What would a liberal-arts education look like if McDonald's underwrote it?
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The advent of a Web site means that small colleges can kiss their chances of getting federal money goodbye.
First Person
The overload of service work a professor has taken on has him seeing that phrase in a different light.
First Person
Here's what every assistant professor, no matter how autonomous, should know about how to get along with the boss.
First Person
An associate professor looking to move to a better institution in religious studies has trouble finding positions to apply for.
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A scholar creates his wish list for the ideal archive, from the hours of operation to the chairs.
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The first round of interviews is over for a married couple on the market in law, and only one of the pair is still in the game.
First Person
A graduate student wonders exactly what departments are looking for in requiring applicants to write a statement of purpose.
First Person
If my main adviser can't take the time to write me a letter when I need it, does that mean I am not worth the time?
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The paradox of plagiarism is that to be really good at it, you need precisely the reading and writing skills that ought to render it unnecessary.
First Person
A former tenured professor found her niche once she gave up the need to fit her new life into her old credentials.
First Person
New Ph.D.'s and assistant professors need to view the papers they write for academic conferences as a stepping-stone to getting published.
First Person
Tenured job candidates have what all applicants ideally should have -- the luxury of asking, "What about my needs?"
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An assistant professor who was denied tenure faces two unpleasant options: move or change careers.
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A month into a Fulbright appointment in China, an economist and single mother of four returns home.
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Was it just a demographic fluke that 17 of the 22 students in a professor's class were men?
First Person
A married couple, both visiting professors who have abandoned the practice of law, begin a dual search for tenure-track jobs.
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A new faculty member digs out from the avalanche of jargon and teaching theory that buried him during his first weeks on the job.
First Person
He wanted to demonstrate how an old dean could contribute to a new dean's success; it didn't work out that way.
First Person
A Latina assistant professor knows the risks of accepting too many speaking invitations from minority student groups. Here's why she does it anyway.
First Person
On the job market for the first time since 1991, a department head looks to move up into academic administration.
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A Ph.D. meeting with potential employers encountered different versions of the same question: Had academe ruined him?
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Just as a Ph.D. starts to feel like she finally fits in in academe, her faith is shaken in her job prospects.
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A Ph.D. in the biological sciences is eager to leave Los Angeles for his first tenure-track job, and greener pastures, too.
First Person
A doctoral candidate in English falls victim to two of the grand delusions of the academic job search.
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Unexpectedly denied tenure, an assistant professor in the sciences is forced back into the job market.
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After spending 20 years in a string of temporary teaching positions, a lecturer finally decides to call it quits.
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A faculty member taking his daughter on a series of campus visits finds many of his colleagues less than helpful.
First Person
An associate professor who has made a career out of being a big fish in a small pond wonders if it's too late to move up.
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A postdoc weighs whether it's better to control the direction of her research or sacrifice that control to pursue what some would say is a greater good.
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An English professor returns to work after a yearlong leave and finds, much to her surprise, that she's happy to be back.
First Person
An academic couple -- she's an environmental scientist and he's an engineer -- go on the job market for the second year.
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Seven years ago, a department chairman at a private art college walked away from academe. Now he feels the tug of what he left behind.
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Why do so many professors rebuff academic librarians who offer to teach a class session on research skills?
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A parent's illness forced a Ph.D. candidate to make career sacrifices. How will they affect her job search?
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How do you set up a research laboratory when you don't have lab space, start-up money, or a grants office to appeal to for help?
First Person
An assistant professor who went on the market with his wife sometimes had to remind himself that he was her partner, not her mentor.
First Person
Should a tenured faculty member buck the odds and re-enter the academic job market?
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An economist and single mother of four prepares to begin a 10-month appointment in China.
First Person
After a 20-year career, an academic librarian leaves city life behind and begins to rethink her future.
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As a Ph.D. in the life sciences prepares to go on the job market, she finds herself less than enthusiastic about one aspect of academic life -- the students.
First Person
Don't expect nonacademic friends and family members to ever understand the complexities of the university promotion and tenure system.
First Person
It was only after she canceled her overseas jaunt that an English professor realized how badly she wanted to go.
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It is time to discard the notion that a new assistant professor is automatically capable of supervising a dissertation.
First Person
A professor finds a new way to communicate with colleagues and students and is only occasionally troubled by his sparse friend count.
First Person
Is lack of time the only reason why the job search of a former student-services administrator has been so lackluster?
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If we've done our job in the hiring process, a dean says, there should be no need to haggle over a starting salary.
First Person
After a fruitless job search, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. mulls what went wrong.
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Why do we assume that the quality of part-time instruction is a question to be considered independently, apart from the quality of full-time teaching?
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Preparing to attend his 18th fall meeting marking the start of a new academic year, a professor looks at how he and that annual rite have changed.
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Life as an academic transient isn't all bad -- not that a newly hired assistant professor isn't happy to give it up.
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It may sound naïve, says a university president, but a fulfilling academic career really does lie in the concepts of service and mission.
First Person
After striking out on the American academic market, a Ph.D. in philosophy finds a tenure-track job in his country of origin.
First Person
E-mail rejection letters allow doctoral programs to be efficient in dismissing applicants for admission. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to the new medium.
First Person
Mistakes like that one, far from being evidence of sloppy student writing, are often logical and worth exploring in the classroom.
First Person
An associate professor and blogger offers a handy multiple-choice guide for our future columnists.
First Person
Should a new Ph.D. take a tenure-track job at Faraway State, or accept a lecturer's post so she can live with her husband?
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An assistant professor discovers that an important part of her job is challenging the gender assumptions that students have about their professors.
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You could say that a Ph.D. in English has decided to quit academe, but she prefers to think of it as retiring.
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A Ph.D. student offers a firsthand account of what it's like to be flamed on RateMyProfessors.com.
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If it's a seller's market for academic librarians, why do so many hiring committees risk alienating candidates by taking too long to decide?
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Over and over, a new assistant professor kept thinking, "This is nothing like graduate school."
First Person
For all the authors who continue to ask that question, here's what you need to know.
First Person
An assistant professor urges his students to consider how their everyday consumer choices affect others around the world. But what about his own choices?
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Stuck in a tiny, windowless office, an assistant professor opts to move his base of operations outside.
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How does a Ph.D. go from no job prospects to an endowed professorship in a year's time?
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The prospect of being passed over for a promotion convinces a college marketing director it's time to leave.
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When someone asks you the inevitable question, "What do you work on?," just make sure you have a punch line.
First Person
What it's like for a president to move from a very rich college to a financially struggling one.
First Person
For a writing instructor and her students, it was an emotionally exhausting and strangely uplifting term from day one.
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Instead of plodding around with the same old complaints and obsessions, isn't it time for academics to run wild with the new mediums of expression open to us?
First Person
That's how long it took a Ph.D. in the social sciences to find her first tenure-track job.
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A divorced academic couple in the same department finally go their separate ways.
First Person
Isn't academe the one area where it is impossible to be overqualified?
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A professor at a Catholic university cautiously begins to tell his students he's gay.
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At the end of a semester filled with students who couldn't be bothered to learn his name, a professor finds something that keeps him coming back.
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What good is it to have a star scholar as your mentor if he doesn't have any time for you?
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Given the choice, a finalist who repeatedly came in second would rather know that upfront than be kept in the dark.
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This year's job search for a Ph.D. in the humanities comes to a rather anticlimactic end.
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At some point on the long march, writes the spouse of a Ph.D. candidate, you just want it to be over.
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Should a Ph.D. candidate accept an offer from a big lab with an established pedigree or from a smaller, unproven one doing fascinating research?
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An assistant professor wonders if his cramped quarters signal his insignificance.
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Up for tenure, an assistant professor on a joint appointment finds that neither department understands his work.
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The job search of a Ph.D. candidate in the physical sciences ends with a tenure-track offer.
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After hours spent listening to her interviewers talk, a Ph.D. in the social sciences wonders when she gets to speak.
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A Ph.D. in history decides that four years on the academic market without a tenure-track offer is long enough.
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How do you keep from being nervous when you are interviewed on television?
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Even the best full-day, on-campus interview provides scarcely more than a hint of an applicant's true potential.
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A persistent yet unspoken question haunts search-committee deliberations: "Will this candidate stay here?"
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In the search for a tenure-track job, a Ph.D. in economics advises, it helps to find happiness wherever you can get it.
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The jobs sound good at first, says a college marketing director who is on the market, but they all share the same flaw.
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His colleagues all said he had a strong tenure case, but nothing quite prepared him for having the official letter in hand.
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As dawn breaks over another chain hotel, a job candidate is stuck in the same college town, doomed to repeat the same job talk and the same conversations.
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The long months between leaving one campus for a new job at another is a time of strained emotions and dangerous temptations.
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A junior faculty member learns the politics of salary negotiations and counteroffers.
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By saying that my scholarly interests are broad, will I run the risk of being forever labeled a surface-skimming dilettante?
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Raised in a blue-collar family, an assistant professor continues to feel a disconnect with the wealth that surrounds him in private higher education.
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Being a scholar of anything having to do with Islam, the Middle East, or the Arab world has become a full contact sport.
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A 24-year-old instructor finds that her youthful smile and figure are a curse in the classroom.
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It's unnatural to spend your entire career working in the same place, in the same capacity, and with the same people.
First Person
A new Ph.D. in the humanities begins losing her hair, just as the job market gains steam.
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A Ph.D. in the sciences runs the interview gantlet in search of his first postdoctoral research position.
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Needing money for an overseas trip, an academic administrator takes a second job and learns the meaning of hard work.
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If we ran our classrooms the way most conference panels are run, we would be hounded out of teaching.
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Should you take the job offer you want, or the one that would be better for your family?
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An academic couple searching for two tenure-track jobs in the same field finds it helps to know that others are in the same predicament -- but only a little.
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When every weekend brings another round of departmental socializing, what's a quiet untenured person to do?
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What's it like to spend a Saturday waiting to hear whether your colleagues want you to stick around?
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For an academic job candidate, being superstitious goes hand in hand with being on the market.
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Twenty years after a student's suicide, his death continues to affect a professor's teaching.
First Person
A job candidate admits that he was smart in an interview when pleasant might have served him better.
First Person
For a postdoc in biology, the one part of the campus interview that fills her with terror is mealtime with her potential colleagues.
First Person
A college marketing director would be a lot more excited about finding her dream job if only it would come looking for her.
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A tenured professor who quit her job and boxed up 25 years of her faculty life wonders how to begin the purge.
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An assistant professor tells how she learned to stop worrying and give lots of A’s.
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A Ph.D. applying for academic and nonacademic jobs finds that both types of employers want her to just choose a side already.
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An economics Ph.D. seeks to conquer his stress about the job market the only way he knows how.
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A dissertation shows your potential as a scholar; it shouldn't simply be a long footnote to your mentor's glorious career.
First Person
You don't ask for a yearlong leave to do some ordinary piece of work, but to produce the "big one." It seemed feasible at the start.
First Person
What is the best way to respond to a interviewer who says, "I don't see the scholarly value of your work. Care to comment?"
First Person
A junior scholar reconsiders the advice he got from senior professors on how to win tenure.
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Determined not to be left behind, a faculty member decides to become IM buddies with her students.
First Person
For rhinos, the answer to alienation and anxiety is food. Ph.D.'s on the academic job market are less fortunate.
First Person
What, exactly, is a professor to do when confronted by a student with psychological problems?
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Awaiting word on his tenure case, an assistant professor finds himself starting, and abandoning, new projects.
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Have I become that terminal associate professor who spurns his long-term loves of teaching and research for the promiscuity of a million service obligations?
First Person
The cover letters led to interviews. Now if only one of the interviews will lead to a fellowship.
First Person
It's easy to get caught up in sharing every little detail of your job search, but is all that talk doing you any good?
First Person
Instead of merely torturing himself at one big academic conference, an assistant professor opts to attend two.
First Person
A temporary stay-at-home dad, faced with the prospect of starting his job search, begins to rethink the temporary part.
First Person
A Ph.D. in the physical sciences has been contemplating the job search for a year, but getting his first callback made it real.
First Person
A graduate student gets more than he bargained for when he pet sits for his department's grand pooh-bah.
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It took him more than two years, but a Ph.D. in political science has finally found good work in the nonacademic world.
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As she heads back to work, an assistant professor feels lucky to have only lost the experience of being a new faculty member in the normal way.
First Person
Every once in awhile, a new president wonders, What would it hurt to miss that next event, to leave early, to not even make the trip?
First Person
As the new semester dawns, it's time for professors to learn what pleasant surprises await in the results of last semester's student ratings.
First Person
It wasn't any fatal mistake you made that cost you the position; you never had a chance to begin with.
First Person
You, too, can guide famous filmmakers through the thickets of historical or scientific accuracy.
First Person
When it's time for some Big Life Decisions, it's eerie to discover that your advisers can no longer make them for you.
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A nonacademic job had seemed the best way to find money and a room of her own. Now a Ph.D. in comparative literature has doubts.
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Too many doctoral students get so focused on the burdens of the moment that they graduate without being truly prepared.
First Person
An associate professor chronicles the lessons he learned from his mid-career job search.
First Person
Combine a new baby, a full teaching schedule, and a job search, and your head would be spinning, too.
First Person
A professor wonders: How much of my leave am I allowed to devote to my 4-year-old?
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The writing was slow-going, and she felt herself losing interest. She needed motivation. She needed a nemesis.
First Person
A job candidate in economics wonders how much external cues and perceptions will skew the way that search committees view his application.
First Person
A college marketing director mulls whether to take the next step and seek a vice presidency.
First Person
You're on leave and your department wants to lend your office to a temporary instructor. But it's still yours, right?
First Person
When you're up for tenure at a teaching-oriented college, every time you teach feels like it has to be a masterwork of pedagogical achievement.
First Person
Until recently, it had never occurred to a graduate student that her blog and her professional fate might be connected.
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He has a Ph.D., publications, a book contract, great teaching evaluations, and experience. What he doesn't have is the right pedigree.
First Person
A green professor is tapped to serve on a curriculum-policy committee and learns how faculty governance really works.
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An academic couple begins a search for two tenure-track jobs in the same field and the same city.
First Person
Be prepared to lose your friends, your mentors, and your sense of self-worth.
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Five years into his doctoral program in the physical sciences, a Ph.D. candidate realizes that his heart is not in his research.
First Person
Ready to give up on academe, a trailing spouse manages to resuscitate her career.
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Dear Professor, you don't know me and you're not actively seeking new postdoctoral fellows right now, but here's why you should hire me anyway.
First Person
After 12 years in student services, an administrator temporarily takes on a new role as a stay-at-home dad.
First Person
Why can't an undergraduate think more like a Ph.D.?
First Person
A department with a zeal for academic jargon leaves a job candidate wondering about her preferred pronoun.
First Person
The gap can be wide between what you hope to achieve during a year off and what you actually do.
First Person
A philosopher newly arrived from Denmark prepares to tackle the American academic job market.
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A Ph.D. in history who landed a great job on the wrong continent wants to come home.
First Person
Writing a self-evaluation for his tenure case, an assistant professor wishes someone would just tell him what to say.
First Person
A Ph.D. candidate in economics takes his best shot at a tenure-track slot in a top-10 department.
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A new Ph.D. finds herself caught in the void between the end of graduate school and the beginning of an academic career.
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With her bosses retiring or quitting, a college marketing director decides it's time to look for a new job.
First Person
An assistant professor with a good tenure-track job decides it's not quite good enough.
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A Ph.D. in the social sciences shares a few lessons she's learned after five years on the market.
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A Ph.D. in biology prepares to go on the market for her first tenure-track job.
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Is it ever a good idea for an applicant to tell an interviewer that he looks like an aging androgynous rock star?
First Person
Two job offers would seem an embarrassment of riches, except when you have to make a decision on the first with no assurance that the second will even be offered.
First Person
To be a strong dissertation adviser, you have to learn to distinguish your own skills and limitations from those of your students.
First Person
A dual-career couple moves to a university that looks a lot like their old one -- with a few crucial differences.
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The glamorous lives of Los Angeles yuppies can inspire jealousy in a Ph.D. student, but only for an evening.
First Person
If "be careful what you say" is good advice for the job seeker, why is it so controversial to add the word "online"?
First Person
An online application system is convenient but it can lead to a glut of candidates and other problems for search committees.
First Person
For a new Ph.D. in the field, going on the job market begins with being told where she can and cannot apply.
First Person
If you're applying to a college that emphasizes teaching, ignore your mentor's advice about what to include in your cover letter.
First Person
A Ph.D. in English struggles with how much to reveal on the job market about his work for Christian colleges and organizations.
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In administration, moving up the ladder means relocating -- a lot. But one admissions director discovers she has made one move too many.
First Person
The problem with using an e-mail list to discuss a search is that the new hire can go back and read what everyone wrote. It's not always pretty.
First Person
Why do academics never talk openly about sexual attraction between professors and students?
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A new Ph.D. emerges from the the stresses of the academic job market with a new appreciation for her field.
First Person
A professor's spell-checker, unleashed with the best of intentions, plays havoc with his CV.
First Person
Unlike their male counterparts, female professors have little choice but to watch what they wear in the classroom.
First Person
Two years after earning tenure, an associate professor finally comes to realize what it means for his career.
First Person
Creating a Web site for your latest book will not only showcase the work, it will help your case for tenure and promotion.
First Person
A black economist chooses a supportive department in a nowhere town over chilly colleagues in a more vibrant city.
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An academic couple learns the crucial different between recruitment and retention.
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Part of the challenge for a professor with multiple sclerosis is figuring out what to tell her students.
First Person
For a Ph.D. in history, the process of writing the dissertation is a lot like a certain hobbit's treacherous journey through Middle-earth.
First Person
Does how you dress in the classroom say anything about your teaching style?
First Person
The elimination of an academic unit is not unlike the cancellation of a television sitcom, with one glaring exception.
First Person
An administrator learns that having a Ph.D. is not an advantage when your supervisor doesn't have one.
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Even if you never have sex in a great library, you can have moments there that are almost erotic in their intellectual intensity.
First Person
An assistant professor finds that teaching and grieving are a surprisingly well-matched pair.
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If the concert hall is located next to a train track, that's a pretty good indicator of how the college values the performing arts.
First Person
Job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible, and in most cases, a blog turns out to be a negative.
First Person
One half of an academic couple hopes that those three words will make all the difference in his job search come fall.
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A senior professor who spent the spring teaching in Europe finds that faculty work there can be far more problematic than in the States.
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It's easy to panic about online education at liberal-arts colleges, but one faculty member makes the case.
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All of the pieces come together in the faculty job search of a Ph.D. in ecology.
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A Ph.D. in chemical engineering who planned to search for a nonacademic job instead becomes the trailing spouse.
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A couple of game-studies scholars, who aren't a couple in the romantic sense, come up short in their dual job search.
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An assistant professor finds that you can make a difference at a small coll