Readers should take note from the lengthy absence of new posts here that my attentions have been turned elsewhere recently. Unfortunately, such is the life of a junior faculty member. In the hopes of renewing my attention to this little digital plot of land, I thought it would be appropriate to think about the kinds of small- and large-scale refocusing that often has to take place. Or perhaps I should say, these have to take place for me. Every once in a while, I have to take stock and reorient myself.
And now, the day before we bring a contentious election season to a close, I sit in my office in a briefly quiet moment. No student papers waiting on feedback from me. No pressing deadlines for publications. No meetings scheduled for the day--perhaps the rarest of all scenarios. This is as good a time as any to think about where my focus needs to move next. But before I look forward, a quick look backward.
Year 1: In my first year as a faculty member, I flailed around a great deal, trying to get my bearings in a new institution, trying to discern how to be a faculty member rather than a graduate student, trying to get my research agenda off the ground. I recall feeling both tremendously excited and hopelessly overwhelmed by the scope of getting my academic career off the ground now that I had finished grad school. That first year, I accumulated solid teaching experience and started building relationships in my department and beyond. I wasn't nearly as successful in publishing as I wanted to be, but I started getting several projects off the ground.
Year 2: I started my work as a writing program administrator--actually, I started near the end of Year 1--and I started some exciting editorial work as a book review editor for WPA: Writing Program Administration. I taught a couple of new classes and offered my first online course, teaching Writing for the Web, something that was definitely out of my pedagogical comfort zone regarding both content and delivery. I garnered a couple of small publication successes and kept slogging away at others, feeling like a late bloomer.
Year 3: This was a good year for me, especially as a junior researcher. I submitted several proposals for edited collections and received acceptances for all but one. A few journal articles and a co-edited collection reached either completion or near completion. As a teacher, I had a much less exciting year, although I did teach my first graduate course. That course was an incredible experience. I also made significant progress in building a support program for faculty writers on my campus, something I continue working to build and sustain.
All of which brings me to the current moment in Year 4. Two-thirds of the way through the pre-tenure probationary period. At this stage, I look at my work in research and feel very good about my standing as a junior faculty member. I also feel very good regarding service: I've concluded my two-year term as writing program administrator, I continue in my role as book review editor and look forward to becoming part of the main editorial team for the same journal in 2017, and my departmental and campus service are both strong. My teaching is solid, with good evaluations and good observations from colleagues across campus and from another regional campus. I even won a competitive teaching award at the end of Year 3.
But as I entered Year 4, I knew that teaching was what required my focus this year. To some extent, I had neglected teaching as I dedicated most of my energies to research and administrative work over the past couple of years. So this year, I am teaching more new courses than I ever have before, and I am enjoying the work immensely. I am working with students more than I have over the past couple of years. I am sharing parts of my expertise with these courses and watching their expertise grow in both expected and unexpected ways. I am working with a teaching assistant in one class, giving me the opportunity to mentor a new teacher and see this course through her eyes as well--a valuable metacognitive experience for both of us. I remind myself that teaching was what drew me to this gig to begin with.
To that end, I have invested about 75% of my attention in my teaching this semester. Progress toward new publications continues at a satisfactory rate, and service still remains an important part of my faculty life. But I have enjoyed the opportunity to pull back and dive into teaching in ways that I hadn't in the last six or seven years.
So what's next? This semester has hit the point where the majority of the remaining work depends on my students rather than on me. I almost always start looking toward the next challenge at this time of the year. Next semester, I'm teaching a brand new graduate course and a new literature course in science fiction in addition to another section of a course I am teaching right now, so I know that much of my attention will still be focused on teaching. But it's time to start thinking about Year 5 and Year 6 will look like.
Year 5 and Year 6 will likely focus on one word: Monograph. My hope is that after spending a year refreshing my attention to teaching to move back with renewed energy to my research. Because I work at a teaching institution, I have not found myself in a situation where I must produce a monograph to receive tenure. This has given me time to find my scholarly voice, to find the scholarly conversations and arguments that keep drawing me back. That affordance of time has given me the chance to move sufficiently far away from graduate school to see the potential professional pleasure and benefit of engaging in a longer, more sustained scholarly project. I'll end this post on the teaser that the monograph will pick up on some of the questions and conclusions I first posed here.
Hopefully this post will hold me accountable. I'd like to return to this post in a year or two to find that I have moved in the direction I've suggested here.
