On Junior Faculty

Ah, junior faculty members.  They are the awkwards of departments in some ways.  It's got to be tough.  You have a "real" job now.  You have grad students to manage.  Some of the grad students are older than you.  You're just trying to become a swan but it's really hard to do because you are on an insane number of random committees that no one cares about.

I have heard some great stories and some horror stories from friends now employed (yay!  hope!) at various institutions.  The first year is the worst I've been told.  It's especially awful if you have a TA and now have to figure out what to do with them.  I have two friends that are at teaching schools who have been teaching a wide variety of courses but at least they are on their own.  They don't have to delegate to us lackeys.

And I know, cry me a river, you have a TA, right?

I'm not so sure.  I guess I will some day know (hopefully if someone gives me a job at the end of this) but for now, I actually feel sympathy for junior faculty.  Especially when it comes to dealing with TA's.  Why?  Well, let me explain.

Today I received my teaching assignment for the fall semester.  I have comprehensives so I asked for the least time-consuming option - an intro to American politics course.  I've TA'ed this before but it was an all essay section.  I had an excellent prof who I asked to work for again, mind you, but a hell of a lot more work than everyone else had to do my first semester - 4 sets of exams with 110 students under my charge.  I asked for a multiple choice section since never since starting here have I had that luxury.  Well, now I do, kinda.  I've been assigned to a visiting prof who got his BA at our school with our department.  He seems like an excellent candidate, has taught this class before, etc.  I'm excited to learn something from him but NOT so excited to have to work in tandem to make up exams as I have just been informed.  I get why the DGS is asking me.  He wants to hand me my own class possibly the following semester.  That's excellent news for me.  It's just annoying because I have a lot on my plate and not all junior faculty "get it".  It makes me nervous.  The first semester is the worst and I am not sure I want to be in the fray again.  I have been told by people who know this prof that he is an excellent guy, very personable, and will fit right in.  Still, it's so old hat to work with faculty that I already know.  I've worked for and with most of them by now.  This is a whole 'nother world and I'm an old person at heart that hates change.  I will no doubt learn a lot, though.  So, I have to just realize this is another learning experience in teaching that I will most certainly appreciate in the end.

I have TA'ed for a first year faculty member once before.  They guy was a great lecturer and he had an excellent rapport with the class.  I learned a lot about what to expect my first year because he did take me under his wing and was a great mentor.  However, he didn't understand workloads well.  I had about 2x's the amount of grading of ANY TA in my second semester of grad school.  The next semester, he knew better and asked to have his class designated writing intensive and got two TA's to do the work that I did myself.  It was hellish in that respect.  He didn't know how much to delegate to me and wasn't sure how to manage me.  I think he gave me too much freedom and let me deal with plagiarism cases in a way that I was uncomfortable having so much power over.  It was hard.  He's definitely changed a lot since then based on what he's told me and other TA's have told me.  He's learned and improved. I think he would be an excellent addition come tenure time and would gladly write a letter on his behalf.  And I am glad I got to see this whole situation over time because it gave me insight into dealing with these situations firsthand.

It HAS to be an awkward situation dealing with graduate students.  I mean, this new guy (from what I have been told by people that know him) is 3 years older than me but judging by his CV, we have a similar amount of teaching experience with similar subject matter.  I believe firmly in a strong chain of command.  I may not always agree with what a prof has a TA do or may not feel that everything is handled perfectly but I do know my place, I know how to speak in turn, and I realize there are 100 ways to skin a cat.  I can imagine that there are TA's that are not like this, though.  Some people seem to want to pull rank.  This really makes no sense to me.  You are a graduate student.  You have no PhD.  Unless you are asked to do something essentially wrong, you should listen to your superior.  This seems  particularly problematic ones that are older and feel wiser.  Even personally I can say I know of one situation that a faculty member told me about which mirrors this.  This was a senior faculty member with a first year grad student, though.  She felt very confident in pulling rank there, obviously.  It's got to be similar to the feeling you felt when you came into grad school and suddenly were teaching students that were pretty much your age.  You have to learn to deal with things as they come and assert that you are in charge.  Never admit that you feel intimidated.

Teaching grad students seems to be a similar quandary.  I am finally at the point where I can confidently think about teaching grad students - but only in stats.  I feel most confident in teaching methods.  The idea of teaching a substantive course still seems far off.  I hope after comps I will feel differently.  Regardless, it's intimidating.  That has to be the worst part.  We had one junior faculty member recently.  This was a wild card class out of my usual subdisciplines but it was relevant to some policy research I'd been doing and I had an open spot.  He is clearly still adjusting to graduate seminars.  The prof was a nice guy, he brought about interesting and new questions about gender and race which I so appreciated, but he sometimes tried to make seminar too much of a democracy.  Another faculty member in his first year of graduate teaching assigned far too much too soon for the first years and ended up frazzled and admitting it WAS too much.

It seems daunting to have all of these challenges on top of tenure woes and various bureaucratic "service" responsibilities.  I worry about this.  I've been told that it "gets better" but only after tenure.  That seems like an impossible dream to dream right now.

To all the junior faculty out there, what say you?  To senior faculty, what was it like?  Does it really just get so much better after tenure?

To all the grad students dealing with it, what have been your experiences with junior faculty?  Similar experiences to mine?  Different?  Better?  Worse?

I'm curious!

Are there any luxuries in grad school?

Are there any luxuries in grad school?

The comment seems ridiculous when you think about the things that we put up with during our time here:
*low wages
*long hours (20 hours a week for teaching?  ha!  Try like 30-35 on teaching alone!)
*high stress - publications, comps, dissertations, conferences, and all this ON TOP of your course and teaching load
*low regard - your family probably doesn't understand and makes commentary about you "being in school forever", your spouse/SO doesn't understand, people think you are uppity
*some people (thankfully not me) don't have health insurance covered by their stipend or any affordable options.  Dental? As if...

And that's just to name a few things that spring to mind...

But that said, grad school does afford us some luxuries.  Or at least it has me.  I realized on a message board  I frequent that I am "lucky" in that I have the flexibility and encouragement of like-minded peers when it comes to things.  This affords me some pretty cool opportunities.  I'm going to name a few.  See if you can name any yourself or if any of these match up.

1. Travel
I am pretty lucky in that most of my adult life has allowed for travel.  My parents are rather worldly people in that they like culture and good food but I didn't grow up travelling the globe - just North America.  My parents made it possible for me to go abroad and I did so during my junior year of college.  I spent a year abroad in the UK studying and researching my senior thesis on health care.  It was amazing.  I couldn't have asked for more.  I also got to see much of Europe.  I spent two weeks in Italy lounging by the pool and taking pictures.  I spent Christmas in Bavaria - Nuremberg to be exact.  It was a Christmas unlike any I could forget.  4 and a half weeks in a picture-perfect little place with friends.

Last year at this time I was landing in Rwanda for coursework and field study that my university paid for in large part.  I moved most of my things into a storage locker here, moved the rest home, and then moved in with a close friend and a colleague when I came back from my trip.  It was an amazing experience and I learned a lot.  It also has helped me look good on a CV.  And it proves that, despite all my himming and hawwing, I can still speak French - like it or not!

I've also gotten to travel on conferences.  Most notably, I travelled to Canada and visited the U.S. embassy in Ottawa during a conference.  My week-long stay was paid for entirely by the U.S. and Canadian government.

Travel is a luxury, though.  Most people don't have the money or reason to go so they can't prioritize it.  It annoys me to see Americans being so damn uppity about what they have when they've never seen the outside world.  The world isn't America, contrary to a recent comment made by some idiot in a facebook war about why America doesn't provide proper health care to its citizens and why it should.  It isn't the world and people do just fine on their own minus our "help".  I am an American but I'm not that dense, basically.  I don't assume that our way is best.  Leaving the country made me appreciate things like a welfare state and transport (I never owned a car until I graduated school and still hate driving) that the U.S. really doesn't provide as well as any other HDC.  However, leaving the country also made me appreciate things like food.  I still stand by the fact that the U.S. has one of the best food "cultures" around and Chicago, specifically, is a food mecca that I have come to miss when not living in the metro area.  Still, it was academia and research that afforded me these experiences.  I wish everyone had these opportunities but my job is unique in allowing me such things.

2. Time
I make my own schedule.  I doubt I will ever find a job more flexible than this.  And that's why if I ever have kids I will likely be the person that is running the kids to the doctor, dentist, etc because lord knows I can.  I still work 80 hours a week but I don't see that block schedule that my Dad does.  He's a banker and works a ton of hours.  He has a hard time believing sometimes, I think, that I work as many hours as I do but I really do.  I take my work home with me.  I grade papers all of the effing time, I eat while I'm reading for courses, and I think up paper ideas or keyword searches in the shower.  Work never stops, of course, which leads to stress, but if I manage it, I can have a pretty good schedule.

This schedule allows me to travel, to have the summers off, and to set my own hours.  Few jobs allow for this but if I stay in academia, this will always be my blessing (and curse).  I want to look at it as a glass half full, though.  No need to be a total pessimist.

3. A community that "gets it".
My colleagues are also my closest friends and my committee is made up of trusted mentors.  I am able to surround myself with people that think like me, work like me, and are interested in the things that I am.  Well, not exactly the SAME things but many of the same things.  When I am stressed about comps, I have shoulders to cry on.  When I am worried about a final paper that just will not work, people get it.  When it is conference season and I am fried and need a break, I have people around me who need the same.

Now, again, this is good and bad.  If you get into a fight with someone, it's an issue.  If you date someone in your program - rule number one you shouldn't break (take it from me!) - they can choose to be an asshole and air your dirty laundry to the program staff at any minute.  Ask me how I know.  Oh wait, that's because it happened 2 days ago to me.  I also share an office with 15 people.  I love most of them some of the time.  I hate some of them some of the time.  I don't hate or love everyone all of the time.  It's bound to be like that when there are so many type A's in a room.  So, it can be good and bad.

But it's mostly good.  Your family (unless they are academics) won't get you.  Your significant others from non-academic backgrounds will NOT get you.  And they may think what you are doing is a joke because your pay is so little.  But, I can assure you, someone at the office WILL get you.  It may not be everyone all the time and sometimes things are better than others but someone will always get you all of the time.

Have any of your own thoughts?  I know graduate school is no luxurious way to live.  Paycheck-to-paycheck and all.  But it does afford us some luxuries.  It reminds me of a faculty member who compares it to playing ball.  If you do the best you can, you will end up being able to come in and play ball day after day.  It's a dream job and if you work, you can keep it, according to him.

How do you talk to normal people?

Normal people confuse me suddenly.  I have realized at this part in my career, where I have been fully indoctrinated into my discipline and the academic world, I am no longer part of the general population.  I don't say this to be uppity because I don't believe my knowledge of  a small part of the world entitles me to feel superior.  And yeah, I study social policy. I can't feel too uppity since that i the one thing that I loathe most!  But I mean, I don't talk like a normal person.

Whenever I talk to my parents, my sister, my friends who don't do this work, or my extended family, I often go off on a tangent about various things:
-statistics
-tenure track jobs and how I desperately need one
-technical health policy documentation, bills
-the problems with defining poverty
-other countries and the way they handle health care
-R1's and how I want to work for one
-funding
-fellowships I would like abroad
-department politics
-comps
-dealing with students

None of these make much sense to the average person.  God bless my family for being supportive and trying to understand my jargon and why I would want a shirt that says "stop staring at my normal bimodal distribution".  My mother works in an engineering department and designs parts.  My dad is a banker.  Nothing makes much of a bridge to their worlds.  While my dad loves politics and we often discuss economic policy, my mother loathes our post-dinner discussions with a bottle of wine.  And even then, my father has never taken  statistics course like myself.

I found myself rattling on about coding to my mother last night and a publication I am working on with a faculty member I love.  My mother knows about the faculty members that matter to me because they are great people and I talk a lot about them, but she doesn't care about coding or a cross-sectional, time series study on Canadian welfare policy.

Reminding myself to not use jargon is something my colleagues also do every day.  We have a hard time in the "real world" not because what we do is irrelevant or is unimportant, but because of our technical language.  It's not unique to my discipline or academia, I just didn't anticipate this would ever happen.  I was warned, but I never thought it would be this dire!