Some excellent advice.
- It is best to go on the job market your last ABD year, so that you’ll appear fresh AND it’s preferable to have your degree in hand and a few years of teaching experience.
- One should publish aggressively in field-leading journals and seek to publish one’s dissertation as soon as practicable in order to stand out AND it’s best to go the more traditional route and hold back on publishing one’s research so as to save it for the tenure probationary period.
- One should cultivate as wide a teaching competence as possible so as to serve a variety of departmental needs AND one needs to have a clear, narrow specialization.
- One should jump at the opportunity to do adjunct work in order to stay in the field and develop one’s teaching portfolio AND one should be cautious about doing adjunct work lest it leave you with the taint of being a second-rater.
Excellence in truth, not in usefulness.
4 comments
December 30, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Anderson
Anyone here hasn’t read “The Whiskey Speech”?
I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey.
December 30, 2011 at 1:26 pm
eric
Thanks, Anderson – I had heard that attributed to various politicians but never with any degree of certainty.
December 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm
JazzBumpa
Sorry – with my chemistry background, I just couldn’t get past “Antimonies.”
Cheers and happy New Year!
JzB
January 2, 2012 at 10:49 am
Pauly Shore
Happy New Year! I missed you guys!