Kristin: hey Cheryl.
Cheryl: well, hey there Kristin!
Kristin: ok, that greeting made me giggle.
Cheryl: me too.
Cheryl: I'm looking at the Transition page, and I love seeing your handwriting. I miss it.
Kristin: awww
Cheryl: I think about MTU a lot. When I first got a tenure-track job, I tried really hard not to talk about grad school like it was the best place on earth, but it was hard not to.
Kristin: Grad school was comforting, it really was. It's like we were all in a built in community.
Cheryl: That’s definitely what I missed the most -- being around folks who are studying the same things we are.
Kristin: I got invited to shoot pool w/ some grad students here a few weeks ago, but it was more of a pity invitation I think, and I get the sense that they'd rather I remain "Professor" and not become "drinking buddy."
Cheryl: That is SOO true. When I moved here, I wanted it to be like grad school (where the faculty and students seemed to hang out together). But, instead, I was pretty sure that the MA students (no PhD at the time) were afraid of me or just didn’t want to associate with me. (In retrospect, I think it’s just that they didn’t know me, and they didn’t have any reason to get to know me since I wasn’t yet teaching grad classes.)
Kristin: TOTALLY! One grad student here physically seems defeated when I'm around him. It freaks me out, like he's deferring to me physically. Every once in awhile when I'm sitting alone in my office I get Simon & Garfunkel "I am a rock, I am an iiiiissssland" stuck in my head.
Cheryl: lol! Oh, remember my first year here, when my office was on the 4th floor of the building?
Kristin: Was that when you had an open house in your office?
Cheryl: Yeah, my open-house office. It was the top-floor of the building with no facilities besides the grad student offices. None of the faculty would come to the 4th floor to hang out and talk with me. And none of the grad students would talk to me because I was the "Professor." That totally sucked.
Kristin: Yeah, I seriously haven't had one faculty member ever come and talk to me in my office. Jeez, that's depressing to think about. WAIT! Patty came by once.
Cheryl: lol. Yeah, Ryan came by once.
Kristin: Our peeps.
Cheryl: So that's why I started the Friday drinking club. I needed the faculty interaction. The face-time and socializing. You do that too, right?
Kristin: My Friday drinking club involves faculty from fine arts, music, rural sociology, and women's studies. No English people.
Cheryl: My group is similar. At first, it was just the four new English faculty (all fresh outta PhDs, so we had a built-in cohort, which was great). It’s morphed into a different group with more similar social interests-- two from English (me and Ryan, a colleague who has been fantastic to work with, plus his wife Julie), one from History, and one from Business. We have a wonderful, gossipy time. A much-needed, end-of-week session.
Kristin: It is odd because I think I'm the youngest in the department. There are two other people near my age, but everyone else is 40s/50s/60s. Not that age should matter that much, but in terms of socializing they already have their own groups/habits/etc.
Cheryl: yeah. It's hard to fit in, in those situations. I didn’t take a job offer from another school because of that same reason; I decided I wouldn't fit socially. But, that doesn’t mean I always fit here either. Lots of my colleagues thought I was much younger. And not a few of them took about a year to figure out that I was a faculty member, not a masters student. (lol – they must have wondered why I was in the faculty meetings!)

TRANSITIONING INTO RESEARCH
Kristin: I just really miss a community of learners, being a prof no longer feels like community learning. I now need to be an individual pillar of knowledge.
Cheryl: That's true, but then you also learn to collaborate.
Kristin: I need to figure out how to do that (collaborate).
Cheryl: You will. It's still early. Hey, wait! We're collaborating!!!
Kristin: We ARE collaborating! Perhaps collaboration as a prof lacks the immediacy I so enjoyed as a grad student.
Cheryl: You said earlier that you were working on a bunch of stuff this week. Tell me again.
Kristin: Well, I'm finishing this piece up, which is good. I'm also sending out a CFP for an edited collection I'm working on w/ Anne Wysocki. THEN, I need to get an abstract out (by the end of today) for a CFP that I'd be silly not to respond to.
Cheryl: Can I just say that that's a Heck of a lot of work that you're doing - and it's only your third month in the job.
Kristin: It's week 15 here (last week of classes!) and I PROMISED myself I'd get 2 articles out by the holidays, but it's not going to happen. I HATE not making my goals. I just feel like I’m supposed to be brilliant immediately. Brilliant and productive.
Cheryl: First years are hectic - trying to get to know your colleagues, figuring out how you fit in, who to work with (who to avoid :)).... Getting two articles out is a good goal, but just look at the other stuff you've accomplished!
Kristin: Thanks. I hope I'll look back at this time and not think it was all wasted. I keep thinking about what Cindy and Gail say: PUBLISH PUBLISH PUBLISH. I know it's true, but the pressure of it freaks me out.
Cheryl: The key, I think, is to keep pushing -- there's no break after the diss. It's "send those chapters out!" starting asap. That's the mentality, but you're always going to lose time your first year, just adjusting. For me, the hardest part of the first year was getting used to the technology (or lack thereof). For most grad students in C&W, it's a BIG adjustment just to figure out how the heck to teach the classes you have been used to teaching, but in a totally different setting.
Kristin: I did sweet talk my way up to 500MB of space instead of the 50 I started out with. Ok, really I just asked nicely.
Cheryl: Yeah, and that's all it takes sometimes -- just asking. I did a lot of sit-downs with the sysad when I got here, to tell him what I was working on, what I was teaching, and why we needed more of X, Y, and Z. He's a good guy, and he likes beer, which helps :)

FIT, FREAK-OUTS, and FINLANDERS
Kristin: Indeed. I just noticed what Amy Kimme Hea says, that: "The first year in a faculty position is exciting and terrifying." I have to agree!
Cheryl: Exactly! I remember Tony Atkins talking about his transition to his first job out of grad school. The systems were set up so that he couldn’t download needed plug-ins on his office computer, and he didn’t have much recourse for changing they way things worked. That's a good example of figuring out how you fit. He decided he didn't fit there – that is, that he would have an unlikely chance of getting tenure at a school that was unfriendly to technologists when his research agenda was teaching with technology -- and so he decided to go back on the market.
Kristin: Oh jeez, wow. I'm actually pretty happy w/ our technology, but it was getting used to the differences that were tough. My Finlander work ethic makes it hard for me to sometimes see things like "fit." Instead, I have a voice in my head saying "You have a good job. Work hard! Earn money! Feed the family!" This ethic does not say such things as "are you happy?"
Cheryl: Sometimes it takes a while to figure out whether you're happy. Carrie Lamanna once asked me whether the comp/rhet job market was moving to a “starter job” model. I told her I think there’s two things at play: (a) We can’t all work at the same kinds of institutions we got our PhDs at (iow, many of us will be going into schools where we are the only C&W person, and maybe the only comp/rhet person!). And (b) we need to re-educate ourselves about the benefits of what we might otherwise consider “starter job” schools. Those may be the places we're best suited for, or the places where we are happiest.
Kristin: I'm pretty happy about where I ended up (WSU was on my short list). Its even harder to think about fit when on paper it looked so perfect. Although, after a semester, I think it is a good fit. Then again, the past semester is totally a blur so what do I know?
Cheryl: It’s really hard to see those things clearly during our first year because we’re still dumbstruck by the whole dissertation process. (At least I was!)
Kristin: I'm still getting over the dissertation. I noticed Clancy said she still has anxiety dreams about the diss! Frightening!
Cheryl: Are you having diss nightmares? I certainly did the first year, and tenure meetings didn't help.
Kristin: I'm doing OK w/ the diss thing, but in some ways I still feel like I'm coming down. I noticed Becky says: "You need to get out of the midset of being a grad student before you become a Professor" How does one start "thinking and acting like a professor?" Do I need a new wardrobe? More New Yorkers on the coffee table?
Cheryl: lol. For me, thinking like a prof had a lot to do with the professional development/service activities (Kairos, CIWIC, etc.) I did as a grad student. That helped me pretend I was on the same level as faculty members, since I had to interact with them in a more, uh, faculty kind of way.
Kristin: As much as I learned as a grad student, and as confident as I am in many ways, I still totally stink at networking. I don't want to brag about anything I'm doing, and even TALKING about what I'm doing feels like bragging to me. I need to seek professional help :)
Cheryl: Lots of folks do great work - amazing work - and are quiet people. You're like that.
Kristin: The meek shall inherit the earth, or something
Cheryl: But in C&W, we also have role models like Cindy and Gail, who are -- well -- they're kinda like me and you.
Cheryl: Cindy's super-outgoing and Gail is more reserved. And that's why (I think) they collaborate so well. A symbiosis.
Kristin: hahahahhahaha, did you just try to compare us to Gail and Cindy? That was awesome and hilarious.
Cheryl: lol – there’s no chance!! The example just came to mind! I'm just saying that there are different kinds of role models for folks to emulate. lol, I mean Cindy and Gail, like, started C&C and CIWIC their first years as new faculty members! Good grief! We’d be lucky to, well, stop freaking out about the disses! Doesn't Jim Kalmbach say it will occupy your whole first year?
Kristin: Jim's comment is on the first-year page of advice.
Cheryl: Alright then. Time to move on!