Customer Reviews

Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I always thought the life of a college professor was one of quiet repose, but I was wrong! Author James Lang takes the reader inside his chosen profession and reveals the stress, challenge and gratification involved. He details his experience in forging new relationships with colleagues and students alike, and relates his commitment to maintaining his own teaching style--which, I think, is quite innovative. This book is a must for anyone choosing this line of work. --Jan Lastella

I appreciated the very human story, but as someone just starting out on this path, I found it discouraging that the moral of the story seems to be "don't even try to get research done during the term" rather than "try and work with what you have".

From Lang's description, it sounds like he has all the qualities of "slow starters" illustrated in Robert Boice's book _Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus_: he is impatient, overly ambitious in his goals, under-estimates how much time things take, will not work unless he has large blocks of time, allows other things to cut into his research time, and does not try to improve his work habits in realistic ways by taking advantage of the time that he does have. The one time he takes out a project, he tries to tackle it all at once, becomes discouraged by its immensity, and then puts it away. I kept cheering for him to discover better work habits, but he never did.

I did like his lessons about teaching and adapting to one's course, and found it refreshing to hear an honest discussion of the dynamics of departmental politics, and reassuring to hear how he felt initial hesitation to ask for advice, but always got good advice when he asked.

The author provides warm, reflective, from-the-frontlines commentary on being an English professor at a small college who is also a Catholic, a father, a person with chronic health problems, and an unambitious researcher. If not many of those identifiers apply to you, don't bother with this book; it is written from a highly personalized perspective. For more widely applicable help, I recommend Robert Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members or Emily Toth's Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.






instead.

In a sea of academic self-help and personal essays, James Lang's account of his first tenure-track experience is -- thankfully -- more of a token from a companion than a mentor. It rings true to life as a college professor, quirks and foibles included, and humanely regarded.
If anything else, his personable ethos makes for an comforting time with a friend, which is to be appreciated.

I've never reviewed a book on Amazon before, but I really want to recommend this one. If you're headed toward the tenure track, or are even thinking about it, you should read this book. It's served as a nice counterpoint to all the advice books I've been reading lately. While those other books have been really helpful to me, this one's helpful in a different way--it shows rather than tells. It also helps remind me that things don't always come off well, despite our best intentions, and it's all too easy to ignore/forget good advice under pressure. Academic life is not all that it's cracked up to be, it can be a real grind, but it's still got plenty to recommend it, and Lang's painfully honest account reminds me to count my blessings. A bad academic job is better than many good non-academic ones. I'm recommending "Life on the Tenure Track" to my fellow grad students, and also to undergrads who have romantic aspirations for the professoriate.

I enjoyed reading Lang's articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education so I decided to read the book while I was finishing up my PhD dissertation...I guess, to get a preview of academic life. The book is a good read and, although his experiences are based on teaching at a small university and in a non-science department, his highs and lows during the first year on the tenure track are relatable to those of us who are in the sciences and in research-intensive institutions. (Though, I'm jealous he did not stress too much about peer-reviewed publications and getting grants!)

I have been reading quite a few books about and by academics. This one was a pretty good one. I am a child of two former college professors and I am also a doctoral student. This book felt very authentic and I believe that Lang does a good job of expressing the stress and worry that a young husband and parent might feel on the tenure track the first year.

I do wish that he would have given less detail about the daily experience of Crohn's disease. I really didn't want to read about diarrhea and visiting the toilet. I think that those details would be better left to the other book that Lang was working on, a book about illness. It was just TMI and made me uncomfortable as a reader. This is the reason for 4 stars instead of 5.

After reading this book I will look forward to more of Lang's articles on the Chronicle of Higher Education. I like his writing style.

"Life on the Tenure Track" is a refreshingly funny look at the life of a new teacher. Being a new teacher myself, I could easily relate to Lang's story and I think I have been in a lot of the same situations he has faced. While reading this book, I looked back at my own classroom experiences, laughed, and realized, as Lang does in the book, that life goes on. "Life on the Tenure Track" may be about a first year college professor, but any classroom teacher could probably relate to his experiences and lessons learned. Lang helped me realize that as a new teacher and professional student, I do not always have the luxury of finding time to write. The lesson I take from Lang is to create lists of writing ideas and to write about the process of not writing, to write about your experiences.

James Lang has a gift for writing, and writing honestly. His story is one that anyone within or interested in the academic world can relate to. The telling of his experience draws the reader into both his world while inviting the reader to consider his or her own experience, motivation and challenges.

While this book may be of little interest to those outside the walls of academe, I might be bold enough to suggest that Lang's writing style is such that almost anyone could enjoy reading this book. I recommend this book to a variety of people. First and foremost, this is a must-read for grad students aspiring to tenure-track positions. It is on the list of required reading for junior faculty as well, if only because it provides a beacon of solidarity amid an ocean of rocky trials. Finally, this is - as I alluded earlier - just a superb book that anyone could enjoy. So go ahead and get this today!

Lang does an excellent job describing the job of an assistant professor, as well as documenting an interesting personal journey.