In mid-September 2025, we started a blog series, “Office Hours: Year One”, where three first-year tenure-track professors from different institutions reflect on their experiences throughout the first year. See Part 1 here. We are back with Part 5 of the series. It is the end of the road for these first years. They took the time to reflect on their first couple of semesters back in May, and then I decided to sit on it for too long because life admin got in the way. But (!) couched in their reflections is a well of experience and advice for anyone starting their assistant tenure-track/senior-lecturer jobs today or in the next couple of months. We hope it is helpful. Wishing all a great start to the semester!
Thank you again to Dr. Brooklyn Walker (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Dr. Charmaine Willis (Old Dominion University), and Dr. Jennifer Ostojski (Indiana State University) for contributing and letting us get a glimpse at the first-year life. We appreciate their contributions and their advice!
Brooklyn Walker: The semester wrapped up well. My Religion and Politics class simulated a Supreme Court case, and the students’ energy was palpable. MPSA was busy, but fantastic: I met new people, reconnected with old friends, and had energizing conversations. And then I headed to Stanford for a small conference connected to an edited book project. Again, new people, old friends, and energizing conversations. Final grades are submitted, and the department halls are now quiet.
There are several priorities for the summer. I’ve had some articles come out lately, so my pipeline is drained. I have datasets to field, data to analyze, grants to apply for, findings to write up, and manuscripts to revise. I’ll be attending ISPP in July, a newbie to both the conference and the UK (where the conference is held). On the teaching side, I’m switching American Government textbooks and got helpful feedback on the Religion and Politics course, so both classes will require extensive reworking. As one can imagine, family life will be tremendously busy over the summer. I’m thinking about how to protect blocks of work time so I can also be more present during blocks of family time.
If I could go back and talk to myself a year ago, I’d remind myself to center and trust curiosity. I went back to graduate school at the age of 37 because I had burning questions I needed answers to, and that curiosity kept me writing during my years at a community college. This past year, there were moments when I got too far into my own head, worrying about what I should be doing or what kinds of work would satisfy other people’s expectations. But recently, I’ve noticed that curiosity keeps drawing me into conversations I want to have about issues I care about. The people I’d so wanted to please seem happiest with the projects most driven by curiosity. And, because I genuinely care about the questions, the work feels light.
That’s something I want to carry into next year: for me, intellectually alive work emerges from sustained curiosity rather than constant professional self-monitoring.
Charmaine Willis: Hard to believe year 1 is over! This semester went well, though as I wrote previously, it was unexpectedly busy despite only teaching 1 (!) course. I’m still learning how to teach and mentor graduate students, but so far it has gone well.
That said, I am excited to be able to focus mostly on research this summer. I was hoping to have a restful summer, but that does not look like it is in the cards as I push my book manuscript towards completion. I’m also participating in a great Japan-focused conference (quickly becoming one of my favorites) and a few exciting professional development opportunities. However, I will make some time to take “off” (no research or other work, no family obligations, maybe even an OO message and avoiding my work email???) this summer, as well.
On this note as well, I’m trying to be more judicious with my time and energy as I think about which conferences to apply for or attend in the next AY (!). I’m someone who tends to conference a lot (I remember a professor telling me when I was in grad school that one conference a year was typical and thinking “seriously??”), not that I have an abundance of financial resources (and I certainly had less as a grad student!). I find them especially helpful (at a minimum) as external deadlines (i.e., I need to have a draft of this paper completed before the conference), and more recently, for papers in progress. There was a time when I would apply for several conferences per semester and/or submit multiple papers per conference (depending on submission rules), but I am trying to be (and doing, I think) better about limiting my conference participation throughout the year, especially at this point in my career.
I don’t know that there’s any specific piece of advice I’d give myself a year ago that I learned that I didn’t already know (to some extent), except to say things tend to be more expensive and time-consuming than you expect them to be. Many of us (especially in academia) have to move for our jobs; if we are lucky, we will receive some kind of moving allowance (typically a reimbursement). However, this is never enough. Similarly, university funding can be generous, but still may not cover everything; I had to “eat” some conference it expenses this year. Plan accordingly as much as you can.
Similarly, moving and getting settled into a new place (residence and position) takes time. For me, the latter has been pretty smooth, but the former took time, as the housing market here is rough.
Research and publications also take time; we all know this, but the tenure-track makes that really hit home. While it is somewhat journal-dependent, often the best-case scenario with journal articles is a year from initial submission to publication, and can be longer for many reasons. When you are considering tenure requirements (and annual evaluations), thinking about that time frame is very important. I was lucky to have two published in my first year that I’d previously been working on, and one that just came out that will apply to year two. All but one of them were published at the first journal I submitted to (one was at the second journal). This process is magnified for book publishing, which is, much like the dissertation (and for most of us, a form of the dissertation), about project management. This process can take years, of course, and like journal publishing, it depends partially on whether one can place the book quickly (a publisher is interested after getting the manuscript peer-reviewed). As I finish my first year, I’m thinking a lot more about scheduling and the amount of time things take to complete.
Jennifer Ostojski: Similar to my cohort colleagues, I feel like this first year went by in a flash. The rhythm of the semesters just kept going and suddenly it was time in May to submit grades yet again. My first year was filled with a lot of new things, and learning how prior teaching stints differed from the tenure-track. This meant especially to have to/want to make more time for service responsibilities and interests, which on the best of days complement my research and teaching and on the worst days completely distract from it. But that is also a new normal that I am taking into my second year. Depending on what institution you are in, these responsibilities will be bigger or smaller in the beginning of your tenure-track journey.
I don’t think I succeeded (yet) at the whole work-life balance (cue to look shocked right about here). Last year, I manifested that I wanted to prioritize that, but here we are and I look at weekend grading sessions and some late night class prep/writing sessions that got in the way of all that manifesting. Oh well. I’ll try again this summer. I was glad to attend a couple of conferences in the Spring that reconnected me with some old colleagues and old/new friends. It felt energizing and also allowed me to refocus on some on-going research projects that I have submitted at the beginning of the month and plan to finalize by the end of the summer (I am looking at you, edited volume!). (Side note: I finally got to meet Charmaine at ISA and Brooklyn at MPSA – and they are as awesome in person as they are online).
I really, really enjoyed my teaching assignments this year – looking back. It was a combination of old preps and new preps, meeting tons of new students, and adapting as we go through the semester to meet the needs of the learning environment. Luckily, in the fall I have a lot of repeats, so I can take it easier over the summer when it comes to “worrying” about that part. I want to continue doing my Model EU group next spring and continue creating this program in my department, as it is amazing to see students flourish in such experiential environments but also as an educator it is just great to participate.
Thinking about what I’d tell myself if I had to do it all over again: Frankly, slow down and take a breath. Similar to Charmaine’s thoughts, everything will take a bit longer than you will think it will take. It just will. And that is okay, because you are not sprinting, you are given a space to slowly develop your career. Yes, there are external pressures, but … slow and steady will get it down. I know it’s easier said than done, and maybe it just comes with the experience and excitement of the first year, but it’s basically what I tell my students in the first days of the semester as well: “you are new; you are allowed to stumble and learn.”
Summer will be a list of things I hope to “achieve”, and then we will let the dice land wherever they may fall. I am learning from my manifesting that sometimes life will get in the way of that. Academic summers somehow are always super long, and then they are just over in a blink of an eye.