2018 Tenure Track Cohort

[eigen]

I'm not sure if anyone else from my cohort wandered over here yet, but I wanted to re-start the 2018 TT cohort thread in our new home.

It's the end of the first year! How's everyone surviving?

[mamselle]

Should we do a copy-and-paste link here and in the CHE thread to get folks to come over?

M.

[nescafe]

Hey y'all! I made it over!

My quarter still has a few weeks to go, and I'm currently getting my ass handed back to me. This has been a good quarter, but I haven't felt this utterly incompetant in the classroom in a long time.

Every place has a learning curve. Every place has quirks and invisible walls you don't see until you walk right into them, nose first. I'm bumping into every wall in the place! Mostly because I'm teaching new preps, am new to the quarter system, and have oversubscribed courses. These are all luxury problems, but mid-June still can't come quick enough.

[eigen]

Yay! I'm not alone.

Semester wrapped here, and I immediately flew out while grading to a workshop in DC, then back for a few days, and out for another conference.

I'll be diving in with summer research students in the first week of June, so that will kick-start a (hopefully) productive summer.

I'm finally feeling a bit settled at the new institution, and starting to get involved in curricular and other development work around campus.

[greyscale]

I don't know that I ever joined this thread on the old fora, but I'm in this cohort - though thanks to endless bureaucracy, my clock didn't start until January 2019. I can't believe my first six months are almost done...

[Nekolove]

I am also here! So glad you are all finished (or almost finished) with your first year.

Things went really well for me and I'm definitely finding my stride. I didn't put much pressure on myself to get a lot of research done which helped my stress levels. I had a few things in the hopper, and am planning to work my butt off this summer to catch up. I have already met a lot of people across campus, and making meaningful connections with other departments as I build my new program.

And facilities/administration actually came through and renovated the classroom promised to me for my discipline which is brand new to the campus. And it looks gorgeous. They found some money to have it properly cleaned (I'm in art/design so the classroom was filthy from decades of drawing courses...charcoal and graphite tends to become airborne and sticks to every surface), freshly painted, ordered new furniture on wheels so I can have a totally flexible space, and new computers. I'm going to hang colorful posters and put all my teaching books and supplies in there in the next couple of weeks and I'm thrilled to start teaching in there in the fall.

I am still struggling with not saying yes to everything and definitely overcommitted to service stuff the first year. I'm planning to work really hard on saying NO this year. I will be serving as a faculty senator and on a couple of committees so I think I can safely say no to everything else. I hope I have the strength to do so! I just need to channel Polly mer.

What are everyone's plans for the summer? I took my week long vacation early and was lucky enough to get a summer stipend and will be writing curriculum and writing articles all summer. And hopefully reading for pleasure and catching up on Netflix. What about the rest of you?

[Golazo]

I hadn't posted for quite a while on the old CHE forum, with the crazy of starting a new position, but the new Fora needs posters. I jumped back on the TT at a public regional after several years in a non-academic post, after bailing on one of the colleges similar the the ones gracing the closure thread just after finishing the PHD. I'm using a new moniker here, so I'll be less identifiable.  At any rate, this has been a busy summer with teaching online, running a workshop, trying to satisfy reviewer #2 (hopefully I'm close). Since I'm on a shortened clock, I need to make sure to keep my productivity up. I really like my department, and I think there is a clear path the tenure. However, the state legislature has been doing some wonky things (not Alaska crazy, yet), and I'm a little ambivilent about where we are going at the institutional level, so maybe that's a post for a job market thread...

[nescafe]

What are everyone's plans for the summer? I took my week long vacation early and was lucky enough to get a summer stipend and will be writing curriculum and writing articles all summer. And hopefully reading for pleasure and catching up on Netflix. What about the rest of you?

Sounds like a good plan to me! I'm in the field this summer. I caught the plague this week, though, so laying low and watching Netflix. I have a chapter to finish and am otherwise collecting archival materials for the new project. Going on a late-August vacation that I'm really looking forward to. Otherwise glad to have this chance to focus in on my writing/research, as my teaching schedule got the better of me last Spring.

[blueghost]

I'm involved in more departmental changes than I ever thought I would be going into my second year on the TT. I'm in a department that combines two separate fields, and my field is the smaller of the two. We need to increase the number of majors before administration gets any ideas about eliminating our program.

What that means is that I'm designing an "honors section" of our introductory course for this fall, as well as one of the new sophomore-level classes to be on the books for fall 2020. At least I was able to get an internal grant to pay me a summer stipend for this development work.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

I`m a first year tenure track faculty and I cant find the 2019 cohort. Any idea if the 2019 cohort migrated their discussion thread to fora.org yet?

[eigen]

I`m a first year tenure track faculty and I cant find the 2019 cohort. Any idea if the 2019 cohort migrated their discussion thread to fora.org yet?

Here you go! https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=89.0

They made the decision to merge new starts for 2019, TT and non-TT.

I'm sure if you wanted to start one that was just the TT cohort, that could also be useful.