SOMETHING NOT FOR THE CV

Hi All,

Assistant Professor here, hoping to be read by fellow junior faculty (and senior faculty, too, if they care to eavesdrop). Full disclosure: AssProf is tenure-track, after simultaneously navigating the academic job-market, the pandemic (academia is pretending it is over, so AssProf is rolling with that), and some high stakes personal crises. Anyway ... moving on from that arduous history to the present, AssProf wants to post brief articles on this blog, mainly for two reasons:

(1) AssProf is grateful for the countless academic blogposts that taught them everything from how to apply for a PhD to what to write in an email to the Provost. AssProf wants to give back a little, and share bits and pieces from the wisdom they have been gathering, slowly but surely, as university faculty.

(2) AssProf needs to do something they cannot put on their CV.

In fact, (2) is the subject of this introductory post. You will be on a CV-nurturing high as new faculty. This is one of the toxic residues of the academic job-market: you may have landed a job, but you will have no inclination to pause and breathe. I (yes, this is still AssProf, but I am ditching the third person; it got tiring after the numerical list) spent my first six months on the new job only doing CV-worthy work. Every single time my brain was pregnant with a new idea, I announced the conception on the CV (forthcoming/in-progress/under development), and got to work to push the baby out ASAP. This is maybe not harmful until you turn from human into research-teaching-service-machine (you must stop when you start cultivating hobbies that can go under "service for the field"). So, devote some of your time (whatever you can afford: 10 minutes a week to a whole Saturday if it's at your disposal) to doing something not for the cv. This is easier said than done, especially if you are looking for a new thing to do. If you already have a creative outlet extraneous to your professorial identity, keep at it! I do too, and writing for pleasure used to be one of them prior to this junior-faculty CV-craze. So now, I have this blog. It was the perfect solution, really. The articles that are brewing in my mind, I could comfortably post only as AssProf, and there goes my chance to add it as some sort of academic service (we'll see)!

Write again soon. Stay well, readers!