The Road to Tenure

The Road to Tenure offers humorous recollections of the messiness and confusion that fill the days of a pre-tenure academicfrom graduate school through the postdoc and into the assistant professor days. The books three sections roughly map onto the chronology of academic life, beginning with graduate school and the job search experience; followed by teaching, research, and service; and finally the challenges of family and academic identity. The book is not a how-to, nor does it emphasize lessons learned on the way to tenure. Instead, the collection earnestly, and with good humor, captures a significant and meaningful slice of the experience of pursuing academia in contemporary colleges and universities. For the doctoral student or newly hired faculty member, these essays will provide some comfort with their implicit suggestion that, while its certainly hard work, you are not alone.