A while back a former student told me he had just gotten married, had a daughter, finished his PhD, and got a tenure-track job at a university.   Busy day.   He also wanted to set up a time to chat about how to be a successful new assistant professor.
 
After thinking about this for a couple days, here was the most important piece of advice I was planning to tell him.
 
If you’re starting a new professor, the most important thing you need to do is to look at your next 40 years and decide who your main audience is going to be.  I think there are four types of audiences that you can have as a professor:  1) Your school, 2) your field, 3) your mission 4) yourself.  You might be thinking you can serve multiple masters and split your attention to all four, but this is very, very difficult.  People who try to satisfy two masters often end up to two unhappy masters.
 
1. Your School.  As a new professor, you can focus on your school.  If you do this, your audience is the administrators, students, and other professors at your school.  You can aim at being a charismatic teacher, a go-to committee member, a friendly-to-all colleague, and a tenurable researcher.  The upside is you can be very successful at your school and grow a strong and appreciated community around yourself.  However, most of your investment will have been in “institutional capital.”  The downside is you may not be especially movable to other schools.  
 
2.  Your Field.  Some professors can focus on their field.  Their audience is other professors in their same field.  As graduate students, we grow to admire the famous people in our field or the ones who wrote the key papers we based our dissertation on.  Some new professors want to mainly focus on their field and to contribute to it in our own way.  This involves doing the right types of research and publishing it in the right types of journals.  If all goes well, you will have opportunities to more attractive schools.  But sometimes this doesn’t have an end. That’s the downside of a field-focus.  Some people can really grind themselves down trying to publish more and more, but it might frustratingly never be enough to satisfy whatever's driving them.
 
3.  Your Mission.  Some new professors focus on a specific mission that involves changing something.  Some might be driven to  change the criminal justice system, social justice, how companies operate, what people eat, how children are raised, and so on.  This offers a very satisfying mission because you can focus your research, teaching, and outreach at activities you think can change a corner or your specific world, and you can become a go-to expert in that area. Also, the impact you can have is more unique and more permanent in many ways.  The downside is that a mission-focus takes a while before it starts getting traction and having impact.  As a result, you’ll probably have to move around and change schools to eventually find the right school that most appreciates what you’re doing. 
 
 
4.  Yourself.  Still other professors focus on themselves.  This “March to my own drummer” approach sounds like the perfect ideal of academic freedom – doing what you want, when you want, wherever your muse leads you.  The downside of this approach is that focusing on yourself doesn’t always lead to tenure, the next promotion, job offers other schools, or to being appreciated and valued by your colleagues. 
 
 
Choosing one of these four audiences usually isn’t a conscious decision by most new professors, but it will probably be the track you’re on until you retire.  It’s like choosing a North, South, East, or West road out of town from your PhD School.  Once you’ve driven on that road for few years, you can’t go back, and it’s super hard to change roads. 
​• “I’m going to focus on my field, then focus on myself.”  After doing this for the 12 years it will take to become a full professor, your values and your work habits will probably not let you change the road without losing your reference group or feeling like you’re now “dead wood.”  
 
• “I’m going to focus on my school and getting tenure, then I’ll focus on my mission.”  After you get tenure, then you’ll want to put it off until you’re a full professor, then until you finish your time as department chair, or as associate dean, or until you retire.  Once you lose your research or outreach momentum, it’s hard to get it back.  The immediate, short-term strokes you’re getting from your school will seem much more attractive than the delayed gratification of muscling up to pursue a perhaps faded mission. 
​To summarize these thoughts I had, when my former student friend got on the call, I was planning on emphasizing just three points:
 
1. Choose your audience carefully because you’ll probably have it for 40 years
2. Here’s the pluses and minuses of each audience
3. Realize it’s really difficult – either practically or psychologically – to change your audience down the road
 
 
That was the plan . . . but of course that wasn’t what happened during the call.   When I said the biggest piece of advice for a new professor is to carefully choose who your audience is going to be, he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s really important.”  Then we started talking and laughing about other stuff.
 
To then return and say “This is going to be a 40-year decision you make,” seemed like a heavy thing to say when we’re high-fiving each other about his new degree, new family, and new job -- and all in one day!
 
He doesn’t start his new job for another four months.  We’ll have time to talk again before he before he‘s shifting into fifth gear.

Some people love graduate school, but most of us want to finish it up and get started with our real lives.

About a couple years ago I met a nice guy from Utah who was finishing his thesis at a university about 5 hours away.  He had just moved here to take a job.  After only two weeks, he was totally immersed in his new job, and I asked him if he was concerned about being able to finish up his thesis.  He said, "Oh, no, not at all.  My university's only 5 hours away, and I've only got a couple months of work left on it."

The idea of starting a new life or a new job a few months early – say, before we’ve completed our dissertation – sounds pretty good.  After all, lots of people Zoom and Skype from home, so  it should be a snap to web-commute back to the university and finish up our dissertation away from the anxieties of campus.  For instance, you could now start your new gig (maybe as a professor) in June instead of August.  Your plan would be to move, get settled, wrap up the dissertation, and get two months of a tempting new salary.  

When I was a PhD student, someone told me that if you want to know how long it will take to finish your dissertation if you move away, you use a simple formula.  You take your best guess of how long you think it will take to finish, then you triple it and add three months.  So if you think you have 2 months left on your dissertation, and you move away in June, you won’t be finished until following March – in 9 months instead of 2 months (2 months x 3 + 3 months = 9 months).   


This is a rough rule-of-thumb, that varies across schools, departments, and people.  Still, when I heard this, I wasn’t going to take any chances.  My apartment lease with my two roommates was up, so I spent the last two months crashing at the apartments of different friends so I could wrap it my dissertation and graduate  before I move away to start my Asst Prof gig. 
​
What happens when you move is not only that it takes time to get resettled and you no longer have the support structure of your PhD program (and the “in sight & in mind” attention of your committee), but you also don’t feel the urgency to finish.  You’re settling into a new role, and everybody's happy to have you around.  You start to put off the uncomfortable pressure of you incomplete dissertation because it feels so much better to be treated as an an adult over here than as a sniffling child over there.  But in a few months when your new department chair asks whether you’re through with your dissertation, it’s going to be awkward to answer.
​
You might not have the option of completing a dissertation on campus, but if you can, it’s worth sleeping on couches until it’s done.

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The Rest of the Story: Four months after meeting the guy from Utah, I ran in to him again at the same boardgame cafe where we had originally met.   He was very excited about having moved, and he was very excited about his new job.   What's notable was that he never mentioned anything about his dissertation, how it was going, or whether it was finished.  His dissertation had been an enthusiastic 80% of our conversation during the first time we met.  Sine he never mentioned it, I wonder if he hadn't made the progress he had expected to make.

There are 100 things on your mental To-Do list.  Daily duties (like email and planning dinner) and pre-scheduled stuff (like meetings and appointments).  But what remains are the big things that are easy to put off because they don’t have hard deadlines – things starting a new initiative, exploring a great idea for a side hustle, finishing a pet project, or taking the first step to follow that crazy dream you’ve had for 10 years. These are the things that could have the biggest impact on you, come the end of the year.

 But these projects are also the easiest things to put off or to only push ahead 1 inch each week.  If you push 100 projects ahead 1 inch each week, you’ve made 100 inches of progress at the end of the week, but your desk is still full and you’re feeling frustratingly resigned to always be behind.  This is an incremental approach.

 A different approach would be to push a 50-inch project ahead until it is finished and falls off the desk; then you could push a 40-inch project ahead until it falls off; and then you can spend the last of your time and energy pushing a small 10-inch project off your desk.  This is the “push-it-off-the-desk” approach.

 Both approaches take 100-inches of work. However, the “push-it-off-the-desk” approach changes how you think and feel.  You still have 97 things left to do, but you can see you made tangible progress. For about 12 years, I tried a number of different systems to do this – to finish up what was most important for the week.  Each of them eventually ended up being too complicated or too constraining for me to stick with.  

 Eventually I stopped looking for a magic system. Instead, at the end of every week, I simply listed the projects or project pieces I was most grateful to have totally finished.  Super simple. It kept me focused on finishing things, and it gave me a specific direction for next week (the next things to finish).  It’s since evolved into something I call a “ 3-3-3 Weekly Recap.”

 Here’s how a 3-3-3 Weekly Recap works.  Every Friday I write down the 3 biggest things I finished that week (“Done”), the 3 things I want to finish next week (“Doing”), and 3 things I’m waiting for (“Waiting for”).  This ends up being a record of what I did that week, a plan for what to focus on next week, and a reminder of what I need to follow up on.  It helps keep me accountable to myself, and it keeps me focused on finishing 3 big things instead of 100 little things.  Here’s an example of one that’s been scribbled in a notebook at the end of last week:

Even though you’d be writing this just for yourself, it might improve your game. It focuses you for the week, it gives you a plan for next week, and it prompts you to follow-up on things you kind of forgot you were waiting for. 

 Sometimes I do it in a notebook and sometimes I type it and send it to myself as an email.  It doesn’t matter the form it’s in or if you ever look back at it (I don’t), it still works.  I’ve shared this with people in academia, business, and government.  

Although it works for most people who try it, it works best for academics who manage their own time and for managers who are supervising others.  They say it helps to keep the focus on moving forward instead of either simply drifting through the details of the day or being thrown off course by a new gust of wind. 
 
I’ve also use this with others who I work with, and we usually use it as a starting point for our 1-on-1 weekly meetings.  They usually email it to me and it’s a useful check-in.   It helps them develop a “Finish it up” mentality, instead of the “Polish this until its perfect” mentality.   

Also, you can give feedback on what they’re choosing to focus on, and you might be able to speed up what they might be waiting for (especially if its something on your desk).  
​
 Good luck in pushing 3 To-Dos off your desk and getting things done. I hope you find this helps.

Fifty percent of a great class is its syllabus.  Over the years I’ve had horrible syllabi and I’ve had good ones.  The problem is that I sometimes didn’t know which was which until after the course is over.  COVID and web-teaching don't make it easier
 
If you’re looking for syllabus ideas or templates you can use this semester, I’ve included some ideas below.  Most are relevant for in-person classes, but other things (like class previews) are even easier to pull off with mid-size and smaller courses on the web.  I've also included an annotation of why certain things worked better than others, such as these:

• It’s useful to have your most recent syllabus revision listed by its most recent date (instead of by it’s version number)

• Students often ask: “What’s this class about?” & “What will we do in class?”  One intro paragraph can answer both.

• Non-native English speakers and shy students have a hard time participating in large classes. Class Previews help them. An hour before each class, I hold a Class Preview that tells people the discussion questions I’ll be asking that day, and then we discuss them ahead of time. Anyone’s welcome to show up.
 
• For large classes, try to have TA office hours every day (or M-Th)
 
• Try to be super specific about what you expect for an A assignment, and what your policy is on late assignments and missed classes.
 
• Rather than having both the final exam and their project due at the end of the semester, I frontload the course with the most work and move their project up to the half-way point.  
 
• Letting students drop their lowest scoring assignment reduces their anxiety and the pressure they feel.
 
• By having students turn in two copies of their project (one to grade and one to file), it helps ensure the same projects don’t show up year after year.
 
• I have a screen-down, no-laptop policy.  If people say they are taking notes, I ask them to send me the notes after class to see if what I’m teaching is coming across like I hope.  
 
• Class insight cards can give class contribution points to well-prepared, but shy students.
 
• Extra credit opportunities are great.  They help reduce student anxiety.  
​
• If your course is cross-listed with both undergrads and grads, the graduate students will need to do something more (usually about 20-25% more).   I also have four specialized class sessions (and a dinner) only for them.
 
• I try to organize the course into very discrete sections.  This way I can frequently review each section in class before I start a new one.  This way it very discretely shows how the parts of the course build on each other.
 
• The Final Project was renamed “Integrative Assignment” and moved to the middle of the semester. They have to work a lot harder early on in the course, but the quality goes up, and their Finals Week stress level goes down.
 
• You can get the most from a guest speaker’s visit if – before class -- you require students to read something written and published about the guest speaker. (It also makes the guest speaker more of a celebrity). On the day they speak, I will usually show a short Youtube clip of them before introducing them.
 
• I want the last class session of the semester to be valuable.  After they turn in their exam and their course evaluations, I give them the option to leave.  For those who stay, I tell them stories of two big lessons I learned in life (the hard way), and how they can deal with challenges in the future.  It’s an unusual way to end the class, but it always ends it on a high and memorable note. 
 
Good luck writing a great syllabus, having a great course, and having a triple-great semester. ​
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Annotated syllabus pdf
Download File


Word version of Syllabus
Download File


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