What I wish I could tell the newbies

As I've been organizing New Faculty Orientation for the half dozen incoming faculty members we'll welcome this Friday, I'm reminded of a post from a few years ago called "Old Faculty Re-Orientation," a list of things I wish someone had told me when I first started teaching here:

1. Where to park. (Seriously--I was an adjunct, so I was not included in New Faculty Orientation, and the sum total of my instruction in parking was "You can park along any of the streets around campus," which led to my first-ever parking ticket, which I could not well afford on an adjunct's paycheck--which, by the way, has not increased in the entire 15 years since I've been teaching here. I'm grateful I no longer earn an adjunct's paycheck, but why are we still paying today's adjuncts the same amount per course that I earned 15 years ago?)

2. Who was sleeping with whom. (Information that would have made some department-meeting discussions much more transparent.)

3. That colleagues may become friends but they're always colleagues first, and some so-called friends will eagerly sacrifice friendship on the altar of professional advancement. (Social Relations 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

4. The Law of Conservation of Curmudgeonliness on Campus: the minute one career curmudgeon retires, another rises up to take his or her place. (And someday I might become that person!)

5. That some day I would be mourning the loss of a long-lived curmudgeon whose notorious name is totally unknown to my younger colleagues. (Aging 101 in the School of Hard Knocks.)

6. That the wonderfulness that sometimes happens inside the classroom can make all the outside-the-classroom awfulness worthwhile. Or, to quote a former colleague of mine: "The students! The students!" (He was a little drunk at the time so maybe you had to be there.) 

 

That was my list in 2015. What would I add today?

First, I'd love to give new faculty members the secret cell-phone number they can use to text a particular administrator, which is the key to getting that person to read and respond to email messages, but if too many people get hold of that number then the person on the other end will be buried in new text messages and thus unlikely to pay attention to mine. Besides, I object to this roundabout method of getting a response and I don't want to feed the beast. Except when I really need a response.

Second, I'd like to provide new faculty with a list of the people who can be trusted to have their backs and those who can't, but the Master Backstabber File seems to have been corrupted. Better, maybe, for newbies to find out for themselves. How can they earn a degree from the School of Hard Knocks if they never get any hard knocks?

Finally, the reason we're here--The students! The students!--is as rewarding as ever, but when we're not feeling the rewards, it's always helpful to know where to find some cake. (In the Worthington Center for Teaching Excellence. We've misplaced all the magic wands that instantly solve pedagogy problems, but we can usually provide a nice piece of cake.)

What do you wish someone had told you when you were a newbie?