ABSTRACT
The original topic suggested to me by this book’s editor in conversation was “things you wish you knew that first year.” I have taken “that first year” to mean “the first year of teaching on the clock” rather than simply the “first year in which you taught something.” For most of us there will be a number of such firsts: the first time we ran a classroom as a TA for one of our professors during graduate school, the first full course we were put in charge of as lecturer in that same setting (for me, a summer-session Music Appreciation class), the first year teaching as part of a post-doctoral fellowship in another department, the first year teaching as an adjunct on/in the market, and the first year in which you find yourself in what you consider to be a permanent appointment. It is the last of these that is my focus.
