[.ca] New Faculty: A Practical Guide For Academic Beginners (ISBN 0312295375)

It's not easy being the new guy . . .:
It can be difficult making the transition from graduate student to college professor, and in nearly all colleges and universities -- unless you're one of the fortunate few to be adopted by a talented mentor -- you have to do most of it all by yourself, with only the occasional anecdotal assistance from other newbies. Even though all your more senior colleagues made the same journey from chrysalis to butterfly (or moth, in many cases), they quickly forget the tribulations of the process, and so there is little or nothing in the way of meaningful orientation offered at most schools. I had high hopes for this not-thick volume as a useful manual to assist the newly appointed instructor, and it indeed does the service of bringing a lot of material together in one place, but a reader who has been thinking and reading about the subject for a few years will find nothing original here. All the advice on teaching methods, advising students, why and how to get yourself published, why and how to pursue grant money, and the great and foggy subject of "faculty service" has been cribbed from other (presumably more original) authors. However, the thing I found particularly off-putting about this book is that all of it is couched in a self-conscious vocabulary and phrasing that almost serves as a model of academic-speak. And that's not a compliment!