If you are (or think you may be)
headed to graduate school after you've finished your undergrad education, especially to get an academic job, you
really need to have something more concrete in your planning notebook than
"I just love reading literature." Because that's probably the last
thing you'll have a chance to do. (Ugh. That one was painful for me.)
To find out what the start of an
academic life looks like, you can read some of the materials on the English
Department website, under the subheading "Graduate school/career planning"
(you've got to scroll down). Here's a link to the page where you'll find this
material: http://www.niagara.edu/english-links/
On the other hand--what does
going through the grad experience get you? What does it make you into?
Hopefully, the answer is not "dreadfully underemployed and cranky."
Because academic tenure-track jobs may be "soooo 20th century." (More
colleges and universities are hiring adjuncts at crap wages to staff their
classrooms.) And your mentors in grad school have been off the academic market
for at least a decade, and likely have only a vague sense of what it takes to
get a job. (Shocker, right? Us old farts are behind the times.)
However, you can prepare
yourself. Read Inside Higher Education
(e-published only, free, http://www.insidehighered.com).
And if you can, read The Chronicle of Higher Education. It's paper
and e-published, much of it behind a paywall, but some free bits,
http://chronicle.com -- check to see if you can find it in a library or through
your home department... hint, hint, Niagara English students).
One resource that is free in the
Chronicle: Blogs. Like this one: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/tags/The%20Professor%20Is%20In?cid=vem
Which has links to this author's
own blog, here: http://theprofessorisin.com/pearlsofwisdom/ and to another Chronicle site she contributes to: https://chroniclevitae.com/news?cid=vem
Get to know the culture before
you commit the next 10 years of your life. Before that culture eats you alive like it's a zombie.
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