Interview with a Professor

My official job title is Associate Professor. I work in the education field, and I have fourteen years of teaching experience at a state university in Georgia. To prepare for this career, I earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and then I received my MFA in poetry writing. I earned my Ph.D. in English fifteen years ago.

Education, publications and work experience are the most important things a person needs to get hired and succeed as a professor. In graduate school, I discovered that most colleges and universities would not hire someone without an advanced degree, and most schools wanted their professors to have doctoral degrees and lengthy lists of publications. I found that the graduate schools I attended were both good at shopping their graduates around and finding job placements for them, but I also networked for myself whenever I could. My extensive list of publications also made me a good candidate for a position as a professor.

I did not always know I wanted to be a professor. I took a break between undergraduate and graduate school. During that time, I worked jobs that had nothing to do with teaching. I think the most important thing I learned about the working world when I got out of school was that a degree was not the final step in getting the position I wanted. I learned that my degree was just a starting point and that I would have to work hard for years to get the sort of job satisfaction I desired.

After undergraduate school, I began to submit my writing to journals. I racked up several publications in small literary magazines. Though I had my eye on larger, more prestigious literary journals, I knew I needed to hone my craft before I would be ready to publish in those.

In order to improve my writing, I joined an online writers’ group. I won’t mention the name of it here, but I will say that the community was all about writers shamelessly plugging their own work. I learned almost nothing from being a part of the community, and so I looked for another group to join. That’s when I found Scribophile. The online community on Scrib was amazing. I had my writing critiqued by other writers with goals similar to mine. After a few months on Scrib, I took two undergraduate writing workshops at a local university. I impressed my professors and got them to write recommendation letters to graduate schools. I knew I was more of a creative writer than an academic one, so I knew I wanted to get my MFA in Creative Writing.

I would say that working in an MFA program was the thing that really got me started in the teaching field. By the time I started my MFA program, I knew I wanted to teach someday, and I found that the best way to do it was to work as a graduate assistant while I studied. I got my start teaching English Composition to undergraduate students while I wrote my thesis book and earned my degree. The MFA program I attended was a 3-year program, and I accomplished so much. I published a chapbook of poetry and sold my first novel by the time I graduated. I also had two years of teaching experience under my belt by the time graduation rolled around.

My job is not particularly stressful, though I do feel some pressure grading around finals time because I often have pages upon pages of essays to read in a short span of time. However, I do think I maintain a healthy work-life balance. I usually teach only one or two courses during the summer, and last summer I did not teach at all. Instead, I used the time off to begin work on a new novel and take an extended vacation with my family. We try to vacation at least once a year during Christmas, but having free time together during the summer is nice, too. One of the good things about vacation time for professors is that we do have several breaks throughout the year, particularly at Christmas and during the spring.

As it stands now, I’d rank my job satisfaction as an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. The only thing that would unleash my full enthusiasm about my job would be a lighter teaching load. Though I love teaching, writing is also a great passion of mine, and I have found that I am often so busy with classes during the school year that I do not have as much time to write as I would like.

Considered pursuing a career as an Educator? This interview takes you through the ups and downs you can expect, what it takes to land the job, what you can expect to earn and more. This is a true career story as told to DiversityJobs and is one of many interviews with teachers and professionals in the Education field.