I'm a tenure track professor at a predominately undergraduate institution (PUI). Current grad students often ask me what's the most important thing I've learned about my job. In my opinion, the most helpful thing I've learned in my first two years here is to adjust expectations.
I've adjusted my expectations about scholarship. With my undergraduates only spending four to six hours a week on research, I have had to recalibrate with respect to research productivity. Research tasks that would take me a week to accomplish might take my students all semester. I don't anticipate submitting a paper before June.
I have also lowered my expectations about the strength of incoming students. I've found that I can't take for granted that my freshmen are coming into college with the math and writing skills that I would expect. More time is taken in the first semester to bring all students up to speed on written communication and problem solving. Would it be awesome to just teach to the top 10% of my class? Of course. Would it get me tenure? I doubt it.
Perhaps the biggest adjustment is to the state of funding. My start up funds were not too terrible, but I can't bank them for next year. I have to spend everything up and just hope I can get enough preliminary results to warrant a Big Funding Agency to decide that I deserve to be in the special top 13% group (or whatever the funding line is). There are essentially no internal funds here, so I have to get outside funding. This is a daunting enough of a task at a research institution, let alone at a PUI. And so I've learned to not be surprised by the lack of internal and external funds here. What if I run out of money next year? Me stressing about the worst case scenario certainly won't help my undergrads be more productive. All I can do is keep truckin'.
Now, should I passively accept subpar students or a paucity of funding? Of course not.
But it certainly helps me maintain my sanity if I can adjust my expectations for the time being.
