What I Wish I'd Known: The Transition From Graduate Student to Tenure Track Faculty to Tenured Faculty

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to discern the difficulties tenure track faculty face as they attempt to balance their new faculty roles amid a transition from PhD student to faculty. Based on the theoretical Lazarus model of stress, this research analyzes the stressful transition of a PhD student to a tenure track professor and the underlying reasons and outcomes, as well as how a full‐time professor balances responsibilities between research, teaching, and service. Qualitative research and specifically, inductive analyses were used to categorise interviews collected from various faculty across departments and schools and then encoded into themes. Six themes were found in Study 1: Self‐Awareness, Time Management, Professional Independence, Politics, Professional Flexibility, and Professional Skill Development. Study 2 reveals three major themes: The Plague of the Vague, Publish or Perish, and It's Not All Work, But It Is.