COLLABORATE AND COOPERATE. You are not alone either as a graduate student or as a young faculty member. You cooperate and collaborate with many others. Even the dissertation is not a one-person effort inasmuch as you work with an advisor and a committee, with people you study if your work involves human subjects as well as interacting on your topic with fellow graduate students. When you begin your academic career, you need not sit off in a corner and try to do it all by yourself. You can collaborate and cooperate with peers, senior faculty, and even students. In a research institution, you will find you collaborate on projects with coauthors. Most will be close by, but others are from your doctoral program or people whom you know through conferences and other professional interactions. Your teaching assistants and your students will help you with specific tasks, including routine ones. You become part of an ongoing group that cooperates on projects, reads and critiques each other’s papers before submission, gives you ideas, and receives ideas from you. It is a two-way relationship that you need to cultivate. Although telecommuting is needed to obtain integrated blocks of time, you should allocate some time on campus for collaboration and cooperation. It will make you more productive and enrich your life as an academic.
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