how to become an English professor?

Question

i have no idea how to become an English professor...well, i have an idea but i dont know if its right. Im debating whether or not i should become one and i need to know the process. spare any information except irrelevant facts...please!!!

Answer 1

1) Get admitted to the best university possible, and earn a bachelor's degree in English. Get great grades in every English class, get to know your professors, and remain in close contact with them throughout your time in university. At this point, you must absolutely fall in love with and develop a passion for a particular area of study within English lit, (or other area) because if you don't, you'll hate being an English professor.

2) Take the GRE, and apply to grad schools. The letters of recommendation you'll need from your professors will now be great, since you've done well in their courses, and taken the time and trouble to let them get to know you. Hopefully, you've also written a senior thesis that demonstrates to your professors that you can write a solid, sustained, scholarly research paper.

3) Go to the best grad school you can get into. You'll likely want to choose a combination MA/PhD program if you do English lit, or rhetoric and composition, or some other subfield in English, but if creative writing is your area of specialization, an MFA will do. (If you do the MFA, you'll be expecting to be primarily a writer or poet, and get teaching gigs on the side.)

4) While in grad school, join the MLA. Go to their annual meetings, present papers, and network. Also, find the specific area of your specialization, and find a mentor in that program with whom you can work. Take coursework for a couple of years, pass language exams and comprehensive exams (also known as qualifying exams), and begin to research and write your PhD dissertation.

5) Either just before or just after you complete your dissertation, apply for jobs. If you're in a relationship, you'd better have a partner/spouse that is mobile, because you will have NO SAY as to where you'll be working for the next several years of your life. You'll be applying for jobs in universities and colleges anywhere and everywhere in the nation. The MLA will coordinate and host the interviews. If you're religious, pray, because getting that first job will be the hardest thing you've ever done.

6) When you get that first job, if it is tenure-track, you're golden. If it is just a visiting position, keep applying for other jobs. In either case, publish articles in scholarly journals. Write a book, perhaps based on your dissertation. Network some more. Keep attending MLA, and give presentations. If you're tenure-track, do committee work, administrative work, advise studenst, and hone your teaching skills. Publish some more. And work to qualify for tenure in your third or fourth year of employment. If you're visiting, keep applying for jobs until you get one that's tenure track.

7) If, through all of this, you manage to keep your sanity and your passion for your area of study, if you are still able to derive fulfillment from teaching not just the star students, but even the most ungrateful/ unwilling/ uninterested undergrads, then you're a born professor. If you are willing to spend most of your life making sacrifices (geographical, financial, personal) for the privilege of doing what you love, and if you are reconciled to spending the rest of your life paying off your student loans and driving crappier cars than your students, all for the sake of being fulfilled and happy in your work, then again, you're a born professor. Love it. (I do.) :)

Answer 2

Basically, you need a graduate degree in English or an English related field (Grammar, Composition & Rhetoric). To work at a four-year university, you will need a PhD. To work at a community college, you will need at least a Masters.

If you are hoping to not grade freshman composition papers all day, you will need to do a PhD, and then a Post-doc fellowship with a heavy research element.

Start reading the Chronicle of Higher Education online. The Careers section will be especially interesting.

Answer 3

Usually you need to get an MA for Community College level and a Ph.D for the University setting. During your Ph.D program you'll be able to give some classes as a graduate student, and then you'll be able to teach for about 2 years as a lecturer at your current school. After that, you'll have to be in the market to get picked up by some University. Usually the choices are narrow, so don't expect to be teaching in Cambridge or Princeton straight off the bat since those schools usually only recruit people who are already full professors and have done unique research.

You don't need any teaching credentials at the college/university level.

Answer 4

A PhD, or at least a Masters degree in English, plus a teaching certificate, and a few years experience of teaching English, maybe a book or two published

Answer 5

You will need a doctorate, even at the community college level. At the university level, competition is fierce so you'll need to do considerable research to make a name for yourself in order to gain tenure. The good part is you only work a nine month schedule (summer is offtime unless you are hired for summer classes).

Answer 6

Get a Phd in English. Then apply for professorships.