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| Author: Robert Boice
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Category: Book
List Price: $44.99
Buy New: $34.19
You Save: $10.80 (24%)
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 44597
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 0205281591
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.12
EAN: 9780205281596
Publication Date: January 31, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Useful advice May 8, 2001
14 out of 20 found this review helpful
I enjoyed Professor Boyce's book and found it to be helpful. His wisdom is backed up both by research and interesting anecdotes. It is highly repetitive, however, to the point of being annoying. Although a significant proportion of the suggestions in the book are common sense, he provides support and ideas for implementation. It is as though someone wrote a book for weight loss. Some of the ideas are going to be obvious (eat less junk food) but providing a thoughtful structure for implementation is an important contribution.
 Best guide for new faculty August 24, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a first year Assistant Professor, I felt simultaneous joy and dread about my new job. Incredible freedom, a significant amount of pressure, and uncertainty about the best day-by-day approach for acquiring tenure all combined to leave me feeling like a person running through an unfamiliar burning museum in the middle of the night. Boice's book provided the structure for my precious hours at a time when the sheer number of possibilities was overwhelming. In fact, the goal of the book is to provide methods for getting more done on a regular basis.
Before reading Boice's book, a normal day would see me working 6-10 hours on a single task such as class preparation, research, or writing. By the end of the day I may have made progress, but not as much progress as one would expect, and I would often end the day feeling that I was slipping behind in my schedule for all of my other tasks. Having read the book, I now structure my day with several Brief Regular Sessions, making short progress in many if not all of my projects each day. All of my projects stay fresh in my mind and I find that my subconscious often provides insights between sessions. I find that now I make faster, higher quality progress and have a bright outlook on all of my projects...and thus on my potential for tenure.
Boice also stresses starting projects before one feels ready, then stopping before one feels finished, both techniques that I find make new projects easy to start and then continue. Preparing a new class seemed daunting, but doing just 5-15 minutes of preparation is easy and that time added up until I was no longer daunted.
The book is structured into teaching, research, and service, but all three of the sections use similar techniques for similar benefit. I found the research section the most engaging and useful and wish it had been the first section, though I do plan on re-reading the book as time permits. Unfortunately, the book can be a difficult read; it repeats concepts, moves slowly, and can be dry at times. As such it is perfect for occasional reading and I have had great success at reading one page per day (note the brief regular sessions).
I vigorously recommend this book for any new professor or graduate student planning to get a tenure track job. In addition, Boice provides 10 pages of references to back up his research and claims in the book if further reading is desired.
 Fire the proofreaders? September 5, 2007
2 out of 10 found this review helpful
Although I have not yet read the text, the egregious misspelling of the Latin title, which evidently escaped both the author and everyone who proofread the text prior to publication, is not a good advertisement--at least not for anyone who knows even elementary Latin. The correct spelling of the title should be "Nihil NimIs". If I do in fact decide to read the book (I am hardly a "new" faculty member), perhaps I'll be inclined to write a more favorable review of its contents. Meanwhile, let's hope that a new printing will correct the spelling error.
Very helpful to this first year faculty member August 7, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book in the fall of 2005 when I was a first time college professor. It was very helpful. I really appreciated the book What the Best College Teachers Do but it was a bit overwhelming. How can I be the best college teacher when I am a brand new one? But Boice's book was very practical and straightforward. If you are struggling as a new faculty member under the burden of grading and preparing lectures, this is the book for you. You will be comforted that you are not alone and you will be given lots of fresh ideas to help you out of the mire.
A great book for life, not just getting tenure April 7, 2000
I'm in the second year of a tenure track position, and it's really true that the universal social expectation is that getting tenure, especially the process of writing for publication, involves a whole lot of suffering, and that only the strong (definitely not including me) survive. Robert Boice has written a deeply spiritual and inciteful book not only about the tenure process and academic writing, but about how to live life mindfully and joyfully. I cannot recommend this book too highly.
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