Recommended: A Guide to Professional Development (2006)

Here is a book that I recommend to everyone who is pursuing or is thinking about pursuing graduate studies in English:

Moore, Cindy, and Hildy Miller. A Guide to Professional Development for Graduate Students in English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2006. (ISBN: 978-0-8141-1923-5)

This brief and highly readable book is remarkably succinct and thorough, providing helpful advice on many different aspects of professional developments for both masters' and doctoral students in various disciplines within English studies, including composition and rhetoric, creative writing, linguistics and literature (in alphabetical order). I actually read the whole thing in one sitting.

It's worth noting that the authors have included the discussion of ESL/TESOL as an important consideration for composition and rhetoric specialists. Yet, there are other issues that I wished the authors paid more attention to. For example, major professional conferences such as American Association for Applied Linguistics and Linguistic Society of America are not mentioned. Nor does it mention CCCC very much partly because it's now considered a conference within the umbrella of NCTE (although it still maintains a separate membership list).

I was also disappointed not to see any mention of issues related to nonnative English speakers in the profession or foreign nationals, but I guess a majority of mentors in English studies are yet to become familiar with this growing area of research and professional development.

Of course a short book like this can't include everything or fully prepare anyone for all aspects of professional development, but it does provide a good roadmap. Readers would then have to take the trip to see for themselves--accompanied by their travel companions (spouses, friends, peers and mentors)--what it's like to be there to enjoy the long journey into the practices of their chosen disciplines.