This book is a collection of essays I have written over the years about the scholarly writing, doctoral study, and the academic life. Most were published in a variety of venues including my blog, but I thought it would be useful to put them all together in one volume. Most of them I wrote for the benefit of my doctoral students and early-career professors, in order to give them insight into the nature of the world they were entering and provide them with advice about how to negotiate this world.