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Aim/Purpose Graduate programs aim to prepare students for future professional roles, yet doctoral graduates often earn faculty positions at institutions that differ from those in which they were socialized. Navigating this “preparation gap” can produce feelings of uncertainty, tension, and, ultimately, dissonance. This collaborative autoethnographic study explores the gap as it was experienced by two early career faculty in a U.S. context. Background The landscape of academia is rapidly changing, meaning graduate programs cannot prepare each graduate student for every potential professional role offered to them. Therefore, as doctoral graduates emerge from their respective graduate programs, an inevitable gap in preparation exists. This gap in preparation mirrors a gap in the graduate socialization literature, which is limited in describing how early career faculty are socialized into their first positions. Methodology The paper discusses a year-long collaborative autoethnographic study conducted by two tenure-track early career faculty in Education & Arts fields at universities in the U.S. The study employs Clancy’s (2010) theory of Perpetual Identity Constructing as a theoretical framework to examine the perceived dissonance produced during the transition from doctoral graduates to early career faculty. Contribution This collaborative autoethnographic account of two early career, tenure-track faculty members’ transition from doctoral graduate to assistant professors expands the literature on doctoral socialization, academic identities, and the potential of qualitative modes of inquiry. Specifically, it recognizes that doctoral graduates experience dissonance and undergo identity construction during the first year. Findings Our findings revealed three categories repeated in our collaborative autoethnographic data that potentially serve as a window to illuminate the complexity of

Mind the Gap: Transitioning from Doctoral Graduates to Early Career Faculty