In the midst of growing concerns for college teaching [1] we produce more and more useful advice about ways to improve instruction [8]. Yet, we know almost nothing about how (and how quickly) professors establish their teaching styles. And, it follows, we too rarely consider strategies for dealing with their teaching in its formative stages. This article depicts the experience of new faculty as teachers over periods of one and two years and across two large campuses. It shows a surprisingly slow pattern of establishing comfort and student approval, of moving beyond defensive strategies including overpreparation of lecture content, and of looking for supports in improving teaching. The few prior efforts at observing new faculty have been enlightening but limited to smaller groups, to fewer observations, or to nonteaching activities [3, 5, 6]. The aim of this study, though, is not simply to document the teaching experiences of new faculty but to answer four related questions. First, do initial teaching patterns, adaptive and maladaptive, tend to persist? Second, what can we learn from the experiences of new faculty who master teaching quickly and enjoyably? Third, how does success in teaching correspond to prowess in areas including the establishment of collegial supports and of outputs in scholarly writing? And, fourth, how do initial teaching experiences compare at a "teaching" (comprehensive) and at a "research" (doctoral) campus?