A long-term study of new professors in 14 graduate schools of education sought to identify the academic choices professors make early in their careers. A survey examined professors' hours spent in job-related work each week, tasks they committed their time to, tasks they felt they should commit more time to, and insights they reported about their experience of being professors. An analysis of their responses indicated that new professors spend only a portion of their time on research, scholarship, and the potentially supportive work of personal professional development, and that they would choose to spend considerably more time at those activities. The data suggest that those who are already working more hours per week than the average are not committing more time to research and scholarship. Despite their desire to apply themselves to scholarly pursuits and research, new professors find that they canot control the time they spend at work and that their choices are limited by administrative expectations and assignments. The conclusions suggest that exercising choice in an academic career is an important dimension of that work, but choices are not unlimited. (JD)