Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Juggling 101: Elements of a Good Plan A good plan can reduce the stress and overwhelm you experience when trying to juggle all your different responsibilities. This is why I have developed planning classes for members of the Academic Writing Studio [Recently opened up to everyone else too!]. In […]
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Using all 3 types of writing time
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Using all 3 types of writing time Writing is a core activity for academics. Writing, as far as I’m concerned, encompasses anything that moves your projects forward. I advocate establishing a writing practice, while making writing a priority when you plan the rest of your schedule. Finding and protecting […]
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Maintaining your writing practice when things get busy
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Maintaining Your Writing Practice When Things Get Busy Although significant parts of your work during the main part of the academic year are scheduled weekly or relate to things scheduled weekly, your workload is not as consistent as your teaching schedule might suggest. There are periods of more intense […]
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Is tidying your desk procrastination?
As you may know, my definition of writing as “anything that moves your writing project forward”. Typically, this expands your sense of legitimate activities to include reading, taking notes, going for a walk so you can think through the ideas you are working on, or sorting out your project files. A couple of things have […]
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Being an academic in dystopian times: Valuing your academic work
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Being an academic in dystopian times: valuing your academic work As I write this, there has been an escalation of white supremacist activity in the US, and the generally difficult political climate in both the US and the UK has not really become less difficult than when I wrote […]
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Pressure vs Ease
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Pressure vs Ease Deadline Day? I have noticed in social media posts and in conversations with clients that a lot of people use deadlines as a way to motivate themselves. Or at least the story they tell themselves, is that they need a deadline to ensure that they will […]
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Hope works better than fear
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Hope is better than fear. I have cycled through a few tag lines in my attempt to succinctly capture what it is I do: “Love Your Academic Work” made way for “Transforming Academic Lives“. This latest iteration has the benefit of coming directly from something clients have said about […]
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Using the supports you need: Part 2
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Using the supports you need, part 2 I have written previously about how I learned in yoga that it can be helpful to use supports in your practice. I’ve been thinking about this principle again recently in a different way. I think this might help you see the difference […]
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Reconnecting with the desire to write
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Reconnecting with the desire to write I was talking with a client about writing and motivation recently. We started with “It’s really hard to write with a gun to your head.” which strikes me as a pretty widespread problem. Whether that metaphorical gun is the REF, the tenure process, […]
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Communication vs Validation: why are you publishing?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Communication vs Validation: Why are you publishing? The primary purpose of publishing, even scholarly publishing, is communication. If you centre the communicative role of publishing, with a focus on the audience and the difference you would like your work to make for that audience, decisions about when and where […]
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Thoughts on “Untangling Academic Publishing”
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Thoughts on “Untangling Academic Publishing” I have written before about communication and validation in your publishing decisions, and encouraged you to prioritize communication in your decision making process. In this post, I want to extend that argument using a recently published scholarly report as a jumping off point. (you […]
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Hiking as a metaphor for (summer) writing
As I was updating the script for the Planning Your Summer class, I felt a bit weird about the Juggling section. I mostly ignored it at the time because I couldn’t quite put my finger on the problem. The juggling metaphor has been central to how I developed all the planning classes and it seemed […]
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