How do you advise students about academic careers? Apart from the obvious “there aren’t a lot of jobs out there”, what do you say? What do you feel uncomfortable about saying (or not saying)?
Read More »Collaboration, co-authoring, and such
If you are in the humanities or some social science disciplines, co-authorship is much less common and may even be frowned upon. Some humanities researchers have been heard to doubt the existence of co-authorship, “Two people cannot hold the pen.”*
If you are in this kind of discipline, writing with others can feel odd. And it raises some interesting issues about how it will be evaluated.
Why co-author? … get more written … share expertise … mentor students
How will peers view it? … separating you from your co-authors … getting collaborative grants
Read More »Validation vs communication: another example
How is it that just as I write that post about validation and how stuck it can get you, I find another relevant link: Why Lists are a Flawed Approach to Assessing Excellence
Read More »Validation vs. communication: an example
Bon Stewart made a very prescient point in the comments of my post on how scholarship is evaluated. “the notion of validity by process became more important than the idea of contribution TO the process”. This morning I was catching up on blog reading and read a very thought provoking article that I think makes excellent background to such a discussion. It’s about scientific publishing, which is the model that humanities and social science researchers are being compared to implicitly or explicitly. And it illustrates some very serious issues in relation to this question of validation.
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Peer reviewed journal articles and monographs in the academic evaluation process
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Journals and monographs in academic evaluation processes This is the 2nd post in a series on how your scholarship is evaluated in various academic evaluation processes. I was inspired by the comments on a blog post on Melville and the knowledge that some of my readers do blog and […]
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How scholarship is evaluated
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · How scholarship is evaluated The quality and impact/significance of your research is usually evaluated based on where you publish. The advent of new outlets for your scholarly work has raised some interesting issues about how this is done. A blog exchange about Melville scholarship (read the comments, and also […]
Read More »How I help with writing
A hadn’t been publishing. He wrote regularly despite a full teaching load. But he wasn’t getting things finished. And he wasn’t submitting them. Writing was an intellectually satisfying process for A. In thinking about why he didn’t finish he realized that he wasn’t motivated by the product — an article or a book — but […]
Read More »Learning to use images
Moving from knowing that images do things words can do to actually using images well in presentations and other work is hard. I’ve learned a lot about that in the past year. For example, finding representational images after you’ve written the content is probably the hardest way to go about it.
I’m now figuring how to use images to help you be a better academic. If you want to help me test a new tool …
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Permission to think big thoughts
If you don’t make and protect time for thinking big thoughts, writing, and other research tasks no one else will.
Research doesn’t always look like real work, especially to outsiders, but it is. In this post, I give you some tips on valuing that work for yourself and on finding time to do it regularly.
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Permission to refuse service/admin requests
One difference between an academic career and other forms of employment is that you are often left to manage your workload yourself. The basics are decided by someone else, but you are always “free” to take on more.
Saying “no” is hard. Are you saying yes just to avoid the discomfort?
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Are you waiting for permission?
One of the attractions of an academic career is the autonomy it affords. That means no one is going to give you permission. Or, perhaps more accurately, they already have.
Trusting your judgement is hard. You risk criticism. Disapproval. Perhaps even attack. Even though criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, many academics struggle with it.
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You can take your time
Your dissertation is not an end. It is a beginning.
Getting a tenure track job (or equivalent academic appointment) is not an end. It is a beginning.
And even if your ultimate goal is “Be a full-professor, with an international reputation in my field.” (and it’s okay if that isn’t your goal), you aren’t going to get there in 3-5 years.
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