In my last two posts, I suggested that you can decide what kind of academic career you want, and that it’s a good idea to get information and advice from a variety of sources, including informational interviews, to help you figure that out and learn more about the kind of academic career you want. When […]
Read More »Finding Your Way: Academic life as a journey
One of the great attractions of an academic career is the level of autonomy and freedom that you have. Some possible paths are clearly marked. Others are less obvious. Roadblocks are a frequent problem. Regardless of your stage of career, posts in this section help you identify the signposts and make decisions.
How an academic job search is like any job search
In my last post, I proposed that you are likely only interested in a subset of all the academic jobs that are advertised in your field (no matter how sparse or plentiful those jobs may be). If this is a new way of looking at your academic career, it might be unsettling. You might be […]
Read More »There’s more than one kind of academic career
In all the debates about the academic labour market, it seems that an academic career is an academic career. The academic labour market is a mess. Funding is squeezed. Tenure lines (or, in the UK, open-term positions) are not being replaced. There is a huge increase in insecure and poorly paid teaching and research jobs with […]
Read More »Considering going on to PhD
In the full knowledge that you might ignore any and all of this information, I present you with some things to think about as you consider going on to a PhD. Do you want to study for a PhD? I know this seems like an odd question to ask, but the first step is to […]
Read More »Where do you start with doctoral fellowship applications?
I received the following question from a reader: My MA is completing end of August this year, and I plan to go on to PhD. My department has recommended I apply for SSHRC and other grants. I am completely green when it comes to applying for grants/scholarships, and have no idea where to start. There […]
Read More »Should you do a PhD?
There has been a lot of public debate about graduate studies, particularly in the humanities. Unsurprisingly, this is causing some anxiety for people either doing or contemplating grad school. Here are a few things to think about when making this decision. Why do you want to do the PhD? Are you excited about your research project […]
Read More »A PhD doesn’t prepare you for a career
There is a lot of talk about whether doctoral programs should do more to prepare students for careers outside of academia. When you think about it, most doctoral programs don’t even prepare you for a career inside academia. Universities are not really in the business of training people for careers Many of us roll our eyes whenever […]
Read More »Embrace the research process
“The usual result of worrying about excellence or perfection before you start creating is that you’ll never start creating. Let go of how good the end product will be and embrace the act of creating. Excellence comes as a byproduct of continual creation and learning.” (Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing, July 30, 2009) When you only […]
Read More »If you had one more week…
One day on Twitter one of the people I follow says: Just realized Fall term lectures start a week later than I thought they did. A week more of prep time, here we come! You might be able to guess what I replied: Or a week free for writing! What would you do with an extra […]
Read More »Finishing the Dissertation
If you are still working on your PhD dissertation, or if you supervise doctoral students, this post is for you. As you may be aware completion times in the humanities and social sciences are long. Much longer than for other disciplines. And humanities disciplines tend to be longer than social sciences. This seems to be have […]
Read More »How Professors Think
I have been awaiting Michèle Lamont’s book, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment, for a long time. Her study of peer review in multi-disciplinary humanities and social science grant competitions in the US first came to my attention via the co-authored article “What is Originality in the Social Sciences and the […]
Read More »What is a doctoral candidate to do?
News reports, such as this one in the New York Times, appear from time to time reporting on the lack of tenure-track posts in the current economic climate. Searches are being cancelled. Tenure-track positions are being downgraded to term positions. Senior faculty are postponing their retirements. And those completing PhDs are panicking, or at least being […]
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