It means that it’s a competition, just like the Olympics. It means that you can be among the best in the world and still not get a medal job. It means that you have to go out there and do what needs to be done to the best of your ability anyway. Potential employers don’t […]
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.
You don’t have to know what you’re going to be when you grow up
It is not uncommon to hear glib statements about how the era of the job for life has passed. And yet, people still routinely ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. And we still talk about education as if you get educated in your youth, which prepares for The Job you’ll […]
Read More »A job search is a 2-way process
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 »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
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · 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.” […]
Read More »
If you had one more week…
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · If you had one more week A while ago on Twitter, one of the people I followed said: “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 […]
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 »
