Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide ยท Permission to do the scholarly work you want to do Are you telling yourself that you should be doing something that you really don’t think is valuable? Are there gremlins telling you that the work you want to be doing isn’t really scholarly? Or that it’s unfashionable (“No one […]
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.
Context is everything
When you were in high school, you were consistently getting As. Those grades got you into a good undergraduate program, possibly one that was hard to get into. You got scholarships. Prizes. You applied for post-graduate programmes. The minimum grades required were high but you had them. You applied for funding. This might be where […]
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Are you treating your research like a hobby?
Most academics are paid to do research. Research is part of your job description. Research figures prominently in the criteria for hiring, tenure/confirmation, and promotion. This can feel out of sync with the reality of your daily life in the university. You teach. You attend meetings. You do the work necessary to do those 2 […]
Read More »What would make your job better?
I want to plant a seed that can slowly germinate in the back of your mind. What would it mean to you for your job to be “better”? Is there anything you have control over that might make a difference? What is the smallest thing you could do? If thinking about your job feels like […]
Read More »Actively managing your career
The problems identified around leadership/management seem to be twofold: there are good people who are not moving into those roles/positions there are people in those roles/positions who are not doing the kind of job we’d like them to be The piece from the HBR blog and the parody of it highlight one contributor to this […]
Read More »Are negative images preventing good people from applying?
This post is not based on research. This is me thinking aloud about some of the issues I brought up in recent posts on management and leadership. I invite you to think aloud with me in the comments. Research is important. People are doing research (maybe not exactly in our sector but there is research […]
Read More »Don’t you worry it’ll be a waste of time?
One of the participants in a workshop about post-PhD careers asked the question in the title. We were talking about not knowing what jobs might suit us and the value of taking short-term contracts or taking jobs to try them out, knowing that we could move on in a year or two to something else. […]
Read More »What is required for management/leadership
Continuing with the difficult thoughts. Someone I follow on Twitter said this: “is it possible to “manage” well something you don’t fundamentally understand or know how to do yourself? I doubt it.” I’m not attributing it because it’s not about them. This is a really common sentiment. I’ll pair it with a statement a colleague […]
Read More »Leadership and management: some questions
To make a start on those difficult questions… Here are a couple of things that have inspired me, irritated me, sparked difficult thoughts lately. Various conversations about women and leadership: The Status of Women: Gender and the Ivory Ceiling of Service Work in the Academy on the FedCan blog. This parody of a post about […]
Read More »Writing about difficult topics
I’m scared to start writing because I don’t know where to stop or how to break it up into manageable chunks (manageable for you to read as much as for me to write; you are busy; you don’t need a monograph from me).
Here are some of the issues I’m mulling over. I’m going to try to write about them.
Read More »The research you want to make happen
Research produces more questions than answers. (Liz Gloyn calls these “academic otters“. Her strategies reflect her position as an early career research in the humanities.) The successful researchers I know have far more questions and projects they could be working on than they could possibly pursue in their lifetimes, even if they had fewer service […]
Read More »Work-Life Balance in academic careers
I read a thought provoking piece on Work-Life Balance recently. Thinking about this in relation to academic careers, I realize that the choice you face is actually more complex. And that that complexity might make it easier to address the problem (if there is one).
The issue for you might not be a work-life balance issue, it might be a work-work balance issue.
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