While helping a client with her application for promotion, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a senior colleague when I applied for a promotion many years ago. “The promotion committee will be looking for a trajectory in your research.” I checked the guidelines for promotion from my client’s institution. Sure enough I […]
Read More »Academic Context
How things work in academic institutions, academic disciplines, and other spaces where you find yourself. The unwritten rules, assumptions, and ways of being that make the difference in everyday academic life.
This category has been somewhat neglected. Older posts in this category will be edited and possibly recategorized beginning in July 2015.
Being part of a collective is part of your work
Just like eating, sleeping, and exercise, the work required to build and maintain relationships and to work collectively with colleagues has to be a priority. Those relationships are the foundation that makes a lot of other things possible. You cannot leave it to whatever time remains. Nor is it helpful to enter every collective situation […]
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What you can change
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What you can change God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. (The Serenity Prayer —Reinhold Niebuhr) Whether you believe in that god or not, the sentiment of this prayer is just […]
Read More »Expectations
As an academic you are expected to do a lot of things, expectations that appear increasingly unreasonable. You may need to do more work than you think is reasonable but you do not need to collude in the erasure of the political agency of others. What happens if you stop using the passive voice when talking about those expectations?
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Knitting in meetings
I’m a knitter. Maybe you also knit, or crochet, or do other needlecrafts that are small and portable. I knit in meetings and in other public places. I knit in the pub while talking to friends. Can you really do that without looking? This is probably one of the major issues that is going to […]
Read More »The Spectre of Professionalism
As I was writing about how your office is organized, I realized that many of us are haunted by the Spectre of Professionalism. Luckily I have a cartoonist on speed-dial. This Spectre might haunt your office set-up, your writing style, your manner of dress, your interactions with students, your interactions with colleagues, your decisions about […]
Read More »Making sense of the cuts
There has been a lot of head shaking, confusion and anger in the wake of the recent Canadian federal budget. Academics value evidence, reason, and rational argument. The cuts just don’t make sense. What happens if we turn the question around? How do we make sense of what appear to be nonsensical policies? The Conservative […]
Read More »Academia is not a world apart
Most of the time when I sit down to write posts, I have a particular audience in mind. Most of my clients are tenured or tenure-track academics in the social sciences and humanities, or the equivalent. Sometimes I have specific individuals in mind when I write, even though I am writing about the issue because […]
Read More »Being the scholar you want to be
Following a link from Twitter the other day (sorry, I forget who sent me here) I found this fantastic blog post on the Scientific American website: Three things I learned at the Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women: on being a radical scholar. This resonates strongly with my own views about managing your academic career. I […]
Read More »On the road to an academic career
If an academic career is on your list of possible post-PhD paths, there are a few things you should know. The de facto requirements for an academic position have increased. It is unreasonable to expect that you will have all of these additional requirements at the same time as you are awarded the PhD. For most people, there is going to be a period of some other employment between finishing the PhD and getting that secure position. In this post, I lay out some options.
Read More »Validation, communication, & academic blogging: some links
A linky post for those who are interested. There are some interesting things to be found on this topic. Michael Cholbi at In Socrates Wake drew my attention to a few in his post inviting thoughts on whether humanists are avoiding exposure (responding to Alex Reid, see below). Which led me to James Stanescu (aka […]
Read More »Disturbing read about job advice to PhDs
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)?
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