Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You can ignore the grading, reprise This post refers to the break between the first and second semesters of an academic year, which in the Northern Hemisphere tends to incorporate the Christmas holidays. Often the exams and assignments that come in at the end of the semester need to […]
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Holiday parties: turning dread into opportunity
It’s that time of year. No matter what you celebrate (if anything) you are going to be invited to parties. Many of these parties will involve talking to people you don’t know very well — the husband of your department chair, the best friend from out of town, the new neighbor from a few streets […]
Read More »Writing essays is not a generic skill
Chris Atherton‘s most recent blog post makes a great contribution to debates about assessment, and essay writing in particular. Getting Students to Build Things Out of Concrete (Examples, that is) Go read it and come back. This post started as a comment that got out of hand. I’ll wait. Tum te dum te dum. Hi, […]
Read More »Are you letting gremlins ruin your job?
No one will fund that research. Find a sexier topic. One there’s a bit of buzz about. And make it something useful. You’re really behind the times. There’s all kinds of educational technology out there. Why aren’t you using it? Get innovative. Update that course. No one reads academic journals. What are you even bothering […]
Read More »What happened to the Life of the Mind?
For many people what’s attractive about an academic career is the opportunity to be intellectually engaged: with students, with books, with colleagues, etc. Popular cultural representations of academia twist this into an image of the professor with his mind on higher things and detached from reality. Either way what gets called “the life of the mind” […]
Read More »PhD programs are not career training
A degree may be necessary but it is never sufficient
There is no job for which an educational qualification is enough to get you hired.
There is no job for which an educational qualification provides all the necessary skills and knowledge.
A degree, whatever it is, is always but one piece of a complex puzzle.
Read More »Shifting the career focus in doctoral education
On Wednesday November 17th, 2010, I spoke to graduate students at Carleton University about careers after grad school. This post is based on part of what I said. It is directed not only to graduate students but also to the faculty that advise them. For most doctoral students, the tenure-track position is the daisy in […]
Read More »I don’t like the term “unconference”
Call me an unreformed social constructionist but I think language has power. Calling these really cool new types of conferences things like “unconferences” “camps” and whatever just cedes the definition of “conference” to people whose primary goal seems to be to bore us to death. What is the purpose of the conference? There is plenty […]
Read More »misunderstanding copyright
Copyright has been in the news recently thanks to an incident in which a profit-making magazine reprinted an article they found on the internet without the authors permission. (No, I’m not linking. They’ve had enough publicity for their nefarious deeds.) When the author challenged the editor, the response included what seems to be a common […]
Read More »Giving presentations: slides, visual, and handouts
It seems to me that a lot of bad PowerPoint results from the desire to have the slides work as presentations after the fact. Even worse is when the slides need to stand alone without the speaker.
I’m sorry, but if you can get what you need from the slides, you don’t need me standing up in front of you. Why waste my time and yours going through the motions?
Read More »What if teaching really is your thing?
As I’ve said before, not all academic jobs are the same. Some people really value teaching. They do it well. They figure out how to do it better. Seeing students get it is what motivates them. They are, as Chris Atherton noted recently, “exactly the kind of person you’d want teaching your kids when they […]
Read More »On advice about publishing before securing an academic job
Your doctoral supervisor (and indeed the entire department) has an interest in you getting a tenure-track job. It is in their interests to give you good advice.
That said, sometimes their knowledge of the labour market is limited. Assume that they have good intentions, but don’t treat their advice as gospel. Things have been changing fast.
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