The other day Alex Sévigny, a professor at McMaster University, posted a wonderful answer to this question on his blog. I encourage you to read it. Here are some excerpts to tempt you, though I fear they lose some of their power separated from the whole. Universities should strive to build in students a yearning […]
Read More »Is your inner perfectionist making things take longer?
Do you have an Inner Perfectionist? Your Inner Perfectionist can be really helpful and probably has been at various points in your career. They make sure you do your best work. Help you through the end game of writing in which all the big ideas are there and you need to make it really shine. […]
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Making difficult decisions
Recently I had to make some difficult decisions about my capacity to review grant proposals in advance of a fall 2010 deadline. It was a hard decision to make and a hard decision to communicate to clients. I have gifts to share with my clients. I genuinely enjoy helping people. And from 2005 to now, […]
Read More »Ever considered being a program officer for SSHRC?
They are advertising. Some of their program officers have been around for a long time but all of them start on short term contracts. You could focus on the short-term part, and the lack of security, or you could see it as a good opportunity to try out a job that is related to your […]
Read More »Are you really motivated by external rewards?
As I see it, there are three ways to look at tenure, promotion, salary, etc. compensation for doing unpleasant or undesirable work motivation to do stuff your employer wants you to do recognition of the value you contribute to the employing organization When you say you are doing something a particular way “to get tenure” […]
Read More »Conference presentations: speed dating for academics
Scholarly conferences are a regular part of the academic life. Whether big annual conferences run by scholarly associations, or smaller more focused conferences and workshops hosted in various institutions, academics attend conferences regularly. Or as often as possible given the travel funds available. Unless you are invited to give a plenary presentation, chances are you […]
Read More »Who do you want to reach? An example
As I’ve argued in previous posts, publishing is all about reaching the people who can benefit from your ideas. For most academics, some of the people you want to reach are other academics. And the primary way you are going to reach them is through publishing in refereed journals. For too many of us, publishing […]
Read More »It’s fine to only want to reach other academics
I know Knowledge Mobilization, Relevance, Knowledge Transfer and all that are hot topics right now. And if you are doing work that has immediate relevance to particular non-academic audiences, you really need to work out the best way to reach those audiences. Which is one reason that I wrote that earlier post. But that doesn’t […]
Read More »Figure out who you want to reach
In my last post, I talked about how perfectly reasonable it was not to be publishing if you think no one reads journal articles. The problem is, you are doing all this work and you aren’t sharing it with the people who need to know about it. You have great ideas. These ideas are important. […]
Read More »What it means to say the job market is “competitive”
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 »Two Solitudes? Knowledge mobilization/transfer & the PhD problem
This post might be a bit random but there are some thoughts mulling in the back of my head and I figure if I get them out of my head where other people can engage with them, they might grow into something more coherent. Please treat what follows as preliminary thinking. Thinking aloud. An invitation […]
Read More »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 […]
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