As so often happens, reading someone’s blog inspired me to write about something. Keri is on sabbatical. And on her first day, she writes I am already in a bit of a panic about not get everything done that I want to get done over the next 6 months. And, yet, as I sit here this […]
Read More »Roads not goals
I hate goals. I don’t find them motivating at all. If setting goals works for you, go ahead. You are in good company at this time of year. But if goals just make you panic about not achieving them and being a failure, I give you permission not to set any. I don’t care if […]
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 »Other sources of teaching-related stress
In my last post I suggested that teaching might be taking up more time than it needs because you are using more preparation to deal with anxiety. In that post, I talked about the anxiety caused by insufficient or inappropriate training for this aspect of the job and ways to get the support you need […]
Read More »Don’t let obligation get you down
You got into academia because you were excited by ideas. Particular ideas. Stuff you read made you think “But what about …” Or “I wonder if …” You do research to answer those questions and contribute to the conversations that inspired them. Have you lost that excitement? All research goes in phases. Sometimes you do have to […]
Read More »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.” (Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing, July 30, 2009) When you only […]
Read More »What should you do next?
Look at your desk. Really look at it. I’m thinking of both your physical desk, with physical papers strewn about, and your virtual desk, with folders and documents. I bet you have a stack of conference papers that need to be turned into journal articles. And some notes on other things you want to write. […]
Read More »If you had one more week…
One day on Twitter one of the people I follow says: 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 replied: Or a week free for writing! What would you do with an extra […]
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 »15 minutes a day
Where do you start in your quest to keep your research active during the fall and winter? Start small. Could you find 15-30 minutes every weekday to devote to research? I bet you could. That’s not a lot of time. Research has shown that even that small amount of time, used well, can make a […]
Read More »How Professors Think
I have been awaiting Michèle Lamont’s book, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment, for a long time. Her study of peer review in multi-disciplinary humanities and social science grant competitions in the US first came to my attention via the co-authored article “What is Originality in the Social Sciences and the […]
Read More »What is a doctoral candidate to do?
News reports, such as this one in the New York Times, appear from time to time reporting on the lack of tenure-track posts in the current economic climate. Searches are being cancelled. Tenure-track positions are being downgraded to term positions. Senior faculty are postponing their retirements. And those completing PhDs are panicking, or at least being […]
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