coaching

What’s YOUR ideal academic job?

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

When you are looking for an academic job it is hard to imagine that you could get one and be unhappy, even miserable. And yet, I’ve met unhappy academics.

An academic career incorporates a wide range of activities and uses a lot of different skills. Even those who love it, and are successful, love different things about it, or excel at different aspects.

It is important to determine what is important to you. Your actual job may never match your ideal exactly, but knowing what your ideal looks like enables you to choose better compromises.

What you can change

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

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 good advice. You can always just cut out the first […]

Is “number of hours” the right measure?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Recently a client asked me to help her figure out how to work less. She is frustrated by long hours, working weekends, and so on. She figures at this stage of her career she should be able to have a better balance. As we worked together, it became clear to me that the number of […]

October plans

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

I’ve got a lot going on this month. First up, the next session of Conscious Careers starts Thursday October 6. I’m looking forward to working with a new group of students. We’re still in touch with some of the alumni and they have found it really helpful. In fact, one of them wrote about it […]

How I help mid-career academics

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

You’d think that once you get that academic job and get through whatever process you have to go through to keep it (tenure, probation, or whatever it’s called where you live), it would be plain sailing. You have been judged by your peers to know what you are doing and be doing it well. Unfortunately, […]

Anticipating SSHRC Standard Research Grant results

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

Here in Canada, the beginning of April brings news of success (or not) in the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant competition. The applications went in last October. The committees met in the last couple of weeks to make their decisions. The federal government’s fiscal year starts on April 1 so […]

How I help with writing

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

A hadn’t been publishing. He wrote regularly despite a full teaching load. But he wasn’t getting things finished. And he wasn’t submitting them. Writing was an intellectually satisfying process for A. In thinking about why he didn’t finish he realized that he wasn’t motivated by the product — an article or a book — but […]

Learning to use images

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Moving from knowing that images do things words can do to actually using images well in presentations and other work is hard. I’ve learned a lot about that in the past year. For example, finding representational images after you’ve written the content is probably the hardest way to go about it.

I’m now figuring how to use images to help you be a better academic. If you want to help me test a new tool …

A class provides structure

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Now that so much information is available on the internet, this question arises more and more frequently. Why go to university? Why pay all that money to learn things you could learn on your own using resources available on the internet and in public libraries. Couldn’t you just do this stuff yourself? Perhaps with the […]

What are you going to do with that?

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

How many people have asked you this question? I bet you’ve lost count. It is such a common question, someone used it as the title of a book. About non-academic careers for PhDs, of course. (It’s a good book. Well worth it.) And it’s probably your number one source of anxiety while working towards your PhD and […]

Believe it or not, I do this for a living

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

I never would have imagined it were possible. Given that there was no internet when I was a teenager, running my own business over the internet is obviously not something I’ve wanted to do forever. In fact, running my own business at all only came to me as an option fairly late in the game. […]

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