Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Prioritizing Rest over the Winter Break On the first Friday in December, I ran a group coaching session for members of the Academic Writing Studio with the goal of helping them optimize their ability to recharge over the break. There are systemic issues that make it impossible to fully […]
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So tired you could cry? Enable Low Power Mode.
This post is part 2 of a mini-series called So Tired You Could Cry. The 1st part can be found here. You know when your phone warns you about the battery being low, it also asks if you want to enable Low Power Mode? You need to figure out what that looks like for you. […]
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So tired you could cry? Permission granted.
This post is part 1 of a mini-series called So Tired You Could Cry. The 2nd part is available here. You can cry! In fact, put it on your to-do list. Cry in the shower every morning. Cry in bed wrapped up in your blankets. At a minimum stop trying not to cry. Tiredness isn’t […]
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Email overwhelm as a collective problem
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Email Overwhelm as a Collective Problem This post was prompted by the renowned classicist, Mary Beard, stoking up the embers of email stress recently over on Twitter. for all you guys (women and men) recommending 'delay delivery',. do you know what that means? It means that at 9.00 my […]
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What is the point of publishing peer-reviewed articles if you care about changing things out there in the world?
I want to write more about some of the practical applications of the general point I made in Communication vs Validation: Why are you publishing?. In particular, I want to connect my approach to writing and publishing with the larger themes of confidence and meaningfulness. This particular post began with a reply to a general question […]
Read More »Communication vs Validation: why are you publishing?
The primary purpose of publishing, even scholarly publishing, is communication. If you centre the communicative role of publishing, with a focus on the audience and the difference you would like your work to make for that audience, decisions about when and where to publish will change. This principle can also influence how you understand peer […]
Read More »You aren’t trying to win an argument
For various reasons I’ve been thinking about what holds people back from submitting/publishing their work. Fear of criticism comes up a lot. As if somehow if someone doesn’t like it, or disagrees with it, it means you shouldn’t have published it, or the work was wasted or something. We are all searching for truth. That’s […]
Read More »Good enough?
Does something have to be finished to publish? Doesn’t publishing something that is “good enough” but “not quite finished” suggest that you are lowering your standards? What about “excellence”? Back in 2009, I attended a production of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Belle Moral. The author’s note in the program caught my attention, especially the part of which […]
Read More »Fear is in the eye of the beholder (PhD2Published)
I have a post on publishing and fear up at PhD2Published. It starts like this: The biggest barrier to publishing is fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of criticism. Fear that you really don’t have anything to contribute. And then I talk about how to move forward anyway under the following headings Look for the contribution to […]
Read More »Publishing from your dissertation
It is a fact of life that if you want an academic job you need to publish. For most early career academics, or PhD students contemplating academic careers, this means thinking about your dissertation. This post looks at the options: book or articles; and what kind of articles.
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 »Validation vs. communication: an example
Bon Stewart made a very prescient point in the comments of my post on how scholarship is evaluated. “the notion of validity by process became more important than the idea of contribution TO the process”. This morning I was catching up on blog reading and read a very thought provoking article that I think makes excellent background to such a discussion. It’s about scientific publishing, which is the model that humanities and social science researchers are being compared to implicitly or explicitly. And it illustrates some very serious issues in relation to this question of validation.
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