Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Do you suffer from impostor syndrome? That’s one of those faux-medical terms for a Very Real Thing. You feel like you don’t really belong, you aren’t really qualified, and at any moment someone is going to find out and your whole life will come crashing down. It’s related to […]
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Thoughts on accountability, deadlines & goals
You want to write more. You want to finish and submit more of your writing. You may think that the only way to do that is to do one or more of the following: set concrete (product-oriented) goals give yourself deadlines for achieving those goals make yourself accountable to someone else for those goals and/or […]
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“Write all the things” is not a summer plan
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Write All The Things! is not a summer plan As the semester got busier, chances are you started saying “I’ll get to that in the summer” about a lot of things, especially writing. At this point you’ve probably got a list that is roughly “Write all the things.” Of […]
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How to take the weekend off
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · How to take the weekend off Academic life is demanding. During term time you are juggling teaching, administrative and service work, graduate supervision, and your own research and writing. During the summer and your sabbatical, you feel like you need to devote as much time as possible to your […]
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Be an amateur.
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Be an amateur I’ve been thinking about the term amateur. I’m particularly drawn to the origin — “French, from Italian amatore from Latin amator lover”. I note that prior to the 19th century, usage is merely: “A person who is fond of something; a person who has a taste […]
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What that 15 minute practice looks like
You are probably worried about being able to write high quality academic prose, to get it published, to write and publish enough of it, and so on. You may look at my advice to write for 15 minutes a day and think that is never going to help you with that. What useful writing can […]
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Setting effective goals
My approach to planning is very process focused. I encourage you to make time to do the important work and to notice how your projects are moving forward. I do this because what I see happening when people set goals increases stress, leads to overwork, and doesn’t actually support their best work. Things like: negative self-talk […]
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Process vs Product
I have an ambivalent relationship with goals. I know they are important but I find setting specific goals with an output and a deadline stalls my work rather than motivating it. I see that a lot of you struggle with similar issues in your writing. This post uses a long analogy to my own process […]
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Confidence must come from within
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Confidence must come from within It’s easy to think that external validation will help build your confidence. Getting that paper accepted. Getting that grant. Having someone more established in your field cite your work or compliment you on it. It won’t. Like Groucho Marx, who famously would not want […]
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Summer Writing plans
I was talking to a client about her summer plans. She wants to get a lot of stuff written this summer. She has lots of data. She wants to apply for a grant in about 18 months time. And heck, she finds it hard to write during term time and wants to prioritize that over […]
Read More »From the archive: It’s not how much you publish
In this season of setting goals it is worth thinking about how you frame those goals. At the end of a workshop on publishing plans, clarifying objectives, figuring out when to apply for a SSHRC grant, and related issues, one participant made an interesting comment. Thanking me for the workshop she contrasted my approach to the […]
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Goals and magical thinking
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Goals and Magical Thinking You will not be surprised to learn that I read blogs which provide business advice and decided to hire a business coach to help me with my career. Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz wrote a series about goal setting back in 2013 (it’s no longer available […]
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