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Jo VanEvery

You are here: Home / Archives for perfectionism

Do you struggle with perfectionism?

Posts which address the impact of perfectionism on you and your work, and provide strategies for dealing with it.

A silhouette of a person with long hair staring out a window with blinds covering it, in the dark. The frame of the window makes a cross which meets in the middle at the head of the silhouette to make an ominous target shape.

Survivor guilt & imposter syndrome: When you are one of the lucky few

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Survivor guilt & imposter syndrome: When you are one of the lucky few If there is one thing most of my clients, newsletter readers, and social media followers are familiar with, it’s gremlins shouting “Imposter!” at unhelpful moments. I use the term “gremlins” to personify the voices in your […]

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What is Real Writing anyway?

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Jo VanEvery

At the beginning of every planning class in the Academic Writing Studio, I ask participants a set of questions about what they did in the previous period. We focus on writing, and I ask questions about how much time they protected, what they worked on, and how those projects advanced. I do this in the monthly […]

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A bright white wall displays a bunch of messy electronic cables taped across the wall to hold their positions above the floor and leading away from an over-filled plug socket extension block.

What if you need an extension?

Posted on November 17, 2021 by Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What if *you* need an extension? I’ve been seeing a lot of conversation on Twitter about granting extensions to students. Much of it is framed in terms of compassion and kindness. There seems to be a prominent school of thought that you should just do this, almost automatically. That […]

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A business reply envelope in the mail with dark turquoise facemask next to it. Formal letters have so many conventions of tone and structure.

Email sign-offs

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Email Sign-offs Every once in a while there is a bit of a social media storm about how we sign our email messages. There are some humourous memes attributing passive-aggressive intent to various formal sign-offs. They are only funny if you don’t regularly worry about whether the way you […]

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So tired you could cry? Enable Low Power Mode.

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Jo VanEvery

This post was originally written during a time when many universities and workplaces had shifted to remote work in response to the COVID pandemic. Although circumstances have now changed for many people, much of what I say in this post still applies. This post is part 2 of a mini-series called So Tired You Could […]

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An illustration of a woman crying with her face resting on her hand in Victorian style dress.

So tired you could cry? Permission granted.

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Jo VanEvery

This post was originally written during a time when many universities and workplaces had shifted to remote work in response to the COVID pandemic. Although circumstances have now changed for many people, much of what I say in this post still applies. This post is part 1 of a mini-series called So Tired You Could […]

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Close up of the corner of a MacBook laptop screen with Gmail window open

Email overwhelm as a collective problem

Posted on November 6, 2020 by Jo VanEvery

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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Night-time camping scene with a dark blue sky full of stars and the only light coming from an orange tent to the left. A lone silhouetted star-gazer looks up to the stars with a bright headtorch beaming towards the sky. A glowing campfire is on the right.

Juggling, jigsaws, and navigating by the stars: making reasonable plans

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Jo VanEvery

This post was originally written during a time when many universities and workplaces had shifted to remote work in response to the COVID pandemic. Although circumstances have now changed for many people, much of what I say in this post still applies.  Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Juggling, jigsaws, and navigating by the […]

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A graphic design silhouette of a person's head on a bright blue background where a white circle with black simple sad face is placed on the head.

Sneaky ways your gremlins try to get you not to actually publish

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Sneaky ways your gremlins try to get you not to actually publish One of the Studio members asked this question: I’m struggling a bit with my book because it’s going to be one of those £80 books that are marketed to libraries and basically no one reads. Modesty aside, […]

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A wooden carved sculpture of a hand appears to hold up a tree trunk that is growing partially horizontally from the ground. The hand shaped support holds it up and allows it to get back to growing vertically without falling over.

Where does confidence come from? Part 3: Support

Posted on November 29, 2018 by Jo VanEvery

This is part 3 of a series about confidence. In Part 1 of this series, I talked about meaningfulness. In Part 2, I talked about security. The introductory section is repeated so you don’t have to read them in any particular order. Or, listen to the whole series in one track here: Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide […]

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A person holds up a colourful circular dart board to the camera where a green dart is perfectly positioned on the bullseye in the centre.

Do you need to be excellent?

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Jo VanEvery

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Do you need to be excellent? I have written before about “doing your best” being a distraction and instead encouraged you to focus on doing good work. In this post, I want to extend that argument using a recently published scholarly article as a jumping off point. (You can […]

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Face with mask partly on/off

Do you suffer from Imposter Syndrome?

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Jo VanEvery

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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