‘The Essential Guide to Turning Your PhD into a Job’ – Reflections
Karen Kelsky, of ‘The Professor Is In’ has a book out, based on her years of advising PhDs. Preparing yourself (and the range of documents that represent you) for the job market is her niche. I once thought I’d regularly feature PhD book reviews on this site, that is until I actually read some PhD advice books. Many of them didn’t appeal. This one is an exception. If you are in academia, and want to stay there: get this book. If you want to quit academia: same. It is written from a U.S. Perspective with the U.S. (humanities) job market [...]
How to Ease Supervision Blues: Three Perspectives
Supervision: too often the stuff of headaches. In the current academic world where research output is valued above all else and academics are stretched and stretched, and sometimes overstretched to meet their multiple obligations, supervision too often becomes an afterthought. Add to that an academic culture in which PhD projects are increasingly squeezed into impossibly linear schedules - with the emphasis again on ‘measurable output’, while academics are not in any way trained on how to coach and supervise, somehow having to figure this out for themselves (and are definitely not all innately able!), accidents happen. No fatalities, mostly, but [...]
Summer Slow Down: Time to Relax, Recharge, Reflect
Summer. Time to relax, recharge, and…reflect. How was your academic year? What went well? What didn’t? Anything you’d like to change? This slow time of year (though I know, it’s academia, for some of you conference season may be right round the corner) is an excellent time to reflect and ask some questions we don’t tend to get round to when we’re hopping around from one obligation to the next. With our eyes on the next short-term goal, and immersed in the details of our work, perspective gets lost. The summer is a time to chill out a bit, zoom [...]
Stress: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Say ‘stress’. What comes up for you? For most people ‘stress’, means: ‘I have too much to do’ or ‘I am so stressed I want to pull my hair out!’ I want to look at it a little differently. I want to look at stress as a demand you place on yourself, or is placed on you. That’s neutral. It depends on what exactly the stressor is, and how you react to it whether it’s a positive or negative. To make it more specific: let’s say your stressor is a deadline. We all know how deadlines have a knack for [...]
Keeping Up, Meeting Deadlines, and Making Habits Stick
At this time of year, time seems to speed up. The summer is in sight, as are too rapidly approaching PhD deadlines. When we start getting panicky about things it helps to step back and ask what might make a difference. A difference to how we work, how we write, how we get things done, how we feel. What might help us accomplish our goals? I have become a big fan of habits, and have learnt how to build them purposefully and gradually. The gradual bit I am still not too keen on, but as I have found out with [...]
The Art of Focus
Are you in between? At work, but not working? At home, but not relaxing? In bed, but not sleeping? Drifting off into worry about whether your chapter, or paper, or outline will be finished in time, while the clock ticks and your cursor blinks? Drifting off into 'will this ever be good enough' and 'what am I doing'? Drifting off into randomness, into plans and to-do's, and overwhelm? Drifting off into conversations in your mind? Drifting off... Do you procrastinate? Worry? Obsess? Much? Do you wonder where the day went, and why you didn't get done what you wanted to [...]
LIBRARY
Free Resources Library
I have compiled some free resources for you to download. An e-book, a short course with encouraging emails to nudge your writing productivity alive, and a worksheet with a mini-course to create an effective and very zen work routine.
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