The Professor Is In

We continue with vintage – yet evergreen – recordings. It seems like everyone struggles with the desire to quit at times. It’s a natural response to external forces, but you can summon internal forces to manage that impulse. We’re not saying don’t quit! We’re just saying, act deliberately. In this episode, Karen and Kel talk […]

Academics are bailing in unprecedented numbers, and academia has finally started to notice. Karen was interviewed twice in the past couple weeks–once in Nature, once in the Chronicle — about mass resignations by tenured folks, and the new Professor Is Out community on FB. COVID was the final straw–adding actual physical harm to the decades […]

Perfection is the enemy of productivity, but almost all academics struggle with perfectionism. How to resist its siren song? Kel shares her coaching insights from her Unstuck: The Art of Productivity program to give strategies for shutting down the delusion of perfection (which, after all, is not possible) and opening up avenues for facing the […]

One episode wasn’t enough to talk about burnout in the academy. Juxtaposing the WHO definition of burnout with a definition Karen read, that burnout is “investing emotionally in a job and not having that investment returned,” Karen and Kel, along with commenters on the FB Live where this was recorded, delve further into the elements […]

Burnout is on everyone’s mind right now. It’s the end of the academic year, and what an academic year it was.  Profs and students both are at the end of their ropes. Kel and Karen talk about the symptoms of burnout, including some that might surprise you, and how to recognize and make peace with […]

You didn’t get the job this year; what to do?  Kel and I talk through what makes a competitive record and competitive presentation of that record, so you can know what to prioritize this summer, if an academic job is your priority (and needless to say, it does not have to be).  This follows on […]

We dig into the definition of  “professionalism,” a term thrown around as an arbiter of correct and incorrect behavior in academia.  Drawing from insights on a recent Twitter thread, Karen and Kel talk about how professionalism operates as code for the protection of white (male, straight, cisgender) comfort – quiet, sedate, nonconfrontational, bodies contained and […]

We did a survey recently and the message loud and clear was: please give us more advice about just… surviving in academia!  So today we are talking about managing your transition into your new academic “thing,” whatever it is. We talk about managing your fear and keeping connected to your own values and motivations. Academia […]

[Note: Karen and Kel were on vacation in NYC and recording from a hotel room! Please excuse the tinny sound today and next week; it goes back to normal after that!] A tweet went academic-viral recently asking whether academics use sick leave or even know what their sick leave policies are. Short answer: in the […]

We talk about the “capitalist gaze” and how it impacts the creativity of academics. Casting our research outcomes as “products” can be deeply chilling to the imaginative work of scholarship.  Research as an assembly line, or as a deli counter (slicing your work into ever thinner slices to maximize number of publications) constricts scope for […]

When you think about academia like a garden, the analogy clarifies a lot of things. First off, not every plant can thrive in every spot; also, plants need constant resources in terms of water, fertilizer, sun, and attention. We don’t judge one growing zone over another- they aren’t better or worse, they are just different.  […]

Collaborative writing is a great productivity hack when it works. But how to make it work? In this episode Karen and Kel talk to Dr. Julia Hornberger and Dr. Sarah Hodges, who have maintained a weekly Zoom collaborative writing practice over two continents for the past five years. They explain the technical logistics of making […]

It’s the newest trend! Join the thousands who are saying goodbye (and good riddance?) to the academic career!  If you spend any time on Twitter, you know that lately, it seems to be packed with academics loudly and honestly pretty happily announcing their departure from academia. So much so that the people staying in are […]

Karen and Kel talk about coping with rejection, moving beyond the typical advice to “take a break, come back to it later, etc. etc.” (which is good as far as it goes!) to discuss the deeper issues of identity and emotion that rejection triggers. Drawing from an essay by Dr. Gavin Lamb, “4 Reasons Why […]

We talk Imposter Syndrome: what it is, why we get it, how to overcome it. We talk about gendered messages, structural racism, and being told you don’t belong; ie: it’s not Imposter Syndrome if they’re always treating you like an imposter. We ask why it so often intensifies precisely when you experience professional success, like […]

We are back! Thank you for your patience!  Kel and I needed to rethink the podcast; basically we love to talk TO people, and after two years wanted to find a way to make the podcast more of a conversation with the community and less just the two of us (with the occasional guest). So, […]

We talk breaking points. Kel suggests to anyone feeling they’ve reached the breaking point at the end of the semester: pause, and appreciate that it’s showing you, you DO have a limit. Sit with that. What’s it mean to hit your limit and really admit it? That is, rather than judging yourself, or scrambling to get past it. Instead, embrace the breaking point. And use it as, conversely, a strength. That is, the place where you say no. No to more expectations, more to more demands, no to more work. And yes to stepping away, taking a break, seeing a friend, resting yourself.  When it makes you finally just stop, your breaking point can be an ally. [Become a supporting member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like a permanent 50% off code for almost all webinars and courses, free monthly webinar recordings ($50 value), AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, and early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to support monthly? Donate here to send along some one-time support.

Today we are joined by the remarkable Deja Rollins, speaking about performative allyship. Deja, a graduate student in Communications at UIUC, was the standout star of Karen’s TedX event hosted by U of Arkansas Monticello, and we’ve been working on getting her on the podcast for almost a year. In this conversation Deja talks about how white folks, particularly in the academy, talk the talk of “allyship” (especially during summer 2020) without taking any meaningful action, or sacrificing any of our money, ego, status, or institutional power.  She makes the point that identifying as an “ally” is a self-identification actively claimed BY certain white folks (and not requested by Black folks), and, she says, if we’re “about that life then it’s on us to actually show up and do the work.”  Don’t wait for Black bodies to be headlines to show up with hashtags.  Don’t tell Black scholars their work on Black trauma needs to be “sexier.”  White people: Recognize our continued possessive investment in whiteness, especially in academic spaces. We own space all the time; so the task is sit down and listen.  White people: we own spaces of ease, so feel uncomfortable. Prioritizing white folks feeling “safe” (in all the endless anti-racism workshops) is a further violence and silencing.  White people: we own the standards of evaluation, so vocally question the standards by which you are evaluating graduate students, job candidates, tenure candidates. Deja’s message: “If I can’t say outright this is bullshit, whiteness as a normative structure is whack as hell, a lot of performance and no action, if you can’t hear that, if i make you uncomfortable, that’s not where I need to be.” [Become a supporting member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like a permanent 50% off code for almost all webinars and courses, free monthly webinar recordings ($50 value), AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, and early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to support monthly? Donate here to send along some one-time support.

Dr. Samira Rajabi, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at U of Colorado Boulder,  joins us for a discussion of navigating ambiguous grief and trauma in the pandemic academy and the rest of life. Drawing from her research for her new book, All My Friends Live in the Computer: Tactical Media, Trauma, and Meaning Making, as well as her own personal stories, Samira talks with us about the importance of social media communities in navigating suffering, and ways to interrupt capitalist narratives of productivity and success/failure, in order to reconnect with genuine loss, and move through and past it to what comes next.  Sometimes all it takes is a kazoo! [Become a supporting member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like a permanent 50% off code for almost all webinars and courses, free monthly webinar recordings ($50 value), AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, and early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to support monthly? Donate here to send along some one-time support.

The Professor Is In Ep 3:9 The Key to Interviews and Grants Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:32:54 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Stitcher RSS Feed

Part three in our three-part series about getting Unstuck. So much of the academic experience is about feelings of failure.  It’s central to normally functioning academia (in the sense of job, grant and article rejections), but it’s far more relevant nowadays to the effort to leave the academy.  Not getting the coveted job is still widely considered a “failure” and academics who have their identity wrapped up in academic achievement so easily take on the identity of “failure” – as in, I’M a failure – in the face of not getting an academic job, and deciding to depart for other career directions. How are you stuck in the quagmire by attaching narratives of the past  – like bungie cords pulling you backward – and how do you break free?  Kel and Karen offer some methods to move beyond these quagmire of failure feelings:  1) Spend time with your grief, and 2) stop expecting an apology (because the university will never give you one). As you do this, you learn to just pause, sit, stop striving, process your feelings of fear, rage, bitterness, and grief, identify the story you’re attached to, recognize where firm ground actually lies, and crawl forward one tiny step. *Like the new Art of Leaving program, which starts this month!  And the Professor Is Out private FB group.) [Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support.

We continue with the three-part examination of getting stuck and unstuck. Last week we talked about the Island of Perfectionism. Today we talk the Sea of Change (next week, we talk the Quagmire of Failure).  The individualism of the (American) academy puts all responsibility for struggle on the individual. But we remind you, you didn’t just “fall” off your path–in the words of Dr. Roxanne Donovan of The Well Academic, something pushed you off.  The pandemic and the Great Resignation are currently pushing unprecedented numbers of academics (especially women) off their planned path. But change is scary! And academics are profoundly risk-averse. We talk about turning toward a mindset of process not outcome (“‘to be’ is not the question in the Sea of Change,” quoth Karen), and querying the conviction of “nobility” that so many academics attach to the academic enterprise and that keeps people stuck in untenable academic places – exploited, endangered, miserable. Pushing the sea-metaphor way past its likely utility (!), Karen and Kel talk about befriending the fear, setting out on your little dinghy – maybe with some help pulling it past the break* – and paddling out into unknown waters! *Like the new Art of Leaving program, which starts next month!  And the Professor Is Out private FB group.) [Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support.

It’s The Great Resignation, and people are departing their shitty jobs in droves. This includes academics, and not just adjuncts. Tenured and tenure track faculty are proactively departing to a degree never before seen. (Find many of them on the Professor Is Out private FB group!) Karen and Kel talk about ways that perfectionism–always the bugbear of academia–can hamper your transition out of the academy just as much as it might hamper your process of finishing that paper, dissertation, or book project. It’s all kind of the same thing: you feel like you have to know EXACTLY where you’re going and EXACTLY what you have to do, before you take a step. But, you don’t. You only need to take the first step. And that first step may well feel like a “misstep” but that is not a mistake, it’s just more information! Opening yourself to process – through Kel’s method of always asking, “….and…?” relieves you from the outcome-centrism of academic thinking, and frees you to move forward. [Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support.

We are joined by Dr. Jane Jones of UpIn Consulting (@JaneJoanne) to talk about 5 reasons that your article manuscripts might be getting rejected, drawn from Kel and Jane’s Art of the Article program. Here’s the list: 1) not finishing out of fear [of reactions, reviews, etc.]; 2) submitting to the wrong journal [meaning a journal that is a poor match for your work, discipline, or level]; 3) not demonstrating the import/significance of your work in relation to the field or fields prioritized by the journal [separate from “nobody has studied this before”]; 4) Clear and precise signposting of topic, methods, theory, questions, analysis and conclusion [this includes you, humanities folks!];  5) an excellent abstract, that in about 6 crisp sentences sketches topic, methods, conclusion and import [that you write first, but then revise as you complete the mss.]. On the way we remind you that publishing requires strategizing, that you are allowed to refuse some reviewer comments, that outlining works, and that abstracts are far from an afterthought–they matter! The upshot is: article-writing is a skill you can gain with training and practice, and rejections are not proof that you don’t belong in academia–they just mean you might not yet have mastered all the skills you need to get your work accepted. [Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support.

What do you do when you get stuck? Kel has found that her coaching clients tend to devolve into a spiral of self-loathing. But that doesn’t work; it’s just not very motivating! So Kel asks: why does the academy tell us we must automatically be good at every single thing we try in the academic career, and how can we get past that when we find ourselves stuck? Drawing from their newfound love of lap swimming this past summer, Karen and Kel talk about taking an inventory of your strengths and your places needing development, and then learning to use places of strength to explicitly shore up and development the weaker skills. Basically, when you are pushing and pushing and getting no results, draw from a different set of resources. Both resources within yourself, and those offered by external sources of help. [Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support.