As the faithful among you know, I started my job as a policy analyst at a health-based professional association back in January. You also know that, between my love for my job and my love for my daughter/husband combo, the amount of time I’ve wanted to create for blogging has been reduced to, you know, zilch. However! There are those of you out there who have expressed interest in writing content for Leaving Academia, and one of those people, Kaylen Tucker, made me realize that there was no point in futzing around with process, consultations, visioning, etc. Rather, Kaylen made me realize that if fresh content was coming my way, it was time to publish it.
So for the next little while, I’m going to be running pieces written by Kaylen and any other new contributors who want to lend their voice to the post-academic community. Interested in being one of those contributors? Email me and let me know what you’re interested in writing about. Were you one of the fab people who already dropped me a line about this back in, oh, say, February? Don’t be afraid to nudge me again.
Doing the work that I do in my capacity as a writer and consultant around all things post-academic is interesting, valuable, and, often fun. The money? That’s a blog post for another day (though I can say that, like many of the self-employed former academics I’ve interviewed, launching my own business without the financial and emotional support of my spouse would be unimaginable).
Approaching university administrators and department chairs about working with their graduate students and faculty advisors to develop strategies around post-grad school employment can result in a number of responses, ranging from relieved enthusiasm to stony, defensive silence. Although faculty advisors do seem now to grasp that something needs to be done to help current graduate students, there is still reluctance to spend any money on the problem. There is still a prevailing attitude about it being better to spend $12,000 to bring in an unintelligible talk by the ruling hotshot of the day than to spend a fraction of that for a day-long workshop that could help steer people’s professional development.
But then there are interested, interesting people like those at University of Waterloo, who contacted me a while back about doing some work with them. Way to go, Waterloo, for living up to your reputation for innovation! Last Friday, I went down there to meet with some faculty and career centre staff to talk about how they’re already serving graduate students and where some of the gaps are. I’m going to develop a workshop for them that I’ll present early in the winter term, and we’ll see where that goes.
After my meeting in Waterloo, I jetted on over to Kitchener for another meeting with a whole other type of scholar–one doing community-based research. This was a totally different type of meeting, one that was more like an information interview, sprinkled with some exploration about how we could work together. This is an area that I’m putting my feelers into, as a way of returning to my social justice roots, as it were. I’m going to start blogging about this a little bit, sharing with you my own efforts to expand and grow my career into a new and different direction.
In the meantime, though, I am still working to spread the gospel of life on the other side of the academic divide. Contact me if you’re interested in finding out if your university or department would bring me in to run a workshop, or beam me in with a webinar. What is your campus doing to help grad students and faculty find non-academic work?
Tagged as:
consulting
Since launching this current incarnation of Leaving Academia, I’ve had requests from readers and clients to create a space on the internet where members of the post-academic community can congregate, network, socialize, exchange ideas and informally just shoot the shit. While there are places to get post-academic info (WRK4US, Beyond Academe, Sellout, etc.), or do some griping (the Chronicle forums) there hasn’t been a centralized place where networking and connecting with others can happen easily…until now!
That’s what I created leavingacademia.ning.com, a community for academics and post-academics to share and discuss all manner of issues related to leaving. It’s a private list (meaning only members can see what’s going on), but joining is just a matter of registered with Ning. The site is really feature-rich, and I’m excited about what kind of fruitful discussions can come about as a result of all the opportunities for exchanging ideas. There are discussion forums, but there’s also a live chat feature and space for people to form their own groups (by city or region, or by communities of interest, like LGBT leavers). Each user has their own page, where they can maintain their own blog, paste their picture and “friend” other users that they know or get to know. It’s pretty nifty, and it’s there for your disposal, so I really urge everyone to go and check it out.
Tagged as:
resource
A few interesting articles I’ve found floating around on the interwebs this morning:
- There’s this piece at Slate about Matthew Crawford, the Ph.D. who became a motorcycle mechanic and wrote a book about it (Shop Class as Soul Craft).
- In the U.S., the Council of Graduate Schools is initiating a new study of completion rates among Master’s degree students, along the lines of the Council’s Ph.D. Completion Project.
- If you’re interested in jobs in the university sector but not necessarily as faculty, check out this piece on working in academic advising, this one on working in academic administration,
Tagged as:
News
As the dismal news about the current state of universities keeps on rolling out, it’s hard not to think the whole university sector is going to hell in a handbasket. The most disheartening thing I probably heard last week was this shit nugget:
Waterloo is not eliminating specific programs, but is discouraging undergraduate classes with fewer than 10 students, a move Dr. Chakma said will likely lead to fewer courses, especially in smaller departments. Classes of fewer than 10 students will no longer be counted in a professor’s teaching load.
I was an undergrad at the University of Winnipeg in the 1990s, and by the time I hit fourth year, most of my classes had 10 students or fewer. That kind of intense learning experience was a major factor in my decision to go to grad school. I really hate to think that this is the direction Waterloo is going in, and that other schools could follow. And isn’t it convenient for Waterloo that they don’t have to make this a formal policy. They can just force professor’s hands instead.
I would love to hear from grad students, administrators and profs who are living through these kinds of cuts and changes right now. Is this kind of news something that you can just ignore until September? Or is it affecing your work and study environment already?
Tagged as:
bad news,
hiring,
reality check
Ah, you’ve found this blog! Before its official launch! You intrepid researchers, you!
In my desire to get this new incarnation of Leaving Academia off the ground, I’ve let it leak here and there that I’ve moved the site to this here location. But in my desire to get my other website off the ground, Leaving Academia has been left behind.
So you might have come here, seen some random collection of old posts in various states of disrepair, and thought, “What the hell? I thought this refurbished site was supposed to be all tidy and content-rich!”
Well, that is still the plan, only we’re all going to have to wait until next week to make sure the site is real nice and purdy before I get any solid content really socked away here.
I promise, though, that things are going to get rolling here shortly. I’m lining up interviews with former academics, scouring the web for the most useful resources and brainstorming a whole host of topics that will address the most pressing issues you may be facing at this point.
So stay tuned!
Tagged as:
admin
