Author: Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD Originally published on Inside Higher Ed. I was recently in a meeting with a president, chief diversity officer and dean at a small liberal arts college. The president launched our conversation by confidently insisting that while lots of people talk about the importance of mentoring, nothing really works, nobody has figured … Read more
Author: Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD I have worked with many academic writers who feel guilty about not writing, overwhelmed by unrealistic goals, panicked about time and stuck in the rut of procrastination. Based on that experience, I know that there are several things you can do that will get you out of your rut and … Read more
Author: Barbara Risman, PhD One ritual shared by all of us with a doctorate is writing a dissertation. For some of us, it’s the most major writing project of our careers, for others it is just a launching pad for a career as a writing professor. But for everyone, it is a hurdle that takes incredible … Read more
Author: Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD It’s been quite a journey over the past five weeks of our collective work to overcome academic perfectionism. We calculated the costs of perfectionism, we learned what the cycle of perfectionismlooks like and how to disrupt it, and we explored concrete strategies for overcoming perfectionism in teaching, service and writing. I love that so many of you experimented with … Read more
Author: Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD Originally posted on Inside Higher Ed. Recent news documenting the unhappy state of associate professors was unsurprising to me. I travel to different campuses every week and one of the most frequent requests I receive is to help “stuck” associate professors find their mid-career mojo. And there’s nothing quite like walking into … Read more
Author: Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD Originally posted on Inside Higher Ed. One of the most pervasive problems I see among academic writers is perfectionism. It’s so ubiquitous and manifests in so many ugly ways that I’ve decided to dedicate a five-part series to overcoming academic perfectionism. And yes, there’s a unique flavor to academic perfectionism and … Read more
Author: Badia Ahad, PhD As a graduate student, I had a lot of difficulties writing the dissertation. I was told by my readers that I needed to “bolster” my language, that my analysis could be pushed “further,” and that my arguments were too diffuse. These kinds of criticisms are not uncommon for dissertation projects, but … Read more
Author: Joy Gaston Gayles, PhD I have been a full professor for a year now. Recently, I was asked to reflect on my experience, given that less than 2% of full professors are African American women. As the first African American in my program area and department to reach this milestone, and one of less … Read more
The thrill of being hired for a tenure-track job is often quickly replaced by feeling all alone in a new town, far from your loved ones. New faculty often feel so thankful to have landed a tenure-track job that it’s hard to also talk honestly about the fact that there are real challenges to settling … Read more
Author: Barbara Risman, PhD Nearly all university administrators are really faculty in disguise. We take jobs in administration for a variety of reasons. Whether we are a Department Head, Associate Dean, Dean or Provost, most of us want to both do our jobs well and remain active in our fields as researchers and writers who publish … Read more