Strategies to help you navigate the emotional aspects of graduate school, academia, and career exploration.
From Maren on Job Searching in Uncertainty The email below was shared with our mailing list. If you’d like to receive the resources mentioned including notification of free webinars and free worksheets, sign up for our mailing list here. Dear Friends, Over the last few weeks, many of you have reached out to us on …
How do your values affect your job search? When it comes to thinking about job options after your PhD (whether academic or non-academic jobs), advice often focuses on the “practical” aspects of a search: what’s the state of hiring in your field? What’s the likelihood you’ll land a tenure-track job? What are your finances like? …
When Should I Quit The Academic Job Market? This is a difficult question to answer because it is so deeply personal. It’s also a difficult question because everyone we know has a different opinion about our job prospects: our advisors, parents, friends, partners, and neighbors. “It’s time to get a real job”; “keep going, your …
9 Signs You Might Be About to Quit Your Academic Job 1. You need to (or simply want to) relocate If you’re like most PhDs, you will have moved at least once either to complete a degree or to take up a job somewhere you would have never imagined living. Sometimes the new location works …
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6 self-care tips for job-searching contingent faculty Are you juggling several course preps and grading hundreds of papers over the weekend while managing a job search? With so many demands on your time, it can be hard to find the energy and motivation to take care of yourself. Without self-care, your fuel will run low …
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How to deal with the loss of your academic career How do you start to think about a career change after you’ve invested so much time in an academic career? How do you deal with the loss of an academic career you’ve always wanted? First, admit that endings are difficult. It is normal to feel …
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Beyond the PhD: Avoiding Post-Parting Depression You’ve been craving the end, to finish at last and be done with it. You’ve lived with your dissertation for too many years, pushed hard for so very long, and hardly believed this day would come. But it did. You no longer have to spend every moment you’re not …
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Dear 2004 Maren Advice to My Past Self Dear 2004 Maren, It’s the beginning of the academic year. You are excited but anxious to be starting your PhD at UNC Chapel Hill. Last week, you arrived with a U-haul from Ottawa, with your dad and friend Paula. You are on the adventure of a lifetime …
The door is slightly open in my Professorial office…And I’m looking at what’s out there… I am an academic. I have a Ph.D. in history and have taught at my institution for 10 years full time. I have a 4/4 teaching load with heavy work in service and small exercises in historical research which sometimes …
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Walking Away From Academia When It Was Your Dream Job There are many blog posts written by people who decided to leave academia. With the tight academic job market and the broken and exploitative adjunct system, there are many people, like me, who leave higher education because of math: there are just not enough jobs …
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How Do I Tell My Advisor I’m Leaving Academia? Whenever I talk with graduate students about how to prepare for a nonfaculty job search, there is one topic about which they share varying degrees of anxiety: how, and when, to tell their Ph.D. advisers. Students who are determined to exit the academy are usually the …
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