Blog – Page 64

March 22, 2010

Have I mentioned?

My wife is starting graduate school in the fall. She’ll be getting a MDiv with the goal of being a congregational minister.

I thought I’d mention it in case anyone was concerned that I was against graduate school in all its forms!

Clearly, graduate school is the right choice for many people, and many more will choose to go even if they really do understand the risks involved. And that’s a good thing, because academia and future college students deserve excited, engaged, passionate teachers and researchers.

It’s going to be really interesting to kind of go through graduate school again, albeit a very different kind of graduate school and from a very different perspective. I’m sure it’ll give me a lot to talk about!

March 18, 2010

How to market yourself outside of academia

For most academics on the semester system, there’s about two months left to go. (A lot of you are on spring break now, or near it, and I can hear the sighs of gratitude from here!) And that means that, if you’re thinking of leaving, this is a good time to start thinking about applying for other jobs.

One of the most frequent questions I hear is about how those of us who have only ever been academics of one status or another can market ourselves to the outside world. There aren’t a lot of job ads for thinkers who can manage hordes of post-adolescents, after all.

While I don’t think you should think about post-academic careers entirely on the basis of skills (your passion is the most important thing), at some point you do have to put pen to paper (or cursor to document) and figure out how to convince some that you’ve got what they want. So let’s talk about what transferable skills you likely have.

A few things you’re probably really good at

Public speaking. You’ve probably been doing it three, six, nine, twelve times a week for years. That’s more public-speaking time than most public speakers have. You know how to organize information for people listening, you know how to deliver it, and you know how to deal with questions and comments that come up. It’s easy to think this is something “anyone can do,” but trust me, it’s a skill. I didn’t realize just how not-common a skill it was until I was part of a group presentation to a company’s executive team and blew everyone away with my ability to make sense without looking at a piece of paper. Seriously.

Training. It may be called “education” instead of “training” or “development” or what-have-you, but you’ve spent years putting together multi-week training systems with objectives, goals, and thoughtful ways of reaching them.

Management. Recognizing peoples’ skills, helping them notice and develop skill deficiencies, providing ongoing and tactful feedback, helping people understand how projects fit into their larger path — sounds like advising, teaching, and management to me.

Defining projects. Say there’s a problem you want to solve. How do you figure out how to do that? Initial inquiry, defining the problem, defining resources, setting out probable paths, and then doing the work — sound familiar at all?

Event planning and management. If you’ve ever been involved in planning or holding a conference, you’ve done event planning.

Writing and editing. If you’re in academia, you write. You might even write for public audiences. You likely edit your own work and that of your friends and colleagues, and you might have had a stint on a journal.

Consulting. Do you help other people, including graduate students and advisees, figure out what they’re doing? Bingo.

Grantwriting. If you’re in the sciences, you’ve got plenty of experience writing applications to get money. If you’re not in the sciences, you might very well still have plenty of experience doing this. It’s a real skill many non-profits need.

Okay, so I have transferable skills. How do I talk about them?

I’m not suggesting that you’re going to write your resume by saying you “consulted” with graduate students or you “engaged in public speaking on an ongoing basis.” That’s doublespeak of the worst kind, and it won’t help you.

However, thinking about what you do as an academic in terms of the skills you’re applying and what they’re called in the real world lets you do two things.

First, it helps you write a skills-based resume. If you aren’t applying for a job that has a close and clear relationship to what you’ve been doing, then framing your experience in terms of skills will help you help them understand why you might be worth interviewing.

Second, it helps you think through your cover letter. Contrary to popular belief, the cover letter should be more than an elaborate address label. It’s the place where you get to make the engaged, impassioned argument that you have the skills and experience they need to do what they’re doing — no matter what it looks like your resume says. Being able to relate what you’ve done to what they need is an invaluable help.

For example, when I was applying for an editing job, I was able to talk about my ability to handle unfamiliar subjects by explaining how I taught technical writing classes, in which students would focus on their majors and their specialties. (I also got to talk about deer contraception, which was great fun and helped me stand out.) It’s not obvious to someone outside of academia, but that experience was pretty much exactly what an editor faces, and it was persuasive because I obviously understood the challenge.

Deer contraception? Really?

Um, yes. I really did mention deer contraception in a cover letter, and it was perfect for the job I was applying for. (Matching your tone to the company’s tone is key!)

You may not have an outrageous example to throw in, but the bottom line is that you’re fabulous and smart and skilled. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have gotten this far in academia to begin with. There are many other organizations that would benefit from all of the experience, passion, and talent you’ve got in spades. You just have to frame it in a way that they, and you, can see.

March 15, 2010

How to finish when you know you’re leaving

There are all kinds of names for it. Senioritis. Lame-duck season. Whatever you call it, it’s that soul-sucking period between the time you’re emotionally done with something and when it actually, mercifully comes to an end.

Maybe you’ve decided your marriage is over, and you just want to be apart now, thank you very much. Maybe you’re pregnant and there’s a few more weeks to go before you get to transition from too-uncomfortable-to-sleep-and-large-as-a-house to baby-holding mama. Maybe you’ve decided this job is eating your life, and you want to quit. Maybe you’ve decided this career isn’t for you, and you want to tie up whatever stage of it you’re in with a bow and move along.

In some cases, you can short-circuit that awful, soul-sucking period by, well, just shortening it. You were intending to move out at the end of the year, but the car is packed and you’ve got a couch with your name on it before you knew what you were doing. You were planning to get another job lined up before you quit, but that last meeting pushed you over the edge and your letter of resignation is now on your boss’ desk.

But often, too often, it’s not that simple. If you want the baby, you have to wait for her to be fully cooked. If you want the degree, you have to finish the dissertation.

And there’s the rub: To do the thing you want to do, you have to do the thing you most don’t want to do.

Craptastic, line 1

Let me start by saying this: This is an awful, shitty place to be. It’s depressing, demoralizing, and alienating. And? It’s not much fun.

A lot of people will likely tell you that everyone hates the end of their dissertation! Buck up! (And okay, yes, most people want nothing to do with it by the home stretch, it’s true.) But it’s not the same thing everyone else is experiencing.

The people who plan to go on, however much they hate the dissertation right now, have a clear motivation for finishing and finishing well: This work is part and parcel of getting them a job and jump starting their academic career. They have an overarching goal that they can keep their eyes on.

When the goal is just to finish so you’re done, because you’ve come this far, well, that’s not much motivation at all.

So what can you do?

There are a couple of tricks that will help you finish even when you’ve lost all motivation to continue.

First, focus on your goal. Finishing is always a means to an end — and in your case, that end is a more expansive, joyful, fulfilling life. Imagine what your life will be like when this weight is lifted from your shoulders. Imagine what your life will be like when you can take back your evenings and weekends. Imagine what your life will be like when you can divorce your fucking laptop and actually spend time doing things you love.

Find a way to remind yourself of this future awesomeness. Maybe it’s a list taped to the desk by your computer. Maybe it’s a collage of all the fabulous things you’ll be doing once you’re done. Maybe it’s a song that epitomizes the life you want to be living.

There is a reason you’re doing this, it says to you. This pain is not meaningless.

And if there isn’t a reason you’re doing this, please rethink it. Seriously. If it’s not going to satisfy something in you, if it’s not going to help your future, if it’s not going to get you to something you want, then consider walking away.

Second, assuming you’re committed to doing it, break down the task into little, teeny pieces.

When you’ve got the finish line in sight, it’s really tempting to chunk everything into motivation-killing huge lumps, because you’re so! close! But if the chunks are too large to deal with without triggering all of your apathy and hatred and stuck, well, they’re not actually getting you closer to the goal.

I know, every other “how to write your dissertation” book tells you to break things into pieces, but their “tiny pieces” and my “tiny pieces” are worlds apart. Their “tiny pieces” are things like “write the next section of the chapter.” My “tiny pieces” are more like “find the title of that fucking book I can’t remember the name of.”

Make a list of teeny, tiny pieces — your feeling about each piece should be a kind of inner eye-rolling, a sense of “of course I can do that.” If the piece doesn’t feel like that, it’s too big — make it littler. Do one teeny, tiny piece. Then walk away from it for 24 hours or until you want to do another piece, whichever comes first. When you run out of pieces, make more. The goal is always to do one teeny, tiny thing that will move you forward.

Often, when I talk about teeny tiny chunks (Martha Beck calls them turtle steps), the response is that they’ll never get done at that rate. Let me ask you this: How well are you finishing now? There will be days when, for whatever reason, you’ll feel motivated to do a whole pile of teeny, tiny tasks. Some days you’ll struggle through one. Let both of those days be okay.

Third, notice when you’re telling a story about yourself, your dissertation, and your leaving: “Oh, I can’t believe I got so far into this without realizing how wrong for me it is. I’m so stupid!”; “I’m just so bad at all of this”; “Everyone knows I’m not going on the market and they probably think I’m a big loser.”

Part of resistance and lack of motivation is the way we talk to ourselves. We often think that being mean and critical is somehow going to make us leap up and start working like mad. I’ve never found that to be true.

Think about the last time someone else was mean to and critical of you. What was your reaction? Did you suddenly feel motivated and engaged, or depressed, despondent, and in need of comfort food and crap tv? The same thing happens when we talk to ourselves in mean and critical ways.

So notice when you’re having negative self-talk, and do your best to replace it with something kinder: “This really sucks, and it makes total sense that I don’t want to do this, but I’m doing my best and I’ll be done as soon as I can be.”

And finally, make sure that you’re engaging in as much self-care as you can stand. Get enough sleep, try not to mainline the coffee, eat something with nutrients in it every so often, spend time with people who love you and believe in you.

One last thing

This part of things really does suck, and it really does end. I promise.

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