Chapter 3
Navigating graduate school and academia
Key questions and answers
This chapter takes the form of short answers to questions
posed by graduate students. I lay out some of the questions that I have
encountered most frequently during my two decades working with graduate
students as an advisor, as a Director of Graduate Studies, and as an
instructor of a number of classes, including, currently, a Graduate
Professionalization seminar. I also include some of the questions that are
often asked of me by newly graduated students, in their first faculty
positions. I first provide my own answers to these questions, and then point
to the much more complete and focused information that can be found in many
of the other chapters contained in the current volume.
Article outline
- Advising
- Choosing an advisor
- Interviewing prospective advisors (and other advisees)
- Balancing senior, mid-career, or junior scholars as advisors and
committee members
- Co-advising: The best of both worlds or a multitude of sins?
- What about when you have no choice?
- Problems: What happens when it’s not working?
- Academic life in a Ph.D. program
- RA Jobs
- Department reading or working groups
- Professional organizations
- Developing your CV
- Social media
- A note of caution
- Teaching experience
- Manuscript editing
- Navigating department or committee politics
- Putting it out there: Conferences
- What conferences should I submit to?
- Where can I get feedback on my abstract?
- How will I fund my travel to the conference?
- What sort of logistical issues should I plan for in delivering my
paper?
- How can I make the best of networking at a conference?
- Putting it out there: Publishing
- When should you start thinking about publishing?
- Where should you publish?
- How to get published
- Rejection…or is it?
-
Acknowledgement
-
References