The Professor Is In

Part three in our three-part series about getting Unstuck. So much of the academic experience is about feelings of failure.  It’s central to normally functioning academia (in the sense of job, grant and article rejections), but it’s far more relevant nowadays to the effort to leave the academy.  Not getting the coveted job is still widely considered a “failure” and academics who have their identity wrapped up in academic achievement so easily take on the identity of “failure” – as in, I’M a failure – in the face of not getting an academic job, and deciding to depart for other career directions. How are you stuck in the quagmire by attaching narratives of the past  – like bungie cords pulling you backward – and how do you break free?  Kel and Karen offer some methods to move beyond these quagmire of failure feelings:  1) Spend time with your grief, and 2) stop expecting an apology (because the university will never give you one). As you do this, you learn to just pause, sit, stop striving, process your feelings of fear, rage, bitterness, and grief, identify the story you’re attached to, recognize where firm ground actually lies, and crawl forward one tiny step.

*Like the new Art of Leaving program, which starts this month!  And the Professor Is Out private FB group.)

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We continue with the three-part examination of getting stuck and unstuck. Last week we talked about the Island of Perfectionism. Today we talk the Sea of Change (next week, we talk the Quagmire of Failure).  The individualism of the (American) academy puts all responsibility for struggle on the individual. But we remind you, you didn’t just “fall” off your path–in the words of Dr. Roxanne Donovan of The Well Academic, something pushed you off.  The pandemic and the Great Resignation are currently pushing unprecedented numbers of academics (especially women) off their planned path. But change is scary! And academics are profoundly risk-averse. We talk about turning toward a mindset of process not outcome (“‘to be’ is not the question in the Sea of Change,” quoth Karen), and querying the conviction of “nobility” that so many academics attach to the academic enterprise and that keeps people stuck in untenable academic places – exploited, endangered, miserable. Pushing the sea-metaphor way past its likely utility (!), Karen and Kel talk about befriending the fear, setting out on your little dinghy – maybe with some help pulling it past the break* – and paddling out into unknown waters!

*Like the new Art of Leaving program, which starts next month!  And the Professor Is Out private FB group.)

[Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks!

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It’s The Great Resignation, and people are departing their shitty jobs in droves. This includes academics, and not just adjuncts. Tenured and tenure track faculty are proactively departing to a degree never before seen. (Find many of them on the Professor Is Out private FB group!) Karen and Kel talk about ways that perfectionism–always the bugbear of academia–can hamper your transition out of the academy just as much as it might hamper your process of finishing that paper, dissertation, or book project. It’s all kind of the same thing: you feel like you have to know EXACTLY where you’re going and EXACTLY what you have to do, before you take a step. But, you don’t. You only need to take the first step. And that first step may well feel like a “misstep” but that is not a mistake, it’s just more information! Opening yourself to process – through Kel’s method of always asking, “….and…?” relieves you from the outcome-centrism of academic thinking, and frees you to move forward.

[Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks!

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We are joined by Dr. Jane Jones of UpIn Consulting (@JaneJoanne) to talk about 5 reasons that your article manuscripts might be getting rejected, drawn from Kel and Jane’s Art of the Article program. Here’s the list: 1) not finishing out of fear [of reactions, reviews, etc.]; 2) submitting to the wrong journal [meaning a journal that is a poor match for your work, discipline, or level]; 3) not demonstrating the import/significance of your work in relation to the field or fields prioritized by the journal [separate from “nobody has studied this before”]; 4) Clear and precise signposting of topic, methods, theory, questions, analysis and conclusion [this includes you, humanities folks!];  5) an excellent abstract, that in about 6 crisp sentences sketches topic, methods, conclusion and import [that you write first, but then revise as you complete the mss.]. On the way we remind you that publishing requires strategizing, that you are allowed to refuse some reviewer comments, that outlining works, and that abstracts are far from an afterthought–they matter! The upshot is: article-writing is a skill you can gain with training and practice, and rejections are not proof that you don’t belong in academia–they just mean you might not yet have mastered all the skills you need to get your work accepted.

[Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks!

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What do you do when you get stuck? Kel has found that her coaching clients tend to devolve into a spiral of self-loathing. But that doesn’t work; it’s just not very motivating! So Kel asks: why does the academy tell us we must automatically be good at every single thing we try in the academic career, and how can we get past that when we find ourselves stuck? Drawing from their newfound love of lap swimming this past summer, Karen and Kel talk about taking an inventory of your strengths and your places needing development, and then learning to use places of strength to explicitly shore up and development the weaker skills. Basically, when you are pushing and pushing and getting no results, draw from a different set of resources. Both resources within yourself, and those offered by external sources of help.

[Become a subscribing member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like free webinar recordings, AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, and — new from this week – live videos with Karen and Kel on Friday mornings, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks!

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