The Professor Is In

Grant-writing is a craft and it can be learned. The challenge is getting your head in the right space. Just like job applications, it’s not about your hopes, dreams, wishes, and preoccupations. It’s about marketing yourself in an intensely competitive environment. In this episode Karen and Kel walk you through Karen’s Foolproof Grant Template, showing you how to grab the reviewer’s attention with a vivid topic, substantiating that with references to current literature, showing a gap in the literature and the catastrophic repercussions of that gap, and finally demonstrating that your proposed project will heroically intervene to rescue us from devastating ignorance. when you’re at the point of seeking money for research, you ARE the hero of that research and that story, and your writing can show that in a host of direct and indirect ways.  Show the funder that their money will make a difference by funding specific, concrete deliverables (sorry!) that advance their agenda.

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We are delighted to host Fobazi Ettarh, who first created the term “Vocational Awe” and has written extensively on its threats to the health and well being of librarians in particular and those employed in “calling” fields in general. Vocational awe refers to “the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique.”

In today’s conversation Fobazi illustrates how the idea of a “sacred calling,” so often ascribed to librarians and faculty alike, mystifies the fact that it is labor within a capitalist system, and makes it almost impossible to push for fair compensation, or non-exploitative working conditions. In addition, it prevents acknowledging the degree that libraries are, like other institutions, foundations of white supremacy. Fobazi breaks down all the ways that racism permeates both access to libraries (and the academy more broadly), and working conditions of the professionals who staff them.

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We are delighted to host Sarah Jaffe, the author of the new book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Our Devotion to Our Work Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (2021). Sarah’s book talks about academics (“Proletarian Professionals”) as one among many groups of laborers in fields that include art, sports, non-profits, teaching, domestic work and more, that try to make laborers substitute “love” for adequate compensation. Sarah brilliantly and energetically breaks down just how, if the neoliberal turn hinges on choice and freedom, then the apparatus for choice is an apparatus for blame. And, as labor conditions got worse, the more you are supposed to perform your “love” for the job. About the academy specifically she observes that just as white women and people of color are scratching their way in, the conditions collapse and a rhetoric of self-sacrifice, austerity and martyrdom is supposed to prevail.  Drawing inspiration from Ettarh’s concept of “vocational awe” (2018),  Karen and Sarah* talk about resisting the coercive nature of uncompensated and unsafe (in the pandemic) work, and how to improve these conditions by replacing individual competition with an investment in our wider community.

*Kel was down for the count after vaccine dose #2

[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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If you’ve been wondering how to bring some semblance of productivity back to your life, this episode is for you. Karen and Kel introduce Kel’s Unstuck: The Art of Productivity, a 12-module program that combines daily emails, coaching videos, awareness exercises like time-maps, and writing techniques, as well as a community support page, to help you discover what is blocking you from getting your writing (and submitting) done, and learn how to overcome it. And at the end, we give you a way to get a major (and shareable!) discount to join the new May cohort. We talk through the three pillars of the program – telling the truth, realistic expectations, and small measurable goals — and why and how they work to interrupt self-defeating habits, and help you recover a writing life, all with evenings and weekends free.  Unstuck is about getting your writing done, and it’s about reclaiming your confidence and trust in yourself and your work.

 

[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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Self-promotion is a dirty word for academics but it shouldn’t be. People won’t invite you to be part of their scholarly community if they don’t know who they are. And if you don’t curate your digital profile then Google will do it for you–and you don’t want that. Self-promotion encompasses all of these things. Karen and Kel talk tactics for sharing your work with scholars, networking, using social media effectively, highlighting press contacts, and why you need your own website. They also confront the dreaded idea of “building your brand.” Beyond that, though, they talk about the judgment about ambition, especially for women, and how owning your ambition is essential to taking control of your own professional fate, whether in or outside the academy.

 

[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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Karen and Kel talk to Professor Erin Cech (Sociology, U of Michigan), the author of the forthcoming book, The Problem with Passion (U California Press, 2021), about why our national obsession with “following your passion” actually intensifies inequality. Erin explains how passion leads to “choice-washing,” in which unequal outcomes are justified  by claiming they were freely chosen, even while those without privilege and resources struggle to get access to “passion”-driven work.  She shows how the passion principle came hand in hand with the erosion of worker rights–if there is no more stable work, we may as well do “what we love” and do only the work that “fulfills us” and “expresses our deepest self.”  The passion principle permeates academia, of course, and fuels all manner of exploitation, especially around the issue of adjuncting. If you’re “passionate” about your subject, surely that will carry you through any trials and tribulations… and if you object, then surely you just aren’t passionate enough?  And so adjuncts are told/tell themselves that if they’re still in academia, they’re still fulfilling their passion and therefore well-compensated… no matter how little they’re paid and how much they’re exploited.  Which, as Erin Cech notes, launches a vicious circle, as overwork forecloses the time needed to critique the passion economy and find meaningful alternatives.

 

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Burnout is the story of the 20-21 academic year. Honestly, who isn’t burned out?  If burnout is a lack of desire to do what you normally want to do, then how should we best think about it, and deal with it? Kel discusses an article by Brad Stulberg about the “passion paradox” and how burnout happens when you get wrapped up in obsessive passion, which is fixation on external validation, rather than harmonious passion, which, in his formula, is motivation that comes from autonomy, mastery, and belonging in your work. Karen and Kel talk about how so many academics have lost access to autonomy, mastery and belonging in their career, especially in the pressure cooker of the COVID year. Karen asks: is it burnout or is it exploitation? Either way: look for ways to reinsert small doses of autonomy, mastery and belonging into your life.

 

[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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This episode, recorded prior to the pandemic, continues our deep dive into coping with the inevitable disappointments of the academic life, whether it’s the job, or the grant, or the publication… or the whole career that just didn’t pan out. The second of a two-part series, it introduces tools 7-12 for managing disappointment in ways that academia never teaches us. The tools: 7) changing expectations from outcome to process; 8) Take a break 9) Get outside your head and do something for others 10) Find a small step forward 11) Build up self-esteem 12) Recover some energy by connecting with your support team.

Along the way Karen and Kel talk perspective, off-switches, bunnies and their blank, bulbous eyes, and combating perfectionism.

 

[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!

Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support–it goes straight to the production team!]

This episode, recorded prior to the pandemic, delves into coping with the inevitable disappointments of the academic life, whether it’s the job, or the grant, or the publication… or the whole career that just didn’t pan out. The first of a two-part series, it introduces six tools for managing disappointment in ways that academia never teaches us. The tools:  1) Face the facts, feel the feelings; 2) You are not a failure and you are not your job; 3) Learn from this experience (ie, process not outcome); 4) Give yourself credit for trying;  5) Refocus on what you DO have and what DOES work;   6) Sharing the experience with (genuine) supporters. Along the way Karen and Kel also talk about white entitlement, concrete ways to ask for feedback, negativity bias, saber-tooth tigers; the scarcity mentality of academia, and Buddhist and Jewish inspirations.

 

[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!

Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support–it goes straight to the production team!]

Today we are joined by Dr. Chris Catarine, author of the new book Leaving  Academia: A Practical Guide (2020).  Karen loves this book so much, it’s the only book she’s ever reviewed on the blog. Chris shares his own journey out of the academic dream (from age 11) of being a Latin professor and on to becoming a communications strategist at a major corporation … and all the steps along the way.  He serves us major insights on the grief of leaving, the limitations of Quit Lit, how to access your inner hustle, dealing with risk aversion, and whether we should be too proud to hand out beer samples in a supermarket.  Throughout we grapple with the question: who will you be if you aren’t an academic? Leave this interview inspired to execute your own journey onward!

 

 

 

[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!

Not ready to subscribe? Donate here to send along some support–it goes straight to the production team!]