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ACADEMICS ONLY

Depressed About the End of the Summer?  How to Beat the August Academic Blues

8/3/2022

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"School’s starting, and I didn't get anything done this summer.”  
 
I’ve heard this every August, and I’ve said this every August.  

​Whenever I’ve asked professors and PhD students what percent of their planned work they got accomplished over the summer, no one has ever said “All of it.”  Almost everyone says something between 25 to 35%.  Everyone from the biggest, most productive super stars with the biggest lab to the most motivated, fire-in-their-belly PhD student with the biggest anxiety.  
 
We are horrible estimators of how productive we’ll be over the summer.   I was in academia for 35 years (including MA and PhD years), yet every single summer I never finished more than 30% of what I planned.  How can we be so poorly calibrated?  We never learn.  We never readjust our estimate for the next summer.   Next summer we’ll still only finish 25-35% of what we planned to do.
 
There are only two weeks in the year when I’m predictably down or blue.  It’s the last two weeks of August.  It’s not the heat (I mostly stay indoors).  It’s not the impending classes (I love teaching).  It’s not all the beginning of semester meetings (I loved my colleagues and loved passing notes to them under the table).  Ten years ago, I realized that I felt down the end of every August because I had to admit “school’s starting and I haven’t gotten jack done all summer.” The beginning of school is the psychological end of the Academic Fiscal Year.  
 
One solution to our August blues lies in understanding what times of the year we do like most, and to see if we can rechannel those warm-glowy feelings to August.
 
If you had to guess the #1 favorite time of the year for most academics, you’d probably guess “The end of school.”  The #2 favorite time of the year you might guess would be the “Winter or Christmas break.”  What would you guess the third favorite time of the year is?
 
Surprisingly, I’ve heard people say it’s when they turn in their Annual Activity Report (AAR).  That’s the summary document they turn into their hard-to-please Department Chair that summarizes what they’ve accomplished in the prior 12 months:  What they published, who they advised, what new things they’ve started, what new teaching materials they’ve created, and so forth.  
 
Snore.  How could writing an Annual Activity Report be a highlight?
 
Because it shows in black-and-white that we didn’t sleep-walk through the year.  It reminds us that the publication that we now take for granted was one that we were still biting our nails about last year at this time. It reminds us of our advises who were stressing over their undergraduate thesis a year ago and who have now happily graduated.  It reminds us of the cool ideas we've into hopeful projects -- ideas we hadn't even thought of a year ago..  Going back in a 12-month-ago time machine shows us what we did accomplish.  It turns our focus toward what we did – and away from what we didn’t.
 
Once we cross things off of our academic To-do list, we tend to forget we accomplished them.  August might be a good time to do a mid-year AAR.  It might not turn our August blues into a happy face yellow, but might at least turn it to green.  A green light for a great new school year. 
 
Have a tremendous school year.
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How to Get at Academic Job at by Aceing a Conference Interview

7/4/2022

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For some fields, this season starts the beginning of job market Speed Dating in lots of academic fields.  It’s when all of the schools who have jobs and all the PhD students who want jobs get together at their annual job market conference and speed date.
 
If a speed date goes well, a school will call you in about two weeks and ask you out on a campus date. If that 2-day campus date goes well, you get the engagement ring and get the job.  If the 7-year engagement goes well, you get married with tenure.    
 
But this all starts with the 45-minute speed date at the conference where there’s about a 1 in 3 chance that you’ll get called back.  Two common questions:  1) How do I ace a conference interview, and 2) how do I know if I aced it? 
 
Your advisor and friends have given you a big list of “dos and don’ts” for your interviews.  Things like do act interested and do know lots about their school, and things like don’t act smarmy or arrogant and don’t dress like Spiderman or your favorite D&D character.
 
There's no perfect way to predict whether you’ll get a campus visit, but you hear lots of rules of thumb:
 
     • The best day to interview is the second morning.  
                 The next best is the first afternoon.  
    • The two best interview times are either 10:00 AM or 1:00 PM
    • The more interviewers in your room (vs. skipping),the better your chances
    • The more “fun” the interview seems, the better your chances
    • The more questions they ask about your dissertation, the better
 
When I was on the rookie job market, I thought it would be useful to know which of these was the best predictor of a call-back.  If a person knew that, they’d know when to schedule interviews with their favorite schools, whether to be serious or funny, and whether to encourage lots of dissertation questions.  A few of my friends got together, and we came up with a list of about ten things we thought would predict how well an interview went.   We all then rated each one of our interviews on these 10 things. 
 
We then pooled everything together and ran a logit regression on whether we ended up getting a campus interview date at each school. Only 1 thing was significant.  It wasn’t the timing of the interview or our subjective rating of how “fun” it was.  Instead the only predictor of whether we got a campus visit was how many questions they asked about our dissertation during the conference interview.
 
Makes sense – except this was negatively related.  The schools that asked us lots of questions about our dissertations DIDN’T fly us out for a date.   
 
At the time, we thought maybe they realized we were doing a lot of handwaving in our theory section. Or maybe the deeper they dug, the more holes they found that we hadn’t yet plugged.  
 
I now think there is another explanation.   If we spent 35 minutes of a 45-minute interview talking about only 1 thing, the school only has 1 thing to judge us on (other than our advisor’s letter).   It’s like a speed date where the person spends 90% of it talking about their vacation to Hawaii or their doily collection.  We end up learning a lot about Hawaii or doilies, but not enough about them to want to call them back for a date.
 
A few years later, I was unexpectedly on the job market again as an assistant professor, and I did things a bit differently. Instead of spending 35 minutes droning on about a single project or two, I wanted to make sure we talked about a lot more than just Hawaii.  That way, a broader set of connections could be made, and the people who hated Hawaii might find other things they could be interested in.
 
For all of the adrenaline-pumped PhD students at their job-market conference, it’s probably not the best strategy to spend the whole time talking about only your dissertation or only about Hawaii.  The more other “good fit” connections you can make in the interview, the more likely you might be called back for a first date. 
 
At this point, no last-minute finishing touches on your dissertation rap will help you ace your interview tomorrow morning.  Instead, tonight's better spent learning more about your potential date – especially any unique overlaps you might have in common.
 
Good luck on the job market!
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How Can Academics Get Things Done During the Summer?

6/28/2022

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​
One summer on the way out to the parking lot, a senior professor once told me that if he didn't have a summer project finished by the Fourth of July, he knew it wouldn't get finished.  Since it was about June 28th on the day he said that, I flashed on all of my unfinished projects and was horrified.  

I also pledged to not let that happen and to double-down after the Fourth to "get er done."  Over the past 20 summers since then, I've worked with something I call a 3-3-3 weekly recap to keep the summer moving forward while still having lots of fun. 

Here’s how a 3-3-3 Weekly Recap works.  Every Friday I write down the 3 biggest things I finished that week (“Done”), the 3 things I want to finish next week (“Doing”), and 3 things I’m waiting for (“Waiting for”).  This ends up being a record of what I did that week, a plan for what to focus on next week, and a reminder of what I need to follow up on.  It helps keep me accountable to myself, and it keeps me focused on finishing 3 big things instead of 100 little things.  Here’s an example of one that’s been scribbled in a notebook at the end of last week:


Even though you’d be writing this just for yourself, it might improve your game.  It focuses you for the week, it gives you a plan for next week, and it prompts you to follow-up on things you kind of forgot you were waiting for. 
 
Sometimes I do it in a notebook and sometimes I type it and send it to myself as an email.  It doesn’t matter the form it’s in or if you ever look back at it (I don’t), it still works.  I’ve shared this with people in academia, business, and government.  Although it works for most people who try it, it works best for academics who manage their own time and for managers who are supervising others.  They say it helps to keep the focus on moving forward instead of either simply drifting through the details of the day or being thrown off course by a new gust of wind. 
 
If you work with PhD students or Postdocs, it could help them develop a “Finish it up” mentality, instead of a “Polish this for 3 years until it's perfect” mentality.   It’s also useful as a starting point for 1-on-1 weekly meetings.  If they get in the habit of emailing their 3-3-3 Recap to you each Friday, you can share any feedback and perhaps help speed up whatever it is they are waiting for.  Especially if it’s something on your desk. Ouch.
 

Good luck in pushing 3 To-Dos off your desk and getting things done this summer. I hope you find this helps.
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"Should I Start a Job Before I Finish My PhD?"

5/23/2022

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When you might finish your PhD if it's not done when you take a job,
Some people love graduate school, but most of us want to finish it up and get started with our real lives.

About a couple years ago I met a nice guy from Utah who was finishing his thesis at a university about 5 hours away.  He had just moved here to take a job.  After only two weeks, he was totally immersed in his new job, and I asked him if he was concerned about being able to finish up his thesis.  He said, "Oh, no, not at all.  My university's only 5 hours away, and I've only got a couple months of work left on it."
 
The idea of starting a new life or a new job a few months early – say, before we’ve completed our dissertation – sounds pretty good.  After all, lots of people Zoom and Skype from home, so  it should be a snap to web-commute back to the university and finish up our dissertation away from the anxieties of campus.  For instance, you could now start your new gig (maybe as a professor) in June instead of August.  Your plan would be to move, get settled, wrap up the dissertation, and get two months of a tempting new salary.  
 
When I was a PhD student, someone told me that if you want to know how long it will take to finish your dissertation if you move away, you use a simple formula.  You take your best guess of how long you think it will take to finish, then you triple it and add three months.  So if you think you have 2 months left on your dissertation, and you move away in June, you won’t be finished until following March – in 9 months instead of 2 months (2 months x 3 + 3 months = 9 months).   This is a rough rule-of-thumb, that varies across schools, departments, and people.  Still, when I heard this, I wasn’t going to take any chances.  My apartment lease with my two roommates was up, so I spent the last two months crashing at the apartments of different friends so I could wrap it my dissertation and graduate  before I move away to start my Asst Prof gig. 
 
What happens when you move is not only that it takes time to get resettled and you no longer have the support structure of your PhD program (and the “in sight & in mind” attention of your committee), but you also don’t feel the urgency to finish.  You’re settling into a new role, and everybody's happy to have you around.  You start to put off the uncomfortable pressure of you incomplete dissertation because it feels so much better to be treated as an an adult over here than as a sniffling child over there.  But in a few months when your new department chair asks whether you’re through with your dissertation, it’s going to be awkward to answer.
 
You might not have the option of completing a dissertation on campus, but if you can, it’s worth sleeping on couches until it’s done.

                                                                       ******************************************

The Rest of the Story: Four months after meeting the guy from Utah, I ran in to him again at the same boardgame cafe where we had originally met.   He was very excited about having moved, and he was very excited about his new job.   What's notable was that he never mentioned anything about his dissertation, how it was going, or whether it was finished.  His dissertation had been an enthusiastic 80% of our conversation during the first time we met.  Sine he never mentioned it, I wonder if he hadn't made the progress he had expected to make.
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