Menu
ACADEMICS ONLY
  • PhD Students
    • Get a PhD?
    • Find an advisor
    • Finish Dissertation
  • New Professors
    • Start Strong
    • Teach Better
    • Publish More
  • Scholars
    • Write for Impact
    • Find a great job
    • Avoid Burnout
  • |
  • One-Pagers
    • 5 Ways to Finish Thesis
  • About
  • PhD Students
    • Get a PhD?
    • Find an advisor
    • Finish Dissertation
  • New Professors
    • Start Strong
    • Teach Better
    • Publish More
  • Scholars
    • Write for Impact
    • Find a great job
    • Avoid Burnout
  • |
  • One-Pagers
    • 5 Ways to Finish Thesis
  • About

How PhD Students Develop Great Academic Judgement and Taste

9/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
A close friend of mine believes successful PhD students have three things in common:  They're smart, they work hard, and they have good judgment. The secret sauce here is "good judgment."  Although smarts and hard work are important, most PhD students would have never been admitted if they weren't already smart, hard workers.  
 
But having good judgment is more elusive.  It includes things like knowing what's "interesting" and what isn't, knowing what's worth worrying about (and what isn't), knowing what's important to prioritize, knowing how to solve a people problem, knowing whether to persist on a project or to move on, and so on. 
 
But advising a PhD student to "Have great judgment" is like advising a football team to "Score the most points."  It doesn't tell them how. You can't say "Have great judgment" and then say "Next question," "QED," or drop the mic and walk out.
 
Maybe there's two types of judgment -- technical judgments and nontechnical judgments.
 
For graduate students, building technical judgment is about learning the whys of research. One way to build better technical judgment is to boldly ask lots of "Why?" questions of your mentor, advisor, or of an older student:  "Why did you send it that journal?  Why didn't you use a different method?  Why did you ask the research question that way?"  Most of us shied away from asking technical judgment questions because we didn't want to be irritating or look like we didn't belong.  Most professors I know actually like to answer these questions, and they love to see an engaged student step out of a silent huddle. 
 
Developing good nontechnical judgment is trickier.  Yet this is the critical judgment you need to troubleshoot how you can be a better teacher, or whether to choose the risky dissertation you want to do versus the safe dissertation your advisor wants. It involves figuring out how to deal with your off-the-chart stress level or whether you should take a job at a teaching college or go into industry.   Our tendency as a graduate student is to get feedback from peers in our same year.  A more effective one may be to get it from recent graduates or from professors who have seen cases like these and know how they worked out.  You can even get nontechnical advice from professors you know in other departments. The best nontechnical dissertation advice I got was from a Medical School professor from my church.  It was straightforward, unbiased, kind, and based on lots of students he had known. 
 
As professors, we can help to build better technical judgment by encouraging questions about our research judgment calls, or we can give it as color commentary or as context when we discuss a research project.  But again, helping students with nontechnical judgments is trickier.  One way to do this is in the third person.  This can be by discussing a problem that "their friend" is having or by discussing a relatable case study.
 
Here's one approach to building nontechnical judgment.  I used to teach a PhD course where we'd meet in my home for a casual last class session. The first half of the session would be a discussion about graduate student success and the last half would be dinner.  Each student had been asked to anonymously write down a dilemma that "one of their friends" was facing that was being a roadblock to their success.  We'd mix these 9-10 dilemmas up, and we'd relax in the living room with a glass of wine and discuss them one at a time.  For each one, we'd talk about similar experiences, options, solutions, and so forth.   By dinner time, we had a more balanced perspective and some suggested next steps for many of the dilemmas.
Picture
Over the years, it seemed that about 70% of these dilemmas were about the same 7-8 issues.  These were like the issues mentioned above -- "risky vs. safe dissertation," "stress level," "leave academia," and so on.  
 
Here's a second approach to building nontechnical judgment. Given how similar these dilemmas were from year to year, I wrote up 1-page PhD student case studies that involved slightly fictionalized people who were facing these common problems.  These case studies were in the syllabus for the course, and we'd take the first or last part of each class to talk about that week's case study.  The common dilemmas faced in your field may be different, but the enthusiasm your students would have in discussing them would probably be the same.
 
Some people might be born with great judgment, but for the rest of us, it's a lot of trial and error and a lot of asking bold questions.  If you're a graduate student, you've got a lot more license than you might think to learn from trial, error, and bold questions.  If you're a professor, there's a lot we can do to help them.
0 Comments

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

8/3/2022

1 Comment

 
Picture
"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.
1 Comment

How Can Academics Get Things Done During the Summer?

6/28/2022

0 Comments

 
​
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.
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

"Advice for New Professors?" - Choose your audience

4/7/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
​Last week a former student told me he had just gotten married, had a daughter, finished his PhD, and got a tenure-track job at a university.   Busy day.   He also wanted to set up a time to chat about how to be a successful new assistant professor.
 
After thinking about this for a couple days, here was the most important piece of advice I was planning to tell him.
 
If you’re starting a new professor, the most important thing you need to do is to look at your next 40 years and decide who your main audience is going to be.  I think there are four types of audiences that you can have as a professor:  1) Your school, 2) your field, 3) your mission 4) yourself.  You might be thinking you can serve multiple masters and split your attention to all four, but this is very, very difficult.  People who try to satisfy two masters often end up to two unhappy masters.
 
1. Your School.  As a new professor, you can focus on your school.  If you do this, your audience is the administrators, students, and other professors at your school.  You can aim at being a charismatic teacher, a go-to committee member, a friendly-to-all colleague, and a tenurable researcher.  The upside is you can be very successful at your school and grow a strong and appreciated community around yourself.  However, most of your investment will have been in “institutional capital.”  The downside is you may not be especially movable to other schools.  
 
2.  Your Field.  Some professors can focus on their field.  Their audience is other professors in their same field.  As graduate students, we grow to admire the famous people in our field or the ones who wrote the key papers we based our dissertation on.  Some new professors want to mainly focus on their field and to contribute to it in our own way.  This involves doing the right types of research and publishing it in the right types of journals.  If all goes well, you will have opportunities to more attractive schools.  But sometimes this doesn’t have an end. That’s the downside of a field-focus.  Some people can really grind themselves down trying to publish more and more, but it might frustratingly never be enough to satisfy whatever's driving them.
 
3.  Your Mission.  Some new professors focus on a specific mission that involves changing something.  Some might be driven to  change the criminal justice system, social justice, how companies operate, what people eat, how children are raised, and so on.  This offers a very satisfying mission because you can focus your research, teaching, and outreach at activities you think can change a corner or your specific world, and you can become a go-to expert in that area. Also, the impact you can have is more unique and more permanent in many ways.  The downside is that a mission-focus takes a while before it starts getting traction and having impact.  As a result, you’ll probably have to move around and change schools to eventually find the right school that most appreciates what you’re doing. 
 
 
4.  Yourself.  Still other professors focus on themselves.  This “March to my own drummer” approach sounds like the perfect ideal of academic freedom – doing what you want, when you want, wherever your muse leads you.  The downside of this approach is that focusing on yourself doesn’t always lead to tenure, the next promotion, job offers other schools, or to being appreciated and valued by your colleagues. 
 
 
Choosing one of these four audiences usually isn’t a conscious decision by most new professors, but it will probably be the track you’re on until you retire.  It’s like choosing a North, South, East, or West road out of town from your PhD School.  Once you’ve driven on that road for few years, you can’t go back, and it’s super hard to change roads. 
​• “I’m going to focus on my field, then focus on myself.”  After doing this for the 12 years it will take to become a full professor, your values and your work habits will probably not let you change the road without losing your reference group or feeling like you’re now “dead wood.”  
 
• “I’m going to focus on my school and getting tenure, then I’ll focus on my mission.”  After you get tenure, then you’ll want to put it off until you’re a full professor, then until you finish your time as department chair, or as associate dean, or until you retire.  Once you lose your research or outreach momentum, it’s hard to get it back.  The immediate, short-term strokes you’re getting from your school will seem much more attractive than the delayed gratification of muscling up to pursue a perhaps faded mission. 

​To summarize these thoughts I had, when my former student friend got on the call, I was planning on emphasizing just three points:
 
1. Choose your audience carefully because you’ll probably have it for 40 years
2. Here’s the pluses and minuses of each audience
3. Realize it’s really difficult – either practically or psychologically – to change your audience down the road
 
 
That was the plan . . . but of course that wasn’t what happened during the call.   When I said the biggest piece of advice for a new professor is to carefully choose who your audience is going to be, he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s really important.”  Then we started talking and laughing about other stuff.
 
To then return and say “This is going to be a 40-year decision you make,” seemed like a heavy thing to say when we’re high-fiving each other about his new degree, new family, and new job -- and all in one day!
 
He doesn’t start his new job for another four months.  We’ll have time to talk again before he before he‘s shifting into fifth gear.

Picture
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Welcome...

    Academics Only is a how-to community that  helps  us share our best practices as PhD students, new professors, and independent scholars.

    Helpful tools and tips on how to graduate, get tenure, teach better, publish more, and have a super rewarding career.
    Picture

    Relevant Posts

    All
    Independent Scholars
    New Profs
    PhD Students


    Some Older Posts

    Picture
    Develop great judgment

    Picture
    Choose the Best Advisor

    Picture
    Give useful advice

    Picture
    How not to retire

    Picture
    Useful sample syllabus

    Picture
    Party with students!

    Picture
    Stay focused

    Picture
    Get into a PhD Program

    Picture
    One way to write a lot

    Picture
    Use PhD case studies

    Picture
    Thank a mentor

    Picture
    Blow an interview

    Picture
    Teach for impact

    Picture
    Ace an interview

    Picture
    Do solution-based research

    Picture
    Am I a mini-me?


    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019

    RSS Feed



Share Your Insights and Ideas

What have you created or found that's been useful and could be helpful for other PhD students, new professors, or independent scholars?  ​
​
  • A pdf handout on teaching 
  • Tips on surviving grad school
  • Favorite career-advice articles
  • A paper submission checklist 
  • A list of inspirational quotes
  • A productivity aid you use
  • ​​​​The goal-setting system you use
  • Your most useful go-to websites
  • Helpful academic How-to articles
  • A method to keep perspective or manage stress

​Send an email to AcademicsOnly@yahoo.com if you have something you think would be useful to share with others on this website, or if you have ideas on how to make this more useful to you or your students.

Stay in touch


Picture