Can AI Write an Academic Cover Letter? Short answer: no. Years back I wrote: “Anyone can write a cover letter fast, over a weekend. A BAD cover letter, that is. But to write a good one takes weeks, even months, of close, painstaking edits.” Why? Because academia is peculiar.  Academic readers are completely iconoclastic (although consistently so lol) and the issue with academic job documents is rarely what you say, because your CV has already said it.  It’s HOW you say it. Ie, how you frame your work in ways that speak to all those unspoken, indeed hidden, norms of prestige, hierarc ..read more

By Dr. Stephanie Carnes Bio: Stephanie Carnes, PhD, LCSW, LL.M is a clinical supervisor and therapist at the New York City Psychotherapy Collective. After leaving academia in the field of social work, she feels privileged to now be able to support individuals navigating life transitions, institution-induced PTSD, and burnout. Learn more about her work at www.newyorkcitypsychotherapists.com. She’s on Instagram @DrStephCarnes. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and son.   The particulars of my story are probably pretty unremarkable, especially in the social sciences. I d ..read more

I feel a bit ambivalent about writing this. I work with so many academics that I know most of you are more disaffected and disillusioned about your work than ever before. You just don’t want to do what you used to do. And yet, here I am offering to help you be productive. To be honest, I WANT you to work less. In fact, no small part of my coaching is designed to help you disconnect from the “work = worth” lie. AND, I want the work you do choose to do to be easier. If only making it happen it was as easy as wanting it! The path out of the belief that work comes first is a long and winding road ..read more

Your department or college may be able to pay for your participation in ANY Professor Is In work, including our formal programs, as well as editing of your professionalization/job search/tenure documents. What follows is context and scripts for asking your department to fund your participation in Unstuck: The Art of Productivity and The Art of the Academic Article, and/or The Professor Is In Pre-Tenure Coaching Group, but you can use it to ask for any kind of professional development or program improvement support.  Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at gettenure@gmail.com for more he ..read more

A reader wrote in to raise the issue of “what to wear” for trans folks on the academic job market, and we decided to make a crowdsourcing post.  Reader noted that my old “How to Dress for an Interview as a Butch Dyke” post is sorely outdated (I agree). They kindly provided the following text as prompt. Please share your thoughts, suggestions, perspectives in the comments!  Thank you, Karen _____ Formal and professional clothing typically conforms to binary presentations of gender. This poses a difficulty for job candidates who either do not fit gender binaries or whose bodies don’t e ..read more

The writer has asked to remain anonymous.   History repeats itself with the governor’s attack on Florida’s higher ed In 1956 a Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, known as the John’s Committee, was created as a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education and modeled on the efforts of Joseph McCarthy to root out Communists. The John’s Committee looked for evidence to connect civil rights groups, like the NAACP, to communism. When these efforts failed, the committee shifted their focus to target and remove homosexuals and the “extent of [their] infiltration into agencies supported by s ..read more

This week the Chronicle published a fascinating essay about academic ghosting. I am quoted in it. The author and I spoke at great length and had a great conversation.     What I find interesting, however, is what she did NOT use from our long talk: all the things I said about the ECONOMICS of ghosting specifically in the context of academic hiring.     https://www.chronicle.com/…/the-sad-humiliations-of…     Ie, that catastrophic systemic defunding means we no longer have sufficient administrative staff to send the emails to candidates when they are no long ..read more

By Dr. Steve Page Transitioning into the academic job market was sobering. My tenures as an undergraduate and graduate student were much shorter than those of others. However, they still left me semi-poor and rejected from several “perfect” positions. The home in which I was raised, 20+ years as an age group, college, and post-collegiate athlete, and early grant and publishing successes had conferred determination, resilience, and disinterest in others’ opinions. Nevertheless, I uncharacteristically sought counsel from my then-girlfriend (now wife), my advisor, and several others. The “quit li ..read more

Early on in the blog, wayyyyyyyyy back almost ten years ago, I posted this awesome youtube video from Leslie Allison: Here is the original post. But somehow I missed William Pannapaker’s bitingly accurate follow up the following year. I give you ““So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities, 9 years later.” As accurate now as ever. More so, really, with covid and the bottom dropping out of academia.  Please send this to anyone considering a PhD in the Humanities. The silver lining:  10 years ago this critical take on academia was an outlier position.  In 2022, the critique ha ..read more

Our Academic Job Market Webinar Series Starts this week! While the data is mixed, some fields are seeing a rebound in academic hiring to pre-pandemic levels (which are not good levels, but are better than the last couple of years). If you’re applying, don’t go it alone. Let us help. Our webinars are amazing, if I say so myself!  I love to talk to folks there, and answer your real questions live on air. Join me for 1.5 hour content-PACKED webinars on all aspects of the academic job search. 1 hour of content, 30 minutes of Q&A. And, YES, you get the recording afterward! Sign Up Here #1 ..read more