We continue with vintage – yet evergreen – recordings. It seems like everyone struggles with the desire to quit at times. It’s a natural response to external forces, but you can summon internal forces to manage that impulse. We’re not saying don’t quit! We’re just saying, act deliberately. In this episode, Karen and Kel talk ..read more

One episode wasn’t enough to talk about burnout in the academy. Juxtaposing the WHO definition of burnout with a definition Karen read, that burnout is “investing emotionally in a job and not having that investment returned,” Karen and Kel, along with commenters on the FB Live where this was recorded, delve further into the elements ..read more

You didn’t get the job this year; what to do?  Kel and I talk through what makes a competitive record and competitive presentation of that record, so you can know what to prioritize this summer, if an academic job is your priority (and needless to say, it does not have to be).  This follows on ..read more

[Note: Karen and Kel were on vacation in NYC and recording from a hotel room! Please excuse the tinny sound today and next week; it goes back to normal after that!] A tweet went academic-viral recently asking whether academics use sick leave or even know what their sick leave policies are. Short answer: in the ..read more

We talk about the “capitalist gaze” and how it impacts the creativity of academics. Casting our research outcomes as “products” can be deeply chilling to the imaginative work of scholarship.  Research as an assembly line, or as a deli counter (slicing your work into ever thinner slices to maximize number of publications) constricts scope for ..read more

Karen and Kel talk about coping with rejection, moving beyond the typical advice to “take a break, come back to it later, etc. etc.” (which is good as far as it goes!) to discuss the deeper issues of identity and emotion that rejection triggers. Drawing from an essay by Dr. Gavin Lamb, “4 Reasons Why ..read more

We talk breaking points. Kel suggests to anyone feeling they’ve reached the breaking point at the end of the semester: pause, and appreciate that it’s showing you, you DO have a limit. Sit with that. What’s it mean to hit your limit and really admit it? That is, rather than judging yourself, or scrambling to get past it. Instead, embrace the breaking point. And use it as, conversely, a strength. That is, the place where you say no. No to more expectations, more to more demands, no to more work. And yes to stepping away, taking a break, seeing a friend, resting yourself.  When it makes yo ..read more

Today we are joined by the remarkable Deja Rollins, speaking about performative allyship. Deja, a graduate student in Communications at UIUC, was the standout star of Karen’s TedX event hosted by U of Arkansas Monticello, and we’ve been working on getting her on the podcast for almost a year. In this conversation Deja talks about how white folks, particularly in the academy, talk the talk of “allyship” (especially during summer 2020) without taking any meaningful action, or sacrificing any of our money, ego, status, or institutional power.  She makes the point that identifying as an “ally ..read more

Dr. Samira Rajabi, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at U of Colorado Boulder,  joins us for a discussion of navigating ambiguous grief and trauma in the pandemic academy and the rest of life. Drawing from her research for her new book, All My Friends Live in the Computer: Tactical Media, Trauma, and Meaning Making, as well as her own personal stories, Samira talks with us about the importance of social media communities in navigating suffering, and ways to interrupt capitalist narratives of productivity and success/failure, in order to reconnect with genuine loss, and move through and ..read more

The Professor Is In Ep 3:9 The Key to Interviews and Grants Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00/ 00:32:54 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Stitcher RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download filePlay in new windowDuration: 00:32:54Recorded on November 9, 2021 Subscribe: Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsStitcher We are deep in interview and grant season and so this episode we devote to the unseen but critical aspect of your candidacy: your ability to quickly and factually articulate yourself as a schola ..read more