Academics depend on slow processes subject to unfortunate slowdowns. And, unfortunately, academic timelines can make or break careers.
Playing the Waiting Game: The Harsh Truth of Academic Timelines
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academia
So Call Me Maybe
A recent IR Twitter flare-up occurred on a seemingly innocuous topic illustrated by the flow-chart above: what should I call my professor? A PSA from Prof. Megan L. Cook recommended students to...
The ULTIMATE Academic Job Market Guide
The following is a guest post by K. Anne Watson, a PhD candidate in Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs. The...
Writing Wednesday: embracing criticism for book revisions
Many a postdoc are likely in my position this year, dissertation defense safely in the review mirror and settling into the groove of their research. Those who, like me, are fortunately enough to...
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Some Personal Reflections on Social Media and Tenure
Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. As some of you may know, I'm up for tenure this year, and it's not going to work out. I don't want to get into the details of anything that ought not be discussed in public, but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts that some of you might find to be of interest. First, to the best of my understanding, my presence on social media played little to no role in this decision. So if there's still fear out there that blogging comes at a price, please don't point to my case as an example. I don't know exactly why this happened, and...
Tenure Letters: To Sling or to Shoot Arrows?
This piece has been making waves in the academic world (for a much better set of recommendations, see this piece). It gets much attention because it both identifies a real problem and then suggests awful ways to handle it. The latter is easier to deal with quickly. However, first let me be clear--what I am talking about here are the letters that universities ask outside scholars to write as they evaluate candidates for tenure and/or promotion. The basic idea is that these letters serve two purposes (at least): so that folks who do specialized work can be fairly evaluated if their work is...
Ranking IR Journals
Editor's note: this is a guest post by Brian J. Phillips, of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics. What are the best International Relations journals? How do we know if one journal is better than another? And how should this affect your decision about where to send a manuscript? I recently worked on a ranking of IR journals at the behest of an institution, and this blog post shares some of the information I learned in the process. This might be helpful for graduate students and junior faculty still getting a feel for where to send manuscripts. A number of questions came up...
Shouldn’t we call it the “having-a-husband” penalty?
As Jennifer Grose at Slate reported this morning, a paper by Wendy Stock and John Siegfried at the most recent AEA meetings, had some very disturbing - but not surprising - findings in regarding women academics and marriage. The Slate article calls it the "wife penalty." I'd prefer it to be called the "having-a-husband penalty." In no uncertain terms, having a husband costs: "For males, getting married within the first five years after graduation was associated with a 25 percent salary growth premium relative to other males. For females,however, getting married was associated with a 23...
Dear Kansas Board of Regents
Dear Kansas Board of Regents, Greetings. You probably don’t know me but I’ve been a long-time user of your services. I started my college career taking dual-credit courses at Pratt Community College in 1996, I attended the Kansas Board of Regents Honors Academy in 1998, and I am a graduate of one of your fine institutions, Kansas State University. After getting my PhD, I even returned to Kansas State for 3 years as an assistant professor. I “did good” as a professor at Kansas State – I published a lot, won a big teaching award, and didn’t make waves. Like a lot of people in my...
The Good Old Days
When people lament about how broken academia is now (for example Higgs of Higgs-Boson), I am so tempted to generalize about the olden days: Many, if not most, jobs were not advertised publicly and many job processes were really old boys networks at work. The job market may not be efficient and does induce heaps of stress, but it is probably better than the olden days. Speaking of old boys, how many jobs were held at any level by women? By non-white folks? Things are not perfect today, but compared to forty years ago? Oy. Speaking of gender, there is still sexual harassment today but now...
Academia, Drug Cartels, and Inappropriate Analogies
Given the intricacies of our job and the cushy lifestyle most academics live in, it disconcerting when academics use improper and incorrect analogies to describe the intricacies of their job. The latest is the idea that drug cartels and academia are similar enterprises. While I understand the spirit of the idea, the basic assumptions are insensitive and damaging. They represent the the pondering of a privileged academic stuck in the ivory tower. Working for a drug cartel, being involved in a gang, or participating in organized crime is not a glamorous lifestyle. This should be an obvious...
The Holiday Boost: Why You Should Submit a Manuscript before Winter Break
What does any faculty member REALLY want for the holidays? It’s not a Lexus, it’s not jewelry, it’s a brand new revise-and-resubmit (R&R) manuscript. It’s really all that is on my list every year. That and, of course, world peace. How can one get an R&R manuscript? So far, I think R&R decisions are the result of the following four conditions: (a) Good work without any serious theoretical or empirical flaws (b) An introduction that doesn’t make the reviewers/editor think the piece is crap from the get-go (c) All reviewers are pretty positive about the manuscript (d) ...