Transforming your diss chapter into an article
Picking up on last week’s post on how to work through writer’s block, I thought I’d cover the process of how I have excerpted essay-length pieces out of dense, lengthy dissertation chapters. In my own case, this process has met with mixed results, so take my advice for what it’s worth: On the one hand, it did culminate in a published article that went through multiple self-imposed revisions, but, on the other, it also yielded an essay submission that was in limbo forever before I decided to give up on it. Still, even with the latter, I think that the revised essay was an improvement over the original chapter, in part because the writing was much tighter, due to constraints on length as well as the need to find a more focused argument for a proposed article.
""BotCon 2006 Costumes" by Bedford (Public Domain)
Of course, this works from the assumption that you are starting with a big chunk of a diss chapter to begin with and not the other way around, where you start with an essay that you turn into something bigger and better. So if that’s the way you work, please feel free to chime in and let us know how you go about things!
Be practical: Before you start to look for a coherent essay in the midst of a tangled jumble of a diss chapter–whether in progress or completed–know what the parameters of your end goal should be. That means figuring out the length requirements for the journal you’re planning on sending a submission to, so that you have a target to aim for. It’s probably not a bad idea to try to compose a 20-25 page essay out of your source material, since that’s a good length for an article and useful, too, for job application writing samples. I know from experience that there’s nothing more nervewracking than having to tailor a 30-pp proposed article down to 20-pp essay on the fly when you receive that email from the search committee with a writing sample request.
More conversion tips below the fold… (more…)
Information Hoarding Is As Bad As Stuff Hoarding
Dean Dad over at Inside Higher Ed offered up a provocative title: “Making Yourself Dispensable.” At first, I thought it would be a guide on what not to do to get tenure. Instead, he offered a compelling argument against keeping information to yourself in order to boost your security in the workplace:
“I’ve seen administrators try to make themselves indispensable by hoarding information or by constructing elaborate networks of side deals in which they fancy themselves key nodes. It never ends well.”
When it comes to your publications, it’s one thing to take center stage and carve your own niche, but Dean Dad is right about the day-to-day workings of a department or any other workplace. Acting like a cast member of Survivor will only get you voted off the island.
(more…)
The Benefits of Boundaries
Establishing a shorter time to degree has its pros and cons. One major pro might surprise you: Writing gets better when you are forced to work with boundaries, whether they are deadlines, word limits, or formatting restrictions.
Lifehacker suggests that people are more productive when faced with limits because you have to get creative. The best limit I set for myself is trying to answer one single question in a piece of writing. “What do I want someone to think or do after reading this piece?”
Usually, in the kind of writing that I do, the answer is simple: Buy now, call us, click through, etc. Once you have that goal, you can flesh it out. Otherwise, you’ll get lost, and the reader will get lost as you try to explain several different ideas at once.
This is tough for academics because academic writing involves a slow buildup, and the best academics can build an argument brick by brick. This style has value and can lead to surprising conclusions, but if you want to hook a reader, you need to at least suggest that you will answer one question. Then, once the reader is hooked, you can go all Derrida on them and take them on the theoretical equivalent of a magic carpet ride.
FYI: I hope that, after reading this piece, you set a deadline for finishing your dissertation or turning your resume into a CV.
Image of the seen power of the picket fence by Idir Fida from Vancouver, Canada, from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license.
Broke-Ass Schools: The last Middlesex U-or Kingston U-Philosophy update
This will probably be the last update on the Middlesex U Philosophy Center saga that has been going on for a few months now, which brought out some of the world’s best-known philosophy types to tackle the growing epidemic of broke-ass schools. This is finally the final word on the matter, because there’s a happy ending to the story: The highly rated Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), which was downsized at Middlesex despite being it’s top-rated program, is headed to Kingston University in London. The CRMEP’s renowned M.A. and Ph.D. programs will continue on at Kingston, and all the students and some of the staff will be able to move with the program.
"Kingston University" by demian (Creative Common license)
The way the Save Middlesex Philosophy blog sees it, the decision by Kingston to take on the CRMEP is pretty much an in-your-face to the bean-counting admin at Middlesex–maybe they could hire one of those “Wide Load” house-moving trucks that take up two lanes on the freeway to metaphorically up and leave Middlesex for Kingston! Part of the story is that Kingston is expanding its humanities programs, so maybe one school’s dead-weight is another’s potential moneymaker. According to the blog:
Unlike Middlesex, Kingston is expanding rather than cutting back its provision in humanities subjects, and it is investing in research in these areas. In addition to taking on CRMEP staff, Kingston will be making a number of other high-level appointments over the coming months, and is launching its own London Graduate School in conjunction with colleagues from several other Universities internationally. We believe that Kingston will provide an enthusiastic and supportive base for the activities of the CRMEP.
Apparently, a few other institutions on the continent are itching to collaborate with the CRMEP, so maybe this whole situation has only helped to boost its international profile. The blog also points out how the multi-national effort to save Middlesex–or, rather, Kingston, now–philosophy has galvanized movements to protect at-risk humanities depts in England and elsewhere. In any case, some folks really, really deserve to take some time off this summer–Congrats for giving us an example of self-preservation, Kingston U Philosophy!
How to Avoid Student Loan Debt
If you insist on taking out a loan for graduate school, remember …
Don’t do it. That’s the easiest way for potential grad students to avoid student loan debt.
But who are we to get in the way of a career dream? So, if you insist …
Don’t take out anything more than you think you can make in the first year. Assume that you’ll be employed at a state school, not at a private school. Visit sites that list the salaries of state employees, and look up the salaries of people you know are assistant professors in your field. (It’s a lot more polite than asking people what they make.) Type in “state employees salary database” in Google and see what comes up. Many newspapers keep a database for muckraking purposes. If you’re in California, start here: http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/
Get federal loans at a fixed rate. Perkins or Stafford loans, for example, come from the government, and they have a fixed rate. You don’t want to get a private loan with a variable rate. That variable rate might seem low when you first get the loan, but it can go up based on market whimsy, and the market has been unusually whimsical as of late. At least with a fixed rate, you will have an easier time setting a budget.
More after the jump! Cover of Bleak House from Wikimedia Commons. (more…)
The Privatization of Teacher Retirement
At my university, a very substantial portion of my salary (a minimum of 9%) is shaved off to be sent to a retirement fund. Those numbers are very high by the standards of the private sector, where the normal range is considerably lower. I suppose that this arrangement has its benefits and drawbacks. The obvious benefit is that we improvident academics can leave these matters to someone else so we don’t die in abject poverty. (Unless, that is, you are one of those well-paid Canadian professors.) Financial savvy is not really what we are known for. In fact, this post might appear a little unseemly at first: a humanities professor writing about finance? Yet one of the things I’ve liked about PostAcademic is the willingness to dig into the nitty-gritty, unglamorous aspects of the academy, so here goes.
It seems to me that there are significant drawbacks to the now widespread use of retirement investment funds. It is becoming the only choice nowadays, as pension plans are being phased out. (On my first day, I was told that if I wanted to choose a state pension, I would have to work a minimum of ten years…and who can look that far in advance, especially since we can be laid off—i.e., denied tenure. And I was also told that the decision I made could not be changed back.)
So I was reminded of the drawbacks of retirement funds today when I looked at the proxy vote information for the latest election of my retirement fund’s board of directors. Thanks to years of ad campaigns touting their “not-for-profit” status (a slogan that encourages confusion with the very different term “non-profit”), the fund I’m in is considered the virtually “automatic” choice for teacher retirement funds in our privatized age. In fact, it’s just one of two choices at my institution (which is one more than most academics get), and if you’d asked me a couple of years ago about my impression of this company, I would have probably said that they were just beneath the angels in the moral hierarchy (that’s just how powerful their advertising campaign is!).
But the more I look into it, the more skeptical I’ve become of this private fund. Essentially, $5000 a year is being sent in my name to trustees whose job it is to throw that money into the stock market and hope that it doesn’t vanish. Who are these people? Their smiling profiles, provided in the proxy materials, reveal a few salient points:
1. Only three of the ten are academics.
2. Each earns about $200,000 a year just from being a trustee. (One as high as $262,500.)
3. Not one of them works exclusively for the fund.
In other words, the salaries earned by trustees from our retirement fund are probably just a drop in the bucket of their total salaries. I suppose one could go further in this demographic research, like the fact that many of them seem to have some connection to Harvard, few have any experience at or with state schools, and so forth, but I don’t really have the tools needed to find out what these people are being paid to do.
What do retirement fund trustees actually do, other than attend an annual meeting? I’d like to know! According to the confession of one such trustee, “one of the biggest risks facing most funds is the level of ignorance among the trustees. Most of them simply do not know enough to be effective at what they do.” Doesn’t sound promising.
Sure, the teacher’s retirement fund on which I depend has some positive features. It is heartening to see that my retirement fund has stuck to its policy of ensuring gender and racial diversity in its trustee pool, and that it has a “Social Choice” option for investors seeking to avoid investing in objectionable businesses. But there are other ways that this organization may actually be less progressive than market funds at large. They are virtually guaranteed a large percentage of teachers’ salaries, since there is usually no other option. They deal with a pliable customer base, behind whose noble profession they can shield themselves. They probably don’t need to manage portfolios aggressively and can avoid heat-of-the-moment decisionmaking.
If the general public often wonders about what professors do, maybe professors (and all teachers!) need to start wondering what their retirement fund administrators do.
Dissertating and writer’s block
Following up on reader SH’s wish list of topics (Thanks, SH!), I’m tackling the issue of how to deal with writer’s block, particularly while you’re dissertating. It’s kind of a timely topic too, since some of you are dreading dealing with the tangled mess your research has become as the summer progresses. I’m not going to be able to give you a magic bullet or anything, since I was hardly efficient in finishing my diss and everyone works differently. But I’ve come up with some tips from recalling some of the pitfalls I encountered, as well as looking around the corner at some logistical things that get obscured by the intellectual project that tends to come first and foremost.
"typewriter typebars" by Mohylek (Creative Commons license)
Know Yourself: Like I said, I don’t have a magic bullet for how to finish the manuscript, because everyone writes differently. I’m not gonna give you a gimmick that writing 15 minutes a day will yield you X hundreds of pages over X period of months. It worked for some people I know, but I never tried it and all the time it would take me to convert to that mindset would take a lot longer than 15 minutes a day. Instead, I was the sort who needed huge blocks of time to go with the flow of my research and writing, which really only the summer could provide. Some days were not very productive, while some hours more than made up for the lost time. That’s just the way I worked, and I’m using my own personal, idiosyncratic approach to say that you should do what you need to do. By now, you know how to write and you know your habits, so don’t change when you’re in the home stretch.
In short, go with what brung ya: If you can pace yourself, that’s great. If you need to sit in front of the computer all day to get a few good hours, that’s fine, too. If you need a block of time to crank out as much you can, make room in your schedule. If you need carrots or sticks or both, do what it takes to fool yourself into writing a little more than you planned to. If you write best under pressure right at the deadline, why change now when you’ve only got one really, really big paper to finish?
More advice, after the jump…
Has the Starving Artist Just Died?
The idea of artists getting involved in business has become a theme as of late. The New York Times just did a story on artists who are taking classes on how to profit from their work. In a recent Rolling Stone, David Byrne–the gold-standard example of a well-fed artist who has not compromised his vision–said:
The romantic notion that musicians can’t deal with the business aspect of things, or can’t be interested in anything outside their music–that has disappeared, thank God. When I was starting out, you were supposed to be stupid! Young musicians that I’ve worked with–St. Vincent, Dirty Projectors, the National–they are throwing away that whole lackadaisical attitude. … These musicians are more engaged in the world around them, and they are going to survive.
Artists are often admonished within their communities to avoid selling out, at all costs (pardon the pun). So are academics in the humanities, who get by on grad stipends and low-paid adjunct gigs until they reach the holy grail of tenure. But starving isn’t glamorous for very long, unless you have a trust fund. The only way to share your ideas with the masses is to keep yourself fed, which is why you need to keep an eye on your money.
If artists are taking business classes and David Byrne is praising the new generation for rocking a balance sheet, then isn’t it time for academics to get more serious about being paid properly? Forming unions and organizing is only the first step. Anyone going into academia must make sure they can survive on what they are paid, and they must fight hard for the jobs they still have. It could be said that older generations didn’t fight hard enough to justify what they do and hire when they had the money, but that time might be over.
Academics Breeding *WITH* Academics, the People You’ll Meet
This is the last entry in our series on “Academics Breeding *WITH* Academics”, and we’re describing some of the kinds of people you’ll meet there. We’ve touched on grad school personality types before here and here, but we’re being more specific about how the relate to grad school mating rituals. These personality profiles explain a little why it’s not always so easy for academics to get together with one another–and why not many folks who aren’t aspiring professional nerds can put up with them!
"Speed dating annonce" by Jean-noël Lafargue (Free Art license)
Late Bloomers: This category is probably where many–if not most–academic lifers fall under. I look at it this way: As the pool of people gets smaller in grad school, those of us who were eccentrically bookish in high school and college get promoted up the coolness rankings. (Unless you are essentially nerdy, which can be breathtaking and awe-inspring itself.) In grad school, where we’re taught to specialize in our own isolated interests and ephemera, being too into weird, quirky stuff can be a strength and an admirable quality, and not the shoulder-shrugging badge of weirdness it might be to the general population. It’s easy and natural for academics to find those aspects appealing in their peers, especially when it’s hard to identify them anywhere else. And it’s all-too-exciting when you find out that you might share the same research interests or extracurricular activities.
More on the Late Bloomer and other grad school singles you might meet…
