Year: 2013
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Transition Q & A: Alexandra Guerson
Alexandra Guerson earned her PhD in history from the University of Toronto. She’s currently a part-time faculty member at New College, University of Toronto, and occasionally takes up sessional work at U of T’s history department and at York University. Find her online and follow her @aeguerson. A tenure-track job at a research institution is often…
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Manifesto
There’s a big, and growing, problem with academic labour and the job market. What makes it worse is that there hasn’t been an attendant shift in attitudes within the academy about the purpose of a PhD. Although I’m most familiar with the situation in history and the troubles faced by the humanities in general, a…
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Exploration
When I hired my career coach, Hillary Hutchinson, back in the fall, I had no idea what a coach did. I’d heard—and laughed about—life coaches but had never heard of a career coach. I’d reached a impasse, though, and was determined to move forward. Since what I’d been doing thus far hadn’t been working, it…
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Scholarship and life
Scholars are almost always academics. We assign the designation to professors and researchers with university posts who get paid to research and publish. The term “independent scholar” only proves this: The qualifier is necessary because “scholar” by itself implies an academic position. I think this is why I’ve been uneasy about my desire to continue…
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Transition Q & A: Jessica Langer
Jessica Langer earned her PhD in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She runs ideas in flight, a social media and digital marketing consultancy, and teaches at York University’s Schulich School of Business. Find her online and follow her @DrJessicaLanger. A tenure-track job at a research institution is often seen as the supposed goal of a…
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A job interview
I had a job interview a couple weeks back. I wasn’t offered the position, but I still consider it a success. A celebration, even. Here’s what happened: Earlier this month, after talking with Natalie Zina Walschots, I started to be much more active on social media. That Friday, I mentioned Jessica Langer in a #FF…
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The importance of blogging
Reading an interview with #altac blogger Liana Silver got me thinking about the importance of blogging in my life. I first started to blog in June 2006. Life was pretty good: I was nearing the end of my second year of my PhD, was finishing up a stint as president of our graduate history society, my comprehensive exams…
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“I’m a loser”
A lot has changed since the fall. Back then, my dissertation defence was several months old and the final version was long handed in. But I felt I’d barely progressed. My post-PhD job prospects seemed poor, and I felt pretty low. When friends and acquaintances asked me what I was up to, I would tell them,…
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Transition Q & A: Natalie Zina Walschots
Natalie Zina Walschots is a music writer, poet and editor based in Toronto. She earned an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. Read more about Natalie at her website and find her @NatalieZed. When you finished your MA, what did you plan to do next? I initially intended to move…
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Transitions, transitions
On Monday I conducted an interview with a guy I’ve decided to write about. It’ll be my first real stab at a non-blogging, non-work, non-academic writing project, and I’m excited to see where it will go. Shandy Brown is a great subject. We met in 2006 on a plane leaving Toronto for San Francisco, and…