Category: Uncategorized
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Certainty and time
Today’s post is a reflection on my troubles imagining a non-academic future for myself given the pervasiveness of the ready-made academic dream. But over time I realized what I truly wanted. I never went on the academic job market. I thought about it, looked at job listings, read the wikis, and pondered what I might…
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You’re invited: New group!
After hosting a few group discussions and participating in lots of conversations with PhDs, I’m ready to take my next step: group coaching! So… I’m launching my first From PhD to Life weekly coaching/support group for recent PhDs, soon-to-be PhDs, and ABDs leaving the academy. Together, we’ll support and encourage each other as we take…
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You’re invited! Post-PhD group
I’ve been pondering starting a post-PhD coaching/support/discussion group and I’m ready to set a time and give it a go. So… Tuesday, 6 August 2013, 9pm EDT let’s get together over the phone and talk about stuff. I like inclusiveness and think there’s a benefit to having a variety of people on the call, so…
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Signature strengths
I’ve been reading positive psychology books the past couple of months. I love the focus on helping people improve their lives, and agree that a happy life is a personally fulfilling life. One of the exercises offered up at the Authentic Happiness website is the VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths. [Edit, 16…
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Training for jobs we won’t get
Today, a year after graduating and with no intention of returning to academia, I found myself at . . . an academic conference! And no, it wasn’t the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, my old summer conference stomping grounds; instead, I was at Worldviews 2013: Global Trends in Media…
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You’re invited! Post-PhD brainstorming session
What do PhDs most want? How can PhDs be best served? What are PhDs most interested in? What are PhDs biggest strengths? What resources do PhDs have? What helps PhDs achieve their full potential? These questions are purposefully broad. I think they make a good beginning for some brainstorming sessions, conversations, blog posts, and Twitter…
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Post-PhD magazine dreams
I want to start a magazine. It will be called Post-PhD and it will be beautifully designed, wonderfully written, and will have inspiring, surprising, and delightful original content. It will be for and about PhDs, including ABDs and our compadres, no matter what they do or where they do it. It will exist in physical…
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Should
I lived with many “should”s during my PhD. I should have worked harder in classes, spent more time on my essays, read more books, taken better notes, tried harder to set up reading groups, done more research, visited more archives, ordered more photocopies, applied for more conferences, networked more actively, worked more consistently on my…
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Update
I’ve been busy with different projects these past few weeks, and am now taking advantage of having little on my plate! Here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to: I participated in a panel and discussion about #alt-ac at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. The whole thing was streamed live over the ‘net…
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Pamela MacIsaac, Vice Principal, Transition Q&A
UPDATE, Nov 2014: Pam MacIsaac now works as an academic coach and tutor with Think Academic Enrichment & Support. Pamela MacIsaac earned her PhD in history from McMaster University in 1997. She later completed a Master of Teaching at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto in 2008 and is…