Tag: graduate school

  • Transition Q & A: Veronica Rubio Vega

    Veronica Rubio Vega is a part-time PhD candidate in political economy at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She works as a research analyst at RBC. Connect with her on Academia.edu, follow her @VERYVERO, or email her.  You’re currently enrolled in a PhD program, but recently switched to part-time studies. What happened?…

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  • Why I started my PhD

    I was recently asked why I did a PhD if I didn’t now want to be a professor. The question was posed by a friendly acquaintance and was meant genuinely, out of curiosity. The assumption he made—that a doctorate is a prelude to a professorship—is common inside and outside the academy. I’m not surprised by…

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  • Transition Q & A: Peter Konieczny

    Peter Konieczny earned his MA in history and MLS from the University of Toronto. He is now the librarian at Oxford College and the editor of Medievalists.net and four other history websites. Follow him@medievalicious. When you finished your MA, did you have a plan for what you’d do next? I finished my MA in 1999 and…

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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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  • Marketing the PhD

    We know the prevailing attitude within academia tends toward the “tenure-track or bust” end of the acceptable jobs spectrum, but the problem exists on the outside, too. Most of the time, people I’m talking to assume something very similar: that I will become a professor. A while back I was talking with an acquaintance about…

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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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