A Guide to Surviving a Career in Academia

Navigating the Rites of Passage

Emily Lenning, Sara Brightman, Susan Caringella, Emily Lenning, Sara Brightman, Susan Caringella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781135146412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Navigating an academic career is a complex process – to be successful requires mastering several 'rites of passage.' This comprehensive guide takes academics at all stages of their career through a journey, beginning at graduate school and ending with retirement.

A Guide to Surviving a Career in Academia is written from a feminist perspective, and draws on the information offered in workshops conducted at national meetings like the American Society of Criminology and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Through the course of the book, an expert team of authors guide you through the obstacle course of finding effective mentors during graduate school, finding a job, negotiating a salary, teaching, collaborating with practitioners, successfully publishing, earning tenure and redressing denial and, finally, retirement.

This collection is a must read for all academics, but especially women just beginning their careers, who face unique challenges when navigating through these age-old rites of passage.

1
Surviving graduate school

Sara Brightman and Emily Lenning

Graduate school can be both the most painful and the most rewarding thing you will ever do in your life. It seems like an endless stream of hurdles; as soon as you survive one, another is set before you. When we survived the thesis defense at the MA level we were sure that it was the hardest thing we would ever do but, much to our dismay, we found later that it was a rather mundane accomplishment. Months and months of work culminated with a pat on the back and the realization that ahead of us were comprehensive exams and, of course, the dreaded dissertation. We took both of the required comprehensive exams (called “area exams” in our neck of the woods) within the span of a few months, all while teaching and taking courses of our own. Once again, months and months of preparation were rewarded with nothing more than a proverbial thumbs-up and questions about when our dissertations would be done. The dissertation, of course, felt like it took forever to finish, though it didn’t. As we will discuss later, and as you will see reiterated as you progress through this book, a career in academia is defined by a multitude of rites of passage. In fact, being successful in graduate school requires the recognition that the comprehensive exams, the dissertation, and all the other hurdles of graduate school are minute in the grand scheme of things. Those who forget this end up taking decades to finish their degrees, which ultimately defeats the purpose of graduate school. Graduate school is but a stepping-stone to a greater goal. Most people who choose to endure doctoral level education hold the ultimate goal of being a professional academic of some sort; if you spend half of your working age obtaining the degree, you have thrown away half of your career opportunities. Thus, it is imperative that graduate students are given the skills to progress through their programs quickly and effectively.

The journey

Graduate education has a history dating back more than 700 years (Mauch and Burch 1998). Still in the United States less than 9 percent of people complete a graduate degree of any sort (Bauman and Graf 2003). There are many factors that contribute to this, but the overwhelming prospect of the work ahead is enough to deter many.

As recent graduates and new faculty, we hope to use our own experiences to help you navigate through your graduate program, because, after all, it is the entry rite of passage in your career. This chapter is about how we have endured the past five years and, hopefully, how others can make it through as well. Merely surviving graduate school requires a tremendous amount of support and surviving successfully means that you have forged relationships that will help foster your future career (i.e., friendships and mentorships), that you have the skills to master the comprehensive exams, and that you can make it through your thesis and dissertation in a timely manner. Though these are not the only challenges of graduate school they are perhaps the biggest, and what follows is what has worked for us and, hopefully, what you can make work for yourself.

Making friends

You may ask yourself, what do friends have to do with making it through graduate school? The answer is – everything. Having a cohort of academic friends, one created through your department or one that you have created, is imperative to your success and sanity (Rossman 2002). Throughout this chapter you will hear us describe many of our experiences collectively because both of us came from the same department at roughly the same time – Emily is only one year ahead of Sara in her career and both of our interests coincide. The relationship we share has made a tremendous difference in trying to navigate graduate school. We have experienced many hurdles simultaneously, and when Emily’s experiences preceded Sara’s, Sara was able to learn from Emily’s mistakes. Working together has prevented us from making one of the biggest mistakes of graduate school – reinventing the wheel. Though you will feel like you are the only person to ever tackle such a feat, you are only one of many before you, and to ignore that is academic suicide. If you do not purposely seek out experiences of others, you risk making mistakes that someone could have easily warned you about – mistakes that will delay your graduation from student status. Trust us, no one wants to make graduate school any longer than it has to be.

Beyond helping you navigate the rites of passage in graduate school, friends are someone to lean on when times get rough. Even though you already have friends and family that you love dearly, the fact of the matter is that some of your experiences will only be truly understood by other graduate students. The greatest evidence of this will probably be when you take your first comprehensive exam. You will spend months preparing (as will be discussed later), only to have all of your work boil down to one day or perhaps a week of writing to save your life. Your nonacademic friends may be sympathetic that you have to take a “big test,” but that’s probably where their understanding will end. Your cohort will recognize that for that one day or one week you feel like your life depends on your ability to put together thought-provoking, coherent sentences under immense pressure. Only other graduate students will understand when you are so stressed out that you find yourself crying in the middle of the hallway after having read seven books in one day – and they certainly won’t brush the incident off as mere anxiety over a menial “test.” This may seem unimportant now, but in the first moment one of your cohort says “I understand” (and they mean it) you will realize why this empathy is imperative to your survival.

Nevertheless, even though your academic friends can empathize and be there to say a sincere “Cheers” whenever you successfully jump a hurdle, they are, simply, a support system. Obviously people cannot teach you what they don’t know about, so it is important to find mentors who have already beaten the game, so to speak. Thus, once you have built yourself an army of good friends, it’s time to find a mentor (or two, or three, or four).

Finding a mentor

Identifying a mentor early on in your program is of primary importance to your success in graduate school and beyond (Kunselman et al. 2003; Marshall and Green 2004). However, finding a mentor is more difficult than it sounds. As much as departments would like you to believe that they are filled with eager professors ready to help you through your degree, it simply is not the case. The truth is you may find yourself surrounded by professors who are busy jumping through their own hoops (especially if they aren’t yet tenured), consumed by their own research, or who are simply disengaged from the department completely. What this means is that you literally have to seek out a mentor; they will not come to you. The first thing you may want to look for is similar interest in terms of research. This should be something you look for when you are checking out the department to begin with, perhaps by asking questions during your initial visit or surfing the department’s website for descriptions of professors’ work, especially their research/publications. Obviously, if you can find a mentor with similar research interests there is a potential for joint publications. Not only will this allow you to get some publications on your vita, it may place your name next to someone who is well known in the area. However, an area of interest similar to your own does not make a good mentor in and of itself.

For women, finding a mentor can be harder than it is for men. While the majority of doctoral students are female, the majority of faculty are male (Wenniger and Conroy 2001; National Opinion Research Center 2009). This becomes important because women and men have different needs from mentors. As well, male and female faculty have different approaches to mentoring students. Men tend to mentor women differently than they do other men by sharing different advice and insider information (Kleiman 1980). Women’s and men’s socialization processes are different, and this creates some differences between men and women when it comes to mentoring (Kleiman 1980). Women, more than men, feel that we should already know an individual before approaching them for help, advice, or information (Kleiman 1980). We feel like we are using someone or manipulating them for our own ends if we don’t have a preexisting relationship (Kleiman 1980). Female students may benefit from a mentor who can advise them academically as well as personally, e.g., on ways to balance family and emotions during graduate school. A female mentor might be better able to provide this kind of advice because of different socialization. On the other hand, a male mentor might be more inclined to involve a student in formal networking in the field. It is up to you to figure out what you need from a mentor, what styles different mentors have to offer (Kunselman et al. 2003), and how to put together a support team that can facilitate achievement of all of your objectives.

You may find, as we did, that there are no professors in your department with similar interests. This is not cause for panic – after all, if we had been determined to find a mentor who was interested in lesbian identity and state crime in China then we would still be looking today. There are mentors out there who will work with you despite differences, which is fine, because the primary purpose of finding a mentor is not to generate publications. The primary purpose of your mentor should be to make sure that you are making timely progress and that you are making the proper connections outside of your department. So, first and foremost, you want a mentor who is willing to dedicate some time and attention to you. One way to gauge a professor’s willingness to work with you is to set up an appointment with the professor of interest and go with a list of questions. You should have a question or questions in each of the following areas:

• Program of study. Ask a random question about the program, such as “At what point should I form a committee for such and such?” If they don’t know the answer off the top of their head, then they haven’t been paying enough attention to the details that concern you. If they seem determined to help you find the answer, great; otherwise, run away as fast as you can.

• Your area of interest. Ask something about the topic of study you are currently focused on, such as where you might find sources. Remember, it doesn’t matter if this is their area of interest or not; what matters is how willing they are to help you accomplish your goals. If the conversation about your area of interest somehow ends up back at their research agenda, run away as fast as you can.

• Their work. Ask the potential mentor about their interests. Oftentimes you will find that their interests go way beyond the short description you were given on line or when you visited the department. Not only will you learn about them, you may also discover that their interests do in fact connect to yours in some way.

• Their job as mentor. Ask them what they think their job (as it concerns graduate students) entails. If something along the lines of “helping them to develop successful careers” isn’t on the list, or if something about their own research agenda is at the top of their list, run away as fast as you can.

• The gestalt of who they are. Find out who they are as a person, not just as an academic. Whoever becomes your mentor will be someone that you have to spend a lot of time with, and there is nothing worse than working with someone who drives you crazy. Make sure that you actually like who they are and that you are compatible as a team. If you can’t work well together, your relationship will ultimately be frustrating and fruitless. Think about it this way: if you were their equal, would you still work with them? If the answer is No, run away as fast as you can.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always as easy as “setting up an appointment” because some professors, even those who might make good mentors, may not be in their office consistently. If this is the case, we suggest taking other routes to getting close to someone you think may be a good mentor. For example, when we wanted to get to know one of our mentors (who is quite often not in her office due to commuting) we signed up to be on a committee that she was chairing at the time and set up a meeting to “talk about our duties as members of the committee.” What she thought was a routine meeting about committee business was actually an opportunity for us to begin building a relationship with her.

Seeking out mentors is key: while it would be nice if they came to us, especially considering that we are the ones paying for the degree, the fact of the matter is that this just doesn’t happen as often as it should. You must take inventory of your department immediately upon entering the program – figure out who your potential mentors are and begin this foreshadowing interview process. The sooner you get a mentor, the better.

Having said this, it is also important to find more than one mentor. While it is necessary to find one person with whom you can work most closely, it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket. While working on our own PhDs we watched seven professors leave our department. While one would hope that this is an out-of-the-ordinary number, as all departments lose faculty for some reason or another, and departmental attrition can mean losing your mentor at a crucial time in your program, it may have devastating consequences. Be sure to develop relationships with several people, and make sure that they are just as aware of your progress as your “primary” mentor is. Remember, when you go on the job market you need several references, and every one of them should be able to write your letter based on the knowledge they have gained by watching your progress over time. Having multiple mentors can only broaden your possibilities and strengthen your support system (Gray and Drew 2008). The more mentors that you have to go to, the more questions you will have answers to.

Not only should you have more than one mentor, you should have mentors in more than one place. This is where networking comes in, which can best be facilitated by your primary mentor. Of course, this requires attending conferences and the like where you actually have the opportunity to meet people from other universities. This means that if your mentor isn’t encouraging you to go to conferences (especially the ones they are attending), then they aren’t fulfilling one of their primary functions as your mentor. Conferences can introduce you to new mentors in several ways. The most obvious is through research sharing. Presenting your research may peak the interest of more accomplished scholars with similar interests, and can lead to publishing. Indeed, the first presentation that we gave as a duo resulted in our first coauthored publication – something that was largely accomplished through the networks that we formed while attending a conference. The truth is, though, that conferences are about more than just sharing ideas and growing the intellectual pool – there is a secret that only the best mentors will share with you.

The secret about conferences is that they’re essentially big class reunions at which people are forced to share their work. While the sharing of new research is an integral part of knowledge production, it is not the only purpose of academic conferences. Undoubtedly your mentor is also attending in hopes of catching up with old friends, many of whom may be an asset to you. A good mentor will likely invite you to a function or two, and it is very important that you attend. Join in the conversations as much as possible (without monopolizing the discussion) and keep your ears open for links to your own interests. Always be prepared to give out your email address to others working in your area, because it is a surefire way to start relationships with people at different schools. This becomes very important once you’re on the job market – if you’ve already worked (positively) with someone at the school where you’re applying to, this person essentially becomes an additional reference. Moreover, these “outside” individuals may prove to be very useful mentors.

The truth is, though, that you cannot rely on casual conversation to get you very far in and of itself – the key is to get involved! Go to the conferences that are most relevant to your interests and find out how you can become an integral part of activities. Some annual meetings have “divisions,” “sections,” “committees,” “subcommittees,” events, meetings, and activities that are very welcoming to graduate students (such as the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology, where this book was born). Without overextending yourself, get involved in these organizations and start making a name for yourself as early as possible. Doing so leads to almost instant reward – rec...

Table of contents

• Contents
• About the authors
• Introduction
• 1 Surviving graduate school
• 2 Strategies for success on the job market
• 3 Money matters
• 4 Being a new faculty
• 5 Teaching with intention
• 6 A brief guide to academic publishing
• 7 Collaborating with practitioners
• 8 Getting tenure and redressing denial
• 9 Retirement
• Conclusion
• Index