Coursework
What They Don’t Tell You About Coursework
How your skills as a student can hold you back in your PhD.
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How to Fail
Earlier this week we shared that a crucial part of making progress on your dissertation isn’t just letting go of perfection but actively giving yourself the freedom to fail. Today, we’re going to share our favorite ways to fail. If you take lessons in acrobatics, stagecraft, or tumbling, one of Read more…
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September, Baby!
Welcome to the Academic New Year! For myself, and many of the academics I know, September is the most magical month: new planners, new pencils, new pens, new term and, most importantly, new potential. September feels like a new start and this time, baby, we’re gonna get it right! We Read more…
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Happy New Semester!
Hi All, It’s the first day of classes where we are and we wanted to wish all of you a happy first day of class, if you’re starting today, or last few weeks of summer, if you’re not. No matter where you are in relation to the semester start we Read more…
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Surviving Summer: Try Something
As we’ve discussed earlier in our series on surviving summer, humanities PhDs often trade money for time. That is, summers for PhD students are often unpaid but full of “free” time. Up to this point, we’ve covered a few ways to save money and reduce your cost of living over Read more…
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Dealing With An Abusive Advisor
Names have power. Interdisciplinary scholars know this. This is why our programs and our dissertations exist. If names did not matter than American Studies would not exist with its PhDs, its journals, and its conferences. American Studies does exist, with its PhDs, its journals, and its conferences, precisely because it Read more…
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Surviving Summer: Eat Something
Welcome back to our series on surviving summer on the low or no income of a humanities graduate student. A lot of our previous posts have focused on food (here, here, and here). This probably isn’t surprising. You need to eat. I need to eat. We all need to eat. Read more…
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The Absent-Minded Abuser
We just completed a series on what 15 abuse tactics can look like in academia. (Feel free to check it out here, here, and here.) I wanted to include a special post about The Academic Bumbler. This post is derived from Lili Loofbourow’s brilliant piece “The myth of the male Read more…
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Surviving Summer: Share Something
One time, in another life, I was listening to a husband and wife missionary team talk about how they saved money to go on their mission trips and one of the things they said has always stayed with me as a very practical piece of life advice: If I’ve got Read more…
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Another 5 Signs of an Abusive Advisor
This mini-series is an adaptation of 15 signs of an abusive relationship from a romantic context to an academic context. Each installment will adapt 5 signs to an academic context. For more familiarity with the signs please check out the original article over at HuffPo. You can also see the Read more…