Chasing the Dragon, Productivity Addiction and Your CV
Most professional attacks can be defeated by prolific writing and production.
But sadly, I am not my CV, and no amount of writing can shield me from myself. Just as you aren't your CV, no amount of first-authored publications in grad school and beyond can save you from yourself.
Academic qualifications cannot slay your inner demons, and they may even serve as a socially acceptable
addiction in their own right. At my R1 programs, I saw full professors who were
credential/competition junkies.
Desperation was a driving force behind them.
Their CVs were terrific.
It was excruciating to see
You must cultivate an entry-level superpower to rise in
modern Academia and reach the high ground where deans quit pondering your
trajectory, retention/tenure/promotion (RTP) review committees stop questioning
your record. Students applaud when you close out the semester with your
lecture on Jon Snow’s famous well, and the beginning of Public Health and John Oliver
invites you on his Report to plug your book.
There aren't many articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education that make me sit up and notice, but "Not Quite Bulletproof" is one of them. The author's desire to be "bulletproof," which he describes as a "desperate, futile endeavor," reflects my early days of competitiveness.
Focus on Diverting Missiles
Save your supersonic speed, your laser-beam vision, and your
aptitude to speak with aquatic life for emergencies and Christmas parties.
Activating the noun "you" with the verb
"to win" diverts missiles like nothing else. Grants and scholarships
encase you in armor crafted in the dark reaches of the unknown. People who
know you better may tend to believe you're bulletproof if a committee of
strangers declares you to be such. They think that to be completely happy and
whole; you must let go of what makes you insane. Academia, it seems,
demands varying degrees of insanity in all of its adherents.
On the JTTT blog, I urge an unflappable devotion to the
length and quality of your CV. I view it as a method of professional self-care.
However, the line between productivity and productivity addiction is skinny.
Take care of yourself. You don’t put your CV on your gravestone.
So frequently, I desire to detach from academics because I
feel like I have failed, even if I enjoy my job. My resume resembles a road map
showing all of my blunders. I see only the gaps, the accolades I didn’t
achieve, the colleges that didn’t take me. Every time I don’t receive a specific(etc.) feel blueuellikekees a human is so low that I should walk in front of a bus.
I am discovering that I am my mother's daughter. And that
I'd be wise to take care of this addiction to productivity before I lose my
marriage (as I/'ve seen happen to so many senior academics at R1s.)
Focus on Blocking Attacks.
To acquire a job, to conquer third-year review, to earn
tenure, to rise to full professorship, to deserve a Wikipedia article that you
didn’t create yourself, all you need to be is bulletproof.
Bulletproofing, like other academic endeavors, begins with those bits of printed black words.
Colleagues launch fire with “the question.” It's an
obligatory parting shot after the talk, whether it's
about the weather or a hilarious yarn about a cat and a priest who walk into a bar. junior professor responds with a DOI number and a publishing
date. “So, how’s the manuscript coming along?”
During my grad school tenure (circa 2012), two publications
published in renowned journals defined me as a hard-to-demerit graduate
student. In the long run, your manuscripts’ growth (based on your dissertation
research) will measure your invincibility after you've been
hired.
Grad school has allowed me to write book reviews,
review articles, and a chapter for an edited book, all on-demand from the
journal's editor. It wasn't until the conclusion of my "training"
time that I realized my resume was woefully inadequate for academic
achievement. It's true that I also made essential friendships and spent time
with people who have become crucial parts of my life during this time. I also
saw and enjoyed a lot of places thanks to research trips, and I also had a lot
of fun during this time.
On the one hand, I can't understand why people give up their
personal lives to feed the academic beast's need for more and more
publications. That phenomenon helps explain why the highest ranks of
academia are filled with the charred remains of people who were once whole but are now just piles of paper.
On the other hand, I am currently an advanced postdoc fellow
on the job market for a full-time TT job in the Medical Sciences. I love what I
do, and I find great satisfaction and self-esteem when I get up early every day
and sit at my cozy desk to write manuscripts. Do I waste lots of time doing
that? Yes. Do I want to do anything else for a career? No. I still gain a lot of
rewards (internal and external) when I ‘win’ a fellowship or grant. It feels
good to get a poster presentation award. It feels even better when another
researcher Google’s you and downloads your most recently published paper.
And, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that education has
increasingly become a game for the cis- and non-disabled wealthy white men (with
an accent on the words "wealthy" and "man"). It costs t broken hopes when people strive to be bulletproof. This
results in an anti-social acid pool that does little to help academics
rehabilitate themselves while also giving education's detractors more ammo. Exchange my pleasure for tExchangees of my self-styled
superiors beyond my dariboundariessfor anybody who would penetrate
their boundaries for one more line on their CV, but I understand.
I once heard someone say that every academic has a “Shadow CV.” A "Shadow CV" with all the fellowships, scholarships, prizes, positions, journal acceptances, and press acceptances that a scholar didn't get is more impressive than a person's accurate CV by someone I heard this from. Sharing our Shadow CVs would allow us to see that our "failures" are not only nothing to be ashamed of but also rich potential grounds for increasing compassion and empathy in our field.
Similar Posts:
- Writing an Academic Research Statement on the Job Market
- Rules of Writing the Academic CV
- How To Write a Journal Article Submission Cover Letter
- How To Write a Revise and Resubmit (R&R) Submission Cover Letter
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment