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Career Sense is a blog for academic job seekers.
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A new year – a new perspective on the job market!
Happy New Years folks!
I hope you all had a relaxing break. I, unfortunately, spent a good chunk of my holidays writing a paper – sound familiar?
I’ve been reading all sorts of synopses of 2009, and they all seem focused on the gloom and doom of the economic downturn (or ‘crisis’ if you are in the States). Of course, those of you in the job market, or about to be, know all about that.
It seems unproductive to start this New Year with the emotional baggage of its less than stellar predecessor. Instead, I’ve been trying to think up ways to re-frame things to focus more on what opportunities may now be more realistic, even preferable to attempting to find a tenure track position this year. Here’s what I came up with:
- Taking another year to finish your dissertation at a more leisurely pace. Many Ivy League universities are actually facilitating this option with innovative funding options like internship and bursaries. Talk to your dean and/or supervisor about this – imagine, not panicking at bedtime!
- Conference with abandon rather than worrying about finishing the dissertation in a few months! Go to fun places, but concentrate your energies on papers that have publishing potential so when the academic job market eases up, you’ll be more competitive than ever.
- Take a ‘gap year’. I know these are something younger students are encouraged to do, but if you think about, many grad students would benefit from having a year away from academe to reconsider their options, while exploring new ones. Of course there is the financial aspect, but if you don’t have a family to feed, it might be one of the last times you be able to hit the high road just because!
- If getting away from academe for a year is unrealistic in your situation, at least take some time to seriously investigate your non-academic options – preferably with the support of a career counselor or advisor experienced with grad students. That way if things don’t improve quickly enough for you, you will have an idea of what your next steps might be.
- Learning a potentially useful, or at least fun, skill. This diversionary tactic could open your eyes to a whole aspect of yourself you had forgotten about, or never knew existed. You will be surprised how much you enjoy doing something, anything, that does not involve research, or academic writing. It can be downright invigorating if not enlightening!
There will be so many incredibly well prepared candidates who will be struggling during this time period, that your ‘unconventional’ academic timeline will hardly be the anomaly that it might have been in the past.
At the very least, having a little time to reflect on where you’ve been, and where you’re going may well make your next steps more clear. Now doesn’t that sound like a good way to start a new year!
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4 Responses to “A new year – a new perspective on the job market!”
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For older students with children and mortgages, these are not options. The fact that I work, manage my family, and face my dissertation are scary enough without thinking about not working and not having enough money for anything! Or paying for conferences that are great for networking but don’t really do much for my c.v.
Having raised 5 children, mostly on my own, throughout my PhDs (I’m ABD in one field and PhD5 in my current program), I understand your challenges. I also admit that the bias in this post is towards the more traditional student without such concerns.
I practice, in so far as I can, many of these suggestions. In fact, for someone like yourself, it is way to easy to feel like you ‘can’t’ do anything that isn’t directly related to completing quickly, making money and strengthening your CV.
But it is perhaps more important for people with other obligations like children to have a realistic plan B, and to have something to do to get away from the grind – a nurture a new or favorite skill, a hobby – anything done for no other reason than we want to.
Me, I lift weights and indulge my technogeek habits occasionally. It provides a little balance in what can feel like an otherwise really unbalanced period of my life
points 1-3 also also have implications for people in relationships. Taking extra time to finish wreaks havoc on couples, especially when one person is supporting another to pursue academia. After 6-7 years of study, taking an extra year to finish is not advice I’d give to anyone unless they have an extraordinarily understanding partner.
Why not suggest people take time in the year to find ways to expedite completion of their degree (i.e. shorter dissertations, focussed research questions, etc)? The faster one finishes the faster they can get on the market or move into a more promising non-university career track. For those 2/3 of grads who never land TT jobs, taking extra time to finish a degree that leads nowhere really is time wasted.
Indeed – all of these suggestions have implications for some people more than others. This is the nature of careers – one size doesn’t fit all. The main point not to be missed is that there are ways of finding or creating something positive out of a situation most agree is less than ideal, if not abyssmal. People who take the time to find a way of growing regardless of circumstances over which they have no control are much more likely to stay sane and even thrive.
I presented a range of options in the hopes that at least one would opened up a possibility to diversereaders at a time when most of the discourse around the econmy was pretty gloomy – c’est tout!