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Advice Category: Academics & Research

Presenting Your Work To a Broad Audience

There are many transferable skills you can develop in graduate school that will prepare you for many types of careers. These may include the ability to synthesize complex information (studying, reading, and engaging in class discussions), manage a large project (a capstone, thesis, or dissertation), prioritize tasks (balancing your studies, work, and personal life), meet multiple deadlines, and work independently or in collaborative settings.

One transferable skill you may consider developing during your time at UW is presenting your research to an audience made up of individuals who are not necessarily experts in your research specialization or field of study. Below are tips for preparing and presenting your work for a broader audience.

Communicate your research to a broad audience. Maybe you’re developing a three-minute networking pitch or preparing for a non-academic job talk. Maybe you’re finally ready to discuss your research project or capstone with family, friends, or community groups. Interested in sharing the significance of your project with policy makers? No matter the setting, presenting your research in an accessible manner for different audiences can help you and your work have a broader impact.

Know your audience. As mentioned above, you may be speaking to a potential employer or a local community group. Do your research ahead of time to know what might resonate with your audience and understand why they might be invested in your work. And no matter the audience, it’s important to be mindful that you are not “talking down” to individuals you are presenting to. You are framing your work in terms — and perhaps stories or contexts — they care about.

Prepare content. Utilize a guide for preparing effective slides or visuals or get advice and support from the UW Research Commons Design Help Desk. Regardless of your chosen visual format, identify a powerful anecdote, a quotation, or a question that can capture your audience’s attention and is connected to the main point of your presentation. Less is more, so include two or three sub-points that connect to your research question or finding. Avoid including a lot of technical or academic jargon, as this may unintentionally lead to audience disengagement. Finally, consider closing with a question, anecdote or visual that ties everything together — and that again— will capture the audience’s attention.

Practice your talk. Schedule times to practice in front of peers outside of your department, loved ones, or even co-workers before your actual talk. Ask for feedback to learn if your audience can follow your story, if they feel engaged, and if they have a clear take-home message from your presentation.

Want practice in a low stakes, fun, and guided way? Submit a proposal Scholars’ Studio! Or, be an audience member at a Scholars’ Studio event this quarter or in winter and learn from your grad student peers!

Best,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

Additional Resources

Navigating Licensing Options for a Thesis or Dissertation

Which license(s) should I use or create when publishing my doctoral dissertation?  – Anonymous 

This week’s answer is courtesy of Elizabeth Bedford, scholarly publishing outreach librarian, Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Congratulations on getting to the home stretch of your dissertation! As part of your degree requirements, you will be depositing your dissertation into ResearchWorks, UW’s online open repository, and it will be important for you to understand your license options through this process.

Some background: being able to access something online does not mean that readers can use it any way they’d like – US law gives copyright holders a set of exclusive rights over their works, which include distributing or adapting the material. Normally if a reader wants to make use of a work in one of the ways protected by copyright, they have to get explicit permission. But what if a copyright holder is fine with some uses, and wants to communicate that to potential users?

Licenses are the mechanism by which a copyright holder allows uses of their work, and traditionally they have been used for individual permissions. However, Creative Commons licenses work on a broad scale, allowing the copyright holder to let an audience know that they automatically give permission for certain uses under certain conditions. CC licenses make things clear and simple for both the copyright holder and the user, and have been proven legally sound, which is not something you get with a DIY license.

CC licenses can be very restrictive or completely permissive, with many shades in between. If you want something more restrictive than anything-goes CC0, you can choose one of the ‘BY’ licenses, which require others at minimum to credit your work. You’ll make decisions prohibiting or allowing combinations of three types of use: 1) commercial use; 2) adaptations; and 3) ‘viral’ licensing. This is a very personal decision, but there’s lots online about factors copyright holders should consider and why some copyright holders make the decisions they do.

You’ll notice that I’ve been careful to say ‘copyright holder’ rather than ‘author.’ For UW dissertations, the author always starts out as the copyright holder. But if you enter into negotiations with a publisher, be aware that sometimes publishers ask you to completely transfer your copyright to them. If that happens, you no longer have the right to make licensing choices over the work and the publisher gets the final say. So read the fine print of your publishing contracts!

My office is here to help with this, so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us.

Graduating soon, and what next?

“I am a fifth-year doctoral student and will be graduating soon. I’m at the point in my graduate education where I am thinking about possible careers. What are some simple steps I can take to start my career planning?” –Anonymous

Lucky you, grad student, you get two answers to your question! One is from Catherine Basl, career counselor with Career & Internship Services. Catherine manages the center’s programming for graduate students. Another is from the Core Programs team, who support personal and professional development of grad students at the UW. You know what they say, two heads are better than one!

Catherine Basl, career counselor, Career & Internship Services:

Leverage your research skills for career planning! Aim for a mix of independent reading about options and connecting with professionals in coffee chats or at events.

A few ideas for getting started:

  • Talk to one alum of your graduate program who works outside of academia in an area of possible interest. Graduate Program Advisers could be a good resource for finding alumni.
  • Attend an event on campus (Core Programs and the Career & Internship Center host many) that is focused on employer connections or exploring options.
  • Reflect on your time here at UW. Consider all of the roles you have held as a graduate student (TA, research assistant, mentor, tutor, lab manager, writer, coder, etc.). Looking at each role, what were the tasks and activities you enjoyed most? Least? See if patterns emerge across roles. For an example of this activity, see pages 8-10 in the Career Guide.
  • Paula Di Rita Wishart’s article on Career Callings also provides some great activities for reflecting on your graduate school experience and next steps.
  • LinkedIn’s Alumni tool shows you where actual UW alumni work and you can sort by location, employer, and field of study to see possible career paths.

Some notes:

  • Looking at job postings when you aren’t sure what you want to do can be overwhelming. Job boards become much more navigable when you have established criteria for what you want in a position. The same goes for large career fairs.
  • Gather multiple data points. That means talking to more than one person, reading about career options on more than one website, and testing out the information you hear.
  • Realize career planning is like all research projects—sometimes things fall into place quickly and sometimes you encounter roadblocks along the way. If you feel stuck or would like someone to brainstorm with, consider booking an appointment with a career counselor and checking in with mentors.

A few more resources for exploring:

Core Programs Team:

Dear UW Grad Student,

Thank you for reaching out! This is a great question, and one we hear frequently from graduate students who are further along in their degree programs and thinking through different career paths. Whether you are thinking about working in industry, non-profits, government, or academia, there are several resources that can help you do intentional career planning (many of which we’ve learned through collaborations with partners at the Career & Internship Center).

First step: do some self-assessment work. Where are you with your skills, strengths, interests, passions? Then, use a planning tool like an Individual Development Plan (link) to start to map out possible goals and steps you can take toward them in the next few months. You can also utilize this helpful career planning guide from the Career & Internship Center that provides several clear, proactive steps you can take towards finding that job you’re passionate about.

To explore and open your possibilities, do LinkedIn searches for professionals with jobs you’re interested in learning more about and set up informational interviews to hear more about their unique career trajectories.

Explore different career options within academia and/or job sectors outside of academia with the amazing resources on the Career Center website.

We totally get that you are 100% focused on your dissertation work and graduation – it’s a lot! And, we know that setting aside 1-2 hours per week (starting right now) to explore, research, draft, attend something that helps you refine your career search will really help you identify career options and opportunities for your next steps. It’s worth it – give it a try!

Sincerely,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess
 

Fostering Inclusive Classrooms as a TA

How do we, as TAs or RAs, work to include all students we work with, given the difficult times the nation is in? — Anonymous 

This week’s answer is courtesy of Gonzalo Guzman, pre-doctoral instructor in American Ethnic Studies and the College of Education. 

To say we live in “difficult times” would be an understatement. This is why it is our duty as TAs, RAs, or Instructors of Record to make sure that our students feel included in our classrooms. By “inclusion” I mean building and fostering a community in your class that validates and respects students. In difficult times, the community you build in your classroom can be a refuge, where students focus on learning and know that their experiences matter to you and their colleagues in the class.

Simply put, inclusion and validation of your students should be central to your philosophy of education/teaching. Students know when TAs/RAs/Instructors care about them, are accessible, and make efforts to include them. This is not content bound, but is a philosophy of work. For instance, a TA can teach content from a discipline or field that focuses on topics such as social history and identity constructions, and still develop a working relationship or classroom where their students don’t necessarily feel included or welcome. Even if the content reflects most of the students’ realities, if the teaching style and the overall classroom environment do not, then students will not feel a part of the learning environment.

Including all the students we work with is relational, continuous work, and it doesn’t need to be a  drastic transformation. It can simply start with check-ins with your students. Other ways to do this are to make assignments more accessible and responsive, adapt student input into your work, and make a collaborative space where your students know you are working together in a shared classroom. How you do this is up to you; it is dependent on the community you make and the relationship you have with your students. How do we include all of our students in these difficult times? We do the work. We teach and work to the benefit and developing lives of our students.

Postdocs, Know Your Rights!

Along with key partners such as the the Career & Internship Center, and UW Schools & Colleges, the Office of Postdoc Affairs (OPA) works to support over 1,100 postdocs at UW. The benefits and rights of being a postdoc vary based on your funding source and position. We want every postdoc to know your rights, as the University of Washington has worked hard to offer fair benefit packages to postdocs – in most cases, commensurate with the faculty. We want to support you in getting your benefits, and Academic HR can always help as well. We created a new one page resource to outline the basics, and we highlight a few key items here. When in doubt always consult your department administrator.

Salary/Stipend: All postdocs’ salaries are recommended to align with the NIH NRSA salary scale where possible. The NIH NRSA scale is adjusted yearly and has increased by 20.9% since August 2012, including increasing the minimum salary/stipend in December 2016, and accounts for years of experience.

Health Insurance: For all postdocs funded through the university, health insurance is the same as other Academic Personnel. Information can be found online.

Holidays: Postdocs are usually not required to work on the 10 university holidays. An alternative day off should be given if the postdoc is required to work.

Leave Benefits: Postdocs with appointments of Research Associates or Senior Fellows are eligible for 90 days of approved paid sick leave for an illness or injury during each academic year. Paid sick leave covers your own serious health condition as defined by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), temporary disability due to pregnancy, childbirth, or recovery therefrom, and to take care for a family member with a serious health condition.

Leave Without Pay (Partial Leave): In limited circumstances and for a limited period of time, a postdoc employee may be permitted to take a partial leave of absence without pay for reasons related to family obligations.

Professional Development: Given the dual nature of postdoc positions as employee and trainee, a reasonable amount of a postdocs’ paid time may be used for career development activities, even when hired under a federal research grant.

Appointments: Postdoc positions are intended to be temporary positions to advance research careers. National guidelines recommend no more than 5 years in a postdoc position. Currently the majority of UW postdocs are in appointments intended for no more than 6 years after confirmation of terminal degree. Exceptions must be approved by Academic HR.

Appointment Termination: Termination of Research Associates should be notified at least 6 months in advance. Termination of Senior Fellows should be notified as soon as possible, with at least 60-days’ notice required. Termination, or non-renewal of contract, can occur for documented performance reasons or documented loss of funding.

Grievances: The OPA and the Ombud can provide guidance on strategies to resolve conflicts informally. Research Associates may be eligible to pursue grievances through the faculty code process. Senior Fellows may be eligible to utilize their school-based grievance process.

Individual Development Plans (IDP) and Annual Evaluation: OPA highly recommends every postdoc develop and implement an IDP, and the supervisor is encouraged to review and discuss IDP with the postdoc. Postdocs will also receive at least one written progress evaluation each year, and have the right to receive expectations that serve as the basis of these evaluation. Postdocs, along with other Academic Personnel, are eligible for annual merit raises based on this annual review.

Non-Discrimination: As members of the UW community, postdocs are protected against, and may have remedies for, instances of discrimination and sexual harassment by addressing these situations through the Civil Rights Investigation Office (CRIO) and/or the Title IX Office.

Time and Effort Commitment: Postdocs have a 12-month appointment, and are expected to work 11 months (eligible for one paid month off per year). Arrangements for time off are made beforehand with their supervisor. Postdocs work at least 40 hours per week. In keeping with professional standards, the OPA suggests that work schedules must be reasonable and related to research needs.

Health and Safety: Postdocs should have access to a relevant health and safety training, and should refuse a hazardous assignment until it has been remedied or determined to be safe. UW Environmental Health & Safety can assist with necessary training or workplace needs for chemicals, substances and equipment. For other campus safety issues, UW SafeCampus is available 24/7.

How Prof. Phillip Levin Works

Phillip Levin, Professor of PracticePhil Levin 2

Department/program: School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Research focus: Conservation

Phillip Levin is one of only two Professors of Practice at the UW, straddling the academic and professional worlds to maximize impact in both. As the lead scientist at the Nature Conservancy–Seattle, he said in 2016 he hopes to “be a voice of science, to highlight where science can provide answers to our most pressing conservation issues and to act as a scientific adviser.” Levin joined the UW in 2016 after working for 17 years for the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration–Fisheries, where he received the Department of Commerce Silver Award and NOAA’s Bronze Medal for his work on marine ecosystems. His research into Puget Sound’s sixgill sharks was featured on KCTS-9’s award-winning documentary, Wildlife Detectives: Mystery Sharks of Seattle, in 2016.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Collaboratively

How do you manage your to-dos?

I’ve tried various apps that sync across devices, but right now my favorite is Google Keep. It’s great for making lists as well as taking short notes.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

I depend a great deal on my calendar (I use Apple’s calendar to combine my personal and work calendars). I am using Notability on my iPad now as a note taking tool. So far it’s great, and syncs over to my phone and computer. I have also found collaboration tools like Asana to be useful for group projects, but typically only during the start-up phase when there are a lot of moving parts. After that, use by everyone seems to decline.

Where do you most often work?

Right now, because I’m in a new position that requires lots of interaction, I am working quite a bit at our office site. Typically, when I write, I prefer to be in a place where I can experience long stretches without interruption. Often this is at home or on airplanes.

How do you manage your time?

Not very well. I never seem to have enough!

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

I prioritize and spend very little time on low priority items.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in academia?

Often I am most productive when I step away from a problem and let my mind wonder. So, when writing or trying to figure out a problem, a long bike ride or walk or gardening will help me. Most of my “writing” is done in my head away from the computer. When I do sit down to actually write, it’s more about organizing my thoughts and trying to express them coherently.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

I’m not sure anything is really mundane. I’m really good at doing nothing, but even then (especially then) the gears in my brain are turning.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

I laugh at everything.

How do you recharge?

Gardening

What’s your sleep routine like?

Listening to podcasts takes my mind away from the day. When I do so, I typically fall asleep within minutes.

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

When my paper or grant proposal is rejected it’s MY fault, not the reviewers. Sure, the reviewer missed the point, or is just plain wrong, but then I need to better express my point. This attitude has always helped me improve my products and reminds me that no matter how right I may think I am, other perspectives are important. businessinlitouwen.nl – Company registration in Lithuania

Who’s your support system?

My family

What pitfall do you consistently see students falling into?

Failing to consider the larger picture. Why should someone outside your immediate field care about what you do? And letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

What do your most successful students do?

They persevere in the face of many obstacles. Persistence pays off.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

Did you enjoy this series? Check back Wednesdays during the Spring quarter for the latest mid-week motivation! While you wait, you can read more in this series, nominate a student or professor to be featured, or answer the questions yourself! (Students should answer the questions via this form; faculty should use this form. If you prefer to answer the questions over email, drop us a line at gradnews@uw.edu).

How Prof. David Domke Works

David Domke

David Domke, Professor

Department/program: Communications
Research focus: Political communication: messages by candidates, campaign, parties and news media; public attitudes and opinions

David Domke is a popular face on campus. Last year, he delivered a sold-out lecture series focused on the 2016 election and civil rights. He was named the UW graduating class of 2008’s favorite professor, and, in 2015, was selected as the keynote speaker for freshman convocation. In 2002, Domke was a recipient of a UW Distinguished Teaching Award. A former journalist, Domke worked for the Orange County Register and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1996.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Intensely.

How do you manage your to-dos?

Lists and calendars. I have a daily calendar, of course, but I also have wall calendars that show the whole year in one glance.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

Google Docs, hard-copy calendar, wall calendar, cell phone for texting.

Where do you most often work?

Everywhere and anywhere.

How do you manage your time?

I compartmentalize and prioritize. I try to focus my mind on one thing at a time, then finish it and move on. Each day I have a plan for my time; these daily plans fit into a weekly, monthly, and yearly plan. The plans get fuzzier the farther out the dates, but I almost always have a working sense of what’s to be prioritized. This working sense allows me to focus my mind on tasks or work in sequence, which is where the compartmentalization occurs.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

Being ahead of the curve on things rather than playing catch-up or working at the last-minute. Being ahead of the curve on items reduces stress for me and allows me to operate efficiently without wasted energy due to stress.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in academia?

Developing healthy boundaries that guide me in knowing when I’m responsible and when I’m not.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

Being hopeful and seeing positives.

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

My Twitter feed. I intentionally populate it with funny people so that I have go-to humor at pretty much all times.

How do you recharge?

Reading, eating comfort food (cookies) and thinking big ideas.

What’s your sleep routine like?

Pretty regular. I go to sleep at 11 p.m. and wake up between 6 and 6:30 am.

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Pursue the good, not the perfect.

Who’s your support system?

My spouse and a small group of close friends and colleagues.

What pitfall do you consistently see students falling into?

Negative self-talk and beliefs. You have to believe in yourself if you want to achieve big things; otherwise you’ll convince yourself you can’t do something.

What do your most successful students do?

Try. Just try. Don’t worry about potential success. Trying is the success.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

Did you enjoy this series? Check back Wednesdays during the Spring quarter for the latest mid-week motivation! While you wait, you can read more in this series, nominate a student or professor to be featured, or answer the questions yourself! (Students should answer the questions via this form; faculty should use this form. If you prefer to answer the questions over email, drop us a line at gradnews@uw.edu).

Translating Your Postdoc Experience into Practice

An academic journey is an interesting thing. After focusing on developing specialized knowledge in a field during your PhD and then digging deeper during your postdoc, it is understandable to wonder how you might use your specific expertise in different settings – whether inside or outside of academia.

A recent panel of Ph.D.s working in industry highlighted the importance of translating your doctoral and postdoc experience into broader terms. Taking an inventory of your skills, capabilities, and strengths can help you gain confidence as you begin to imagine you do have something remarkable to offer to a future employer or to leverage for success in your career.

Skills learned during graduate school and a postdoc fellowship have set you up to be a competitive applicant for most industry and start up jobs, in addition to the traditional academic track. By the completion of your training, you are highly intelligent, with an ability to learn and teach yourself “what you don’t know.” You are adept at gathering all the available information and making a good decision regarding what it means and what’s next. You have developed great analytical and logic-minded skills, which you can apply to move an issue, experiment or conversation forward. All it takes is stepping back, and reframing your experiences for a different audience.

Need some ideas about how your graduate and postdoc experiences have prepared you for a rewarding career inside or outside of academia? Check out this list from Peter Fiske’s keynote at the National Postdoc Association meeting 2017 (#NPA2017) to get you started:

  1. Ability to function in a variety of environments and roles
  2. Teaching skills; conceptualizing, explaining
  3. Counseling, interview skills
  4. Public speaking experience
  5. Ability to support a position/viewpoint with argumentation and logic
  6. Ability to conceive and design complex studies and projects
  7. Ability to implement and manage all phases of complex research projects and to follow them through to completion
  8. Knowledge of the scientific method to organize and test ideas
  9. Ability to organize and analyze data, to understand statistics and to generalize from data
  10. Ability to combine, integrate information from disparate sources
  11. Ability to evaluate critically
  12. Ability to investigate, using many different research methodologies
  13. Ability to problem-solve
  14. Ability to do advocacy work
  15. Ability to acknowledge many differing views of reality
  16. Ability to suspend judgment, to work with ambiguity
  17. Ability to make the best use of informed hunches

As you develop your own inventory, keep in mind that similar skills or capacities may be called different things in different sectors or fields. Do your research when you are targeting a job prospect and develop tailored versions of your CV or resume and cover letters to reflect the field specific terms.  You are prepared – it just takes a little translation to help others see it easily. We invite you to budget an hour or so a week to explore the references below for more tools and ideas.

How Prof. Adam Summers Works

Adam Summers, Professor, Friday Harbor Labs

Adam Summers

Department/program: Biology & School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Research focus: Biomechanics and Biomaterials

Adam Summers is known around campus as “the fish guy,” reflecting his passion for, and expertise in, all things fishy. With a focus on biomechanics in fish movement, he played a role in bringing Pixar’s most popular fish movie — Finding Nemo — to life. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Massachusetts, and, after nine years teaching at the University of California — Irvine, now runs the comparative biomechanics and biomaterials lab at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Curiously.

How do you manage your to-dos?

Wunderlist. Also email ping-backs: I send an email explaining I am working on something and the person who needs it should send me an email if they don’t get it in a certain number of days.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

Word, Chrome, Amira (a 3-D software platform for visualizing, manipulating and understanding data from multiple image modalities), Fusion 360 (a software platform for designing, engineering and manufacturing), Photoshop, Illustrator, Papers.

Where do you most often work?

In my office and lab.

How do you manage your time?

Google calendar.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

Lots of open tabs.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in academia?

Write 750 words every day. Every single day.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

Landing in a crosswind.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Half Resurrection Blues by Daniel Older

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

Daughter’s self-made spelling test which included ‘Parents,’ ‘Mission’ and ‘Revenge’.

How do you recharge?

Fly small planes, snuggle with small children.

What’s your sleep routine like?

Five to eight hours in one block or three and four in two.

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Make your teaching serve your research.

Who’s your support system?

My wife, kids and brother.

What pitfall do you consistently see students falling into?

Waiting to write. Write early, often and broadly. It makes writing for work less work.

What do your most successful students do?

They love morphology and poke at how things work. They tinker and make things.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work. 

Did you enjoy this series? Check back Wednesdays during the Spring quarter for the latest mid-week motivation! While you wait, you can read more in this series, nominate a student or professor to be featured, or answer the questions yourself! (Students should answer the questions via this form; faculty should use this form. If you prefer to answer the questions over email, drop us a line at gradnews@uw.edu).

Should You Pursue An Academic Career?

“So what do you want to do when you graduate?” There is no better way that a well-meaning family aunt or uncle strikes fear into the heart of an unsuspecting grad student or postdoc over slices of turkey at the holidays. Although this question is well meant, it often makes you squirm and feel uncomfortable. Here are some tips to help you think about this quest:

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
About the answer to this – I will tell you what I tell my own students: “I have good news and bad news for you …” The good news is that you aren’t alone. On most days, I’m in the same boat with you, still trying to figure out what I want to be (n.b., please do not tell my department chair!). The bad news, however, is that if you don’t give this some serious thought, you run the risk of missing out on key opportunities in your immediate future.

NOT “Can I Become Faculty?”
Importantly, there is an absolutely wrong question to be worried about: “Can I become faculty?” I can’t emphasize enough that the question is not “can I do it?” The answer to this is an unequivocal “YES.” You already earned a Ph.D. and a postdoc at a world-class institution. If you are willing to put in the work to find mentors, network, learn the rules of the game and be disciplined about executing a plan, then you can do it.  

BUT “Should I Become Faculty?”
This is the far more interesting question to ask. Consider your time as an undergraduate and reflect upon your experience with faculty. Now think of life as a graduate student and  your interactions with professors. Finally, postdocs can do this exercise yet again. How have things changed? Faculty, perhaps more than most other professions, wear many different hats, usually at the same time. You have viewed the faculty experience up close, leading to an important conclusion: you may not really know how a professor spends all of their time. I highlight this simply to say that before you make one of the most important decisions of your life, you should learn more about the life of a professor.

Is Being Faculty A Good Fit?
I advocate that instead of worrying on the details of the future (Will I get hired? Will get I tenure? Will I get funding?), you spend time trying to learn if being faculty is a good fit for you. The happy news is that faculty love to talk about themselves, and if you do a bit of informational interviewing, you can learn a lot about how faculty you admire (and aspire to be like) spend their time. While you already know they work a lot, you should find out how they spend their time, what they like about their job, and importantly, what they don’t like. Try to do this with several faculty you admire; if possible try to do it with faculty at different types of institutions and with faculty of different rank.

Imagine YOUR Life As A Professor
This process works to create a clear picture of what YOUR life as a professor would look like. This is the easiest way to answer the question of whether you should do it or not. Being a professor is an awesome job, and I truly love it. But I recognize it is not for everyone. My last piece of advice is this – once you decide that you should become a professor, don’t waste any time! Put your full effort into making your dream become a reality – I already know you CAN do it, why not prove me right?

 

Acknowledgement: This guest blog post was graciously provided by Dr. Jim Pfaendtner, Associate Profession in Chemical Engineering, who was the keynote speaker at OPA sponsored professional development event Set Up for Academic Success: Getting Funding For Your Research Program in April 2017.