Rejection from Grad School: How Not to Suck at Grad School

How Not to Suck at Grad School: Rejection from Grad School

by Sierra Pecsi

You put the work in to fill out all the forms, met program requirements, ensured references were done on time, had a strong statement letter and still, you were rejected from graduate school and it sucks. This sense of inadequacy and uncertainty is understandable, but not uncommon. I have encountered plenty of students in my past work as a career counsellor that experienced those similar feelings after not getting into law, medicine, and grad school. Of course, I also have had my own share of rejection from psychology graduate programs. That being said, I hope to share what I think may be useful advice for anyone not sure what to do next or how to handle rejection. This applies to all graduate programs, research-based or not.

The feeling of rejection can make you question your abilities, career goals, and force you to obsess about your weaknesses. It will make you wonder why you applied to grad school or whether you should have done something different. Even so, your application may have been quite strong, but with so few spaces in many graduate programs it often comes down to the smallest details that determine whether you’ve made the first round or not. I understand this information won’t change the outcomes, but I hope it offers a new perspective on rejection.

You might be thinking why did I apply at all? This is an opportunity to reflect on whether grad school is right for you. Most students that I encountered applied because they thought it could help their career or because they did not know what else to do after graduation. This is part of a bigger issue, but don’t be afraid to ask yourself why do I want to go to grad school? Do I want to try again? What is my backup plan? What do I want to do instead? If these are some of your questions, I encourage you to reach out to your university’s career planning services for support; they often serve alumni as well. There is nothing wrong with uncertainty. When we are stuck it allows us to refocus our attention to explore what is really important to us and what we are interested in.

You might also be thinking, “what if I apply again next year and still don’t get in?” That is always a possibility. However, re-applying to the same program is proof you are seriously committed. It shows the selection committee that you take action and follow through on your goals, an important quality for completing a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. It might also help to know that groups of applicants change each year. Some years there may be a lot of strong applicants vying for the same supervisors, other years there may not be. You never know who else will apply. You do not have to be the best applicant of all time, but you just might be for that application year. Therefore, instead of thinking, “What if I don’t get in again?” think about what you can offer this time around or the advantages you have by applying again.

How to Ask for Feedback

              Once you’ve understood rejection, it is important to discuss how to handle rejection. How to cope with failure on a professional level can go a long way in your career. It is far too easy to send off a poorly thought-out email to any administrator, or faculty member, the moment the rejection email comes through. Inquiring about why you were not accepted or how many people were admitted can be viewed as inappropriate, not to mention they may not have the authority or information you crave. This is especially true for any potential supervisor you selected on your application. If you were in contact with a potential supervisor, they may be able to help, and decorum will go a long way in how much someone may be willing to assist you. Therefore, I strongly encourage applicants to wait several days before inquiring for information to gather your thoughts and avoid potential missteps. Below are some points to consider should you want to ask for feedback:

·       Contact the right person. Review the program’s contact policy regarding who to communicate all application questions to. Often there is a specific email or point of contact that is the gatekeeper of such requests. If you cannot find the information, then contact a general inbox to kindly request that your inquiry be forwarded to the appropriate person.

·       Be kind and respectful in your email communications

·       Include a reminder of who you are, what program you applied to, and when (some graduate programs having rolling admissions)

·       Be clear about the purpose of your inquiry at the beginning of the email

·       Tactfully state the feedback or information you would like and how this will help your goals

·       Keep it short and end on a positive note

·       Express gratitude for their time or support

·       Importantly, understand you may not receive the information or closure you deserve

Asking for feedback can be incredibly uncomfortable. Rather than thinking about what went wrong, I like to think of it as a chance to see what changes can be made to future applications- if you were going down that path. Responses are likely to be pleasant and helpful. Still, always keep in mind feedback is a privilege, not a right. When you view criticism or rejection as opportunities, you expose yourself to growth.

 What do to next

Feedback is just the first of many steps you can take. Below are additional suggestions if you are considering applying to grad school again or want to pursue research further. This is not an exhaustive list and will not guarantee acceptance. These are steps I have found helpful for myself and from experience speaking with other grad students, professionals, and supervisors.

·       Build your research skills or work in a professional setting. Remember experience does not equate to volunteering or free work. Ensure you will get something in return whether it be a reference, or your name on a poster abstract, publication, etc. 

·       Aim to work closely with potential supervisors either directly or part of a research lab. This will allow you to see if your supervisor is a good fit. They, too, need to know how you work in order to later support your admission to the program.

·       Produce research or written content (e.g., posters, abstracts, manuscripts) that will add to your resume, grad school application, or funding application.

·       Demonstrate strong writing ability by contributing to a blog post or editing manuscripts.

·       Aim to present a poster at a conference (especially local conferences). Many university programs or departments host conferences run by students, and literature reviews are often welcome.  

·       Grow your network. Meet or link with graduate students in programs of your choice to learn about their path to graduate school. I found grad students to be incredibly helpful in the process.  

·       Consider to applying for funding. This is a big job however, being apart of a research lab with access to grad students and a research supervisor can help you with the application process. Not only will this add value to your grad school application but will also teach you how to write succinctly.

 It is now time to think about your next moves. With more time to polish your skills and build your resume, you are on a stronger path of development whether it be in graduate school or applying to a job. You can take as much or as little from this but at least the application is already done.

Principal Investigator Leadership: How Not to Suck in Academia

by Steven R. Shaw, McGill University

@Shawpsych

“It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of ’em was one kinda sombitch or another,” he says. “Ain’t about you, Jayne. It’s about what they need.” — Malcolm Reyolds

A daily occurrence is hearing about some famous or important researcher engaging in some form of misconduct. It seems that all of our academic and scientific heroes have been credibly accused of engaging in harassment, neglect, data manipulation, white supremacy, temper tantrums, plagiarism, racism, being a bad boss, exploiting students, stealing authorship, punching down, fraud, or otherwise being a severely flawed person, scientist, and principal investigator. Consequences for such behavior are fairly rare. But even more common than misconduct is run-of-the-mill lousy supervision. Lack of clear standards, unknown expectations, lack of resources, unavailability, microaggressions, discouraging students, overall poor treatment of students, spiteful behavior, public excoriation of students, and general assholiness are rampant in academia. It is possible to be a strong and productive research leader and not be a jerk. Really. 

Diversity of Lab and Supervisory Cultures

Teaching, research approaches, and service are not all that different between professors. Sure, some are better than others. But the nature of the job and approaches are similar from one academic to the next. Everyone in a specific program or department generally has similar expectations and goes about their business in a manner consistent with the field of study and local culture. But principal investigator styles, philosophies, interpersonal engagement philosophies, and lab cultures vary wildly within programs.

There are no norms for what a lab looks like and how the PI leads. There are many successful PI styles. And more unsuccessful PI styles. 

Universal Nature of Complaints about PIs

One of my least favorite roles in the position of Graduate Program Director is the management of student complaints. I would say that about 98% of student complaints are legitimate and about 60% require action. Most striking is that every single one of our faculty members who is functioning as a PI has had a student complaint made against them. And many of these people are not only fine scholars, but run outstanding labs; are kind, supportive, and conscientious; and several have won national and international awards for their mentorship and research supervision. Our graduate school has created a website, rules, and requirements for research supervision in order to create a shared set of expectations. These are helpful efforts to create a culture of quality supervision, but complaints keep coming. Most complaints are related to emails not responded to, late letters of recommendation, belittling behavior, delays in giving feedback, lack of direction, research mismanagement, and authorship concerns. Being a PI is hard, we are often not well trained for the role, we tend to revisit the way that our PI supervised, and being the boss always opens folks up for complaints. 

Comments about My Lab

I have learned a lot about being a PI based on the complaints I have fielded. I have also observed other labs and interviewed PIs to borrow ideas and structures. I have started to have a lot of undergraduate volunteers and other folks wanting to work with me as grad students. The volunteers are telling their friends. The weird thing is to hear students say, “I have never been in a research lab like this.” I am assuming this is good because they are volunteers and keep showing up.

I am a long-distance from being an outstanding PI. I know some students have complained about me as a PI. Some have left my lab for other labs. I can be a slacker. Competing priorities get in the way. Recently, it has been difficult to concentrate to the degree required because...well, you know...all of this. But I have learned a lot in the process of improving. 

Background and Personal History

I am not really an academic. I worked for 16 years as a psychologist in clinical settings. I am generally poorly socialized in academic culture. In addition, my primary purpose in an academic setting is in a professional graduate program. My students have multiple job offers upon graduation. My field is one of the few with a shortage of academics. I also have minimal ambition. I just like to do the work. Mostly, I want to be useful and have no one bother me. If what I do is not appreciated here, then I will find somewhere else where it is appreciated.

I don’t much like being a boss. I have been a lead psychologist in a hospital setting. Personnel choices and letting people go are not much fun. Although I don’t like being a boss, I strongly value being a leader. If you are a good leader, then most of the unpleasant aspects of being a boss can be avoided. 

General Framework

Here are the eight big points for being out front of big issues and being a leader of a lab rather than a boss.

Modeling

I recall a parent referring his 11-year-old child to my practice with this exact quote, ”This little f**k is the most disrespectful POS I have ever seen. This sh*t is more than I can handle.” Not a terribly difficult diagnostic issue. Behave exactly as you want the students in your lab to behave. It is shocking how students in a lab take on the personality and habits of the PI. Modeling care, detail focus, professionalism, generosity, engagement, ethics, and kindness help make a quality lab environment.

Teaching by Doing

Research supervision is teaching. But teaching by doing. A big question from a student should be met with, “Let’s set up an experiment to answer that question. But first, let’s do some reading so we develop a quality question.” This is far better than simply answering the question. 

Contributions

Valuing all lab members from visiting professors to first-year undergraduates is important. It honestly freaks undergrads out when I ask their opinions. But the second time I ask, they are ready for it. Also remember the most reinforcing response is not to say, “good comment,” but to build and extend on their ideas. We codify this with a regular group lab segment called, “Stupid idea time.” SIT is when we have data that are hard to figure out and we brainstorm the wackiest possible explanations. This is fun, encourages out-of-the-box thinking, decreases fear of being wrong or silly, and often creates the germ of an idea that is genuinely useful. 

Serve Others

Do right by your students. Help them find more money, write letters of recommendation, introduce students to other professionals, look for opportunities, and listen to them. The last one is the big one. Listening is caring. Hear what they are saying to you and what they need. You are helping them. This isn’t some charity thing. When you help them, they will be motivated to be excellent lab contributors.

Organization

Communicate the big picture of where the lab is going. I refer to it as the “evil plot.” BTW—the evil plot is not to spend grant money and produce papers like widgets. It is the big theoretical or clinical goal—and often a bit grandiose. If everyone knows what the lab is trying to achieve then there is space for folks to be innovative in their efforts to advance the evil plot. If they only know how to do data entry, then there is not much room for innovation. Everyone knows the big picture and they will apply their efforts to find creative ways to advance the evil plot and have ownership in lab success. When you know where you are going it is far easier to organize the details.

Diversity

My preference is for demographically diverse labs. Yes, this is consistent with my worldview of increasing opportunity for people with less privilege, but it isn’t really about that. Students from different cultures, languages, ethnic group status, SES differences, and differing levels of experience and age all bring a different way of looking at the same problem. A diverse lab can be a creative lab.

Authorship

I am fairly generous with authorship. Not that authorship is not earned, but all labbies have the opportunity to earn authorship. There is an order of authorship on all projects that is agreed to before the first words are written. If there is a need to change the authorship because someone’s contributions are more or less than planned, then I will suggest a change in authorship, and the authorship team reaches a consensus on the new authorship order.

I also understand that my university’s incentive structure allows and values student authorship. And this formal incentive structure allows for more student authorship. 

Addressing Problems

I am fairly simple about this. Praise in public and fix problems privately. I make sure that the expectations were understood and that the individual had the resources to meet those expectations. Another thing, if we have a face-to-face or remote meeting when I am working to remediate shortcomings, then that is no big deal. If I send you an e-mail, then that is a big deal (I am starting a paper trail to consider more severe action). 

Conclusions

There are so many valid ways to be a leader as a PI. There still will likely be some complaints because not everyone’s leadership style meets the needs of all students. But if you think like a leader rather than a boss there is a higher likelihood of increased productivity, decreased turnover, better ideas, and an overall atmosphere of enjoyable and useful scholarly activity.

More Information

Here is an old blog post that describes how to create a lab culture.

 https://www.shawconnectionslab.com/how-not-to-suck-in-grad-

 school/2017/12/25/establishing-a-lab-culture-how-not-to-suck-in-graduate-school

Information on the basics of working in my lab and detailed expectations can be found here.

 https://www.shawconnectionslab.com/publications

Adventures in Sabbatical Joy: How Not to Suck at Grad School

Adventures in Sabbatical Joy: How Not to Suck at Grad School

Steven R. Shaw

Usually this blog is about tips, tricks, and unsolicited advice about grad school, post-doc fellowships, and early career research work. I’m going to deviate from this a wee bit. I am currently on a sabbatical leave. Some folks treat sabbatical as a restful vacation, visiting professorship, or a chance to travel about. COVID-19 isolation and travel restrictions have altered opportunities this year. I am not much on vacations, but this is a great chance to be mindful and have a career renewal. Such renewal is hard work.   

I spent half of my career as a clinician and chose to be an academic. I made big decisions and some sacrifices (as did my family) to become a professor. I have learned the job and how to function in this odd culture. But a renewal is needed. Work has been a slog. Everything is tedious and difficult. My strengths are not especially valued in modern academia. My work has not been good lately. It gets published, but is bland and lacks meaning. Teaching and supervision are ok, but uninspired. The bad stuff feels worse and the good stuff is not very rewarding. Change is needed.

Separating work renewal from the personal is also impossible. Personal and family long-term medical issues are stressful. Mental health issues are devastating to work and motivation. It is special to have a friend or two who is supportive; especially that close friend who reminds you that you are good, but inspires you to be far better. Personal life is life, but that is another issue; this post is only about how personal life affects professional life. The personal always is a factor in professional renewal. And the other way around, too.

Maybe I should go back to being a clinician. Maybe I could do something to suck a bit less at my job. I am studying new methods, trying innovative approaches to writing and thinking, collecting new data in creative ways, attending to novel concepts, partnering with new and super smart people, and working on my craft. I left clinical work to improve the training of professionals and expand knowledge for the mental health and development of children and adolescents. Being a middle-aged mediocre academic was not on the bucket list.

The sculptor can learn and master tools and techniques, but still never be great or feel good about the work. You can be workman-like, solid, accomplished, or outwardly successful; but not much more than mediocre. What makes an artist or scientist great? What are the paths that lead to making a difference and sucking less in a sustainable manner? There are many paths to making quality work that matters.

I have been reminded of some things that I already know, but was not living. It is time to ensure these goals are not aspirational, but a way of working and being. Time to renew commitments. There is also a small twist.

Be useful. Having a grant funded, publishing a paper, receiving plaudits from colleagues, promotions, winning awards, merit raises, and the like are terrible and silly goals. The goal of all activity and every product is to be useful. If you are useful, then you are successful. Nothing else is really important. Everything else will stem from setting the goal of being useful.

Make trouble. If you have privilege, power, stability, and control; but you do nothing to change the system then you are the problem. Even if you are benign, fair, and kind—you are still the problem. Upset the apple cart. This is you at your most useful.

Inspire others. It is not and never has been about you.

Play, have fun, and do everything with joy. Like a child; the best, highest quality, most useful, most trouble making, and most inspiring work that you can do starts with play. Wouldn’t it be cool if…..? What is the weirdest possible explanation for these data? Why are you doing it that way? What can you do that would change everything? What is a different way to think about this? Play is not just about mental play, but how you do it. Go barefoot, laugh, dance, explore, jump, play loud music, doodle, stop acting your age, do something new everyday for giggles, and keep the passion. Creative spirit, disciplined execution. Fun mind, fertile mind.

Small twist. My mistake was waiting for ideas, events, or people to bring joy to me. Of course, the secret is to bring joy to everything all the time. Drive the bus, do not pay the fare to be a passenger. No matter what.

I have always tried to adhere to these principles, but I lost my way trying to be what I thought a real and serious academic should be and trying to cope with personal issues. It is okay to be wrong as long as you recognize the problem and correct the course. This is the worst possible situation in which to lose your way.

Rebuttal

To those who say, but…this is serious business. You don’t even know. I say…..bahahahaha. You are talking to the wrong person. I know serious: pallbearer at 4 funerals of children under 5 (peds hem/onc work), cut by a student, a lot of PICU end-stage handholding, several gun incidents, and numerous student/patient suicide attempts and overdoses. A paper rejection, minutia of p-values, or not getting tenure are not serious.

To those who say, yes but…

…academia is a hellscape that will eat a joyful person whole

…you have privilege

…my university is so staid I must fit in

…no one will take me seriously

…I can’t afford to lose this job, there are no others

…I hate everything and everyone all the time

There is always an excuse. Don’t do the job of the haters for them. Go ahead, stay in the job you hate, doing work you hate, with people you hate. I’m sure everything will work out wonderfully for you. Why are you doing this to yourself if you feel that way? I was there. I thought about leaving. I am getting better. I know there are people who can suck the joy out of a hot fudge sundae, but this is a wonderful career for laughter and joy—it is time to embrace the opportunities.

Those of you who follow me on the twitter machine @Shawpsych might notice a little change. Of course I get tired, disappointed, lonely, discouraged, receive black dog visits, unmotivated, frustrated, and experience most human feelings of general suck in the year of the great suck. That doesn’t mean that I will stop viewing the work with joy and fun. I am going to try to do a better job of reflecting that. After all, this is about inspiring others in the silliest and most joyful way possible.

Acquiring Critical Skills Informally: How Not to Suck at Grad School

SR Shaw

Teaching, grants, and publications are necessary, but not sufficient for success as an early career scholar. Graduate students and postdocs acquire numerous skills that will support their careers as academics. Many of these skills are taught formally through coursework, seminars, or didactic instruction in research labs. Mentoring provides a semi-formal mechanism for learning skills, yet the specific skills learned are idiosyncratic to whatever the mentor knows and values. There are inevitable gaps in the skills required to be a successful early career researcher. Some of the critical skills that facilitate success, but are rarely taught formally or semi-formally are: proposing budgets, managing lab finances, equipment purchases and the bidding process, human resources issues, running conferences, time management, leadership, supporting diversity, progress monitoring, communicating ethics, handling complaints, giving feedback, personnel selection, mentoring, organizing teams, long-term planning, chairing meetings, and so on. It is not practical to add courses every time the need for a new critical skill is identified. Graduate students and post docs can be strategic and efficient in gaining critical skills informally.

Identifying basic skills and scientific knowledge required to conduct research and become an emerging expert in the field are challenging enough. Simply learning the core skills required to be able to make contributions to scientific knowledge is more than a full-time job. Learning specific skills is above and beyond what are already far too many hours in the library, classroom, and lab. An approach to developing the specific skills may be informal, but must be efficient, strategic, and mindful. A strong early career researcher cannot count on important skills being developed accidentally.

The major challenge is that activities promoting learning specific skills are often thankless activities. There may be few CV lines generated by pursuing critical skills. Quite often a principal investigator, mentor, or supervisor will discourage these activities as detracting from the basic scientific enterprise. Most of the best approaches to learning critical skills involve the dreaded service activities. Service is more than a thankless set of activities to be avoided, but a section of the CV that many TT search committees consider, but rarely see much of in post-doc or new grads. If you curate your service activities carefully, then they are a mechanism for developing critical skills.

Given the challenges, there are two processes to be followed for gaining of critical skills: the two-fer and the focus.

The two-fer is a basic exercise in efficiency. You want to be involved in non-core activities that serve at least two purposes, but require the work of one task. Never volunteer for a task unless the work is reasonable and you will receive at least two positive outcomes. One of those outcomes must be a generalizable critical skill that you may not be able to develop elsewhere. Here are some examples:

·       When invited to review a manuscript for a journal, it is often a low priority and should often be declined. Yet, if you want to eventually serve on the editorial board, learn the ins and outs of journal editorship, or wish better understand journal decision making processes; then take on the task, do quality work, and leave a note for the editor that you wish to learn more about the journal.

·       Be your lab manager. Tedious work, but many critical skills are developed in this position. In fact, when on a university search committee for candidates with many pubs, I carefully look to see if they are a lab leader or simply a frequent hanger-on co-author on lab work.

·       Service as a member of a professional association is fine. Better is service as secretary or treasurer. Then you can learn organizational efficiency, basic bookkeeping, and so on.

·       Initiate. Launch a journal club, start a student association, begin a multiple literature review project, or start a small conference.

·       Propose a special issue of a scholarly journal. This is a classic case of efficiency. Propose a special issue of a journal, which most editors value. Then the outcomes are: you are an author of the intro paper, you are the author of a substantive paper, you invite leaders in the field and they start to know you, you get a CV line for being a guest editor, folks who appreciate the invitation now owe you a favor, you are perceived by the field as a leader in the area, papers in special issues are read and cited more than single publications, and in some areas a special issue can lead to an edited book. Super efficient and a great way to learn leadership, organizational, management, and editorial skills.

The focus involves what to look for so that you can benefit, develop, and practice specific skills from your work.

·       Know exactly which critical skills you wish to develop. The more specific, the better.

·       Take the time to learn formal rules and policies of any organization. University accounting procedures, Robert’s Rules of Order, organizational bylaws, and so on. The boring stuff. If you are going to play the game, you must know the rules. After you learn the formal rules, then learn the informal rules, traditions, and cultures that affect any system.

·       Attend to positive role models (and anti-role models). You can learn a lot by observing how others perform critical skills (or how they do things the wrong way).

·       Understand the role of context and culture. Be sensitive to the dynamics of every group or organization. Empathy and advocacy are valuable skills.

Learning the critical skills that are extracurricular and informal is possible. The most efficient mechanism to learn these skills is through service activities. However, knowing exactly which skills that you need requires professional maturity to evaluate what you know, what you do not know, and what you need to know for your career goals. After that evaluation, then use of the two-fer and focus models will make informal instruction in the critical skills as efficient as possible.

Feel free to comment on this website or via email at steven.shaw@mcgill,ca

Coping with Rejection: How Not to Suck at Grad School

Coping with Rejection: How Not to Suck at Grad School

SR Shaw

Rejection happens to every academic. Most academics have many many times more rejected manuscripts and unfunded grants than successes. Nearly every academic knows that rejection is part of the job, a necessary step to improving work, and is simply part of the process of producing scholarly work for wide consumption. Rejection is not failure, but a necessary step toward success. Knowing this information does not help. Rejection stings. Experienced academics will say, “It is part of the job. Get over it.” This is as useful as the classic stupid advice such as, “Calm down” and “Have you tried not being depressed?” Multiple rejections tend to cumulate and cause deep professional and psychological distress. There are many coping strategies that people use to address rejection. You will find a coping mechanism that works for you. Here is how I think about rejection:

As an aside, rejection is part of real life. A potential romantic partner is not sufficiently interested. Your attempt to cook chicken paprikash results in family scorn and disgust. You fail a driving test. A financial investment does not work out as planned. We rarely get everything we want. But some rejection cuts even deeper. Imagine being a poet, actor, or artist where rejection of your work reflects on your ability to tap into deep elements of your soul. Academic rejection is also personal as it reflects on our ability, skill, and suitability to a career where most of us can easily be replaced in a pitiless system of limited contracts, constricted budgets, and a competitive culture that arises from these realities. I think it is a good idea to normalize rejections in academic work. But no matter what anyone says, rejection sucks.    

Rejected papers and unfunded projects are ego blows and reinforce our anxiety-driven imposter syndrome. Some reviews are unnecessarily personal. Manuscript reviews often make the rejection about the authors. Those hurt the vulnerable and can crush the ego. I am not sure why mean-spirited comments about how “the author could benefit by having a native English speaker edit the paper prior to submission” or how “the author must be an undergraduate student” help improve a paper. When there are actual or implied personal references, I seek consultation with an experienced colleague to ensure I am perceiving the review accurately. I often bring a less-than-helpful personal reviews to the attention of the editor. Yes, I may pass editorial judgment on the reviewer, but reviewers needs to be accountable for their work and punching down on the vulnerable is not cool. A bit pedantic, but it helps to stand up for yourself and contribute to the productive tone of peer reviews in the future. More useful, mine for nuggets of useful information along the with the dreck of a personal comments.

Other reviews and decisions appear to be arbitrary. Or the reviews appear to be careless and haphazard, which is not unusual for reviews that are usually volunteer work. You can challenge a review or appeal a decision. But seriously, don’t do that. Move on to another journal. Most appeals reek of late-night texts to your ex. They are just not that into you, you don’t want to publish where the people cannot appreciate your work, and you can do better. Remember that are thousands of journals out there. Even worse, when a review is spot-on and perfectly identifies errors. These accurate negative reviews might hurt worst of all.

The ability to cope with inevitable rejections may be one of the best predictors of success in academia. To continue to work and produce at a high rate despite a reinforcement schedule that is delayed in the best of times and apparently random and lean in the worst of times requires mindful consideration of what rejection means and how your work can benefit from rejection.

Basic Strategies

It is the work, dummy. I have a single-minded focus on improving. If the editorial decision is accept, then I hope the reviews improve the product. If the editorial decision is reject, then I hope the reviews improve the product. I am not better or worse at my job due to rejection. There is always another project. And there is a home for every paper. You were not rejected, your manuscript was denied publication in a journal that likely rejects more than 50% of submissions. Repeat after me: it is not me, it is the work. Make the work better. After rejection, learn, get better, find a new home for your project, get help from a colleague or mentor, improve it, and persist. Even a paper that completely crashes and burns with some fatal flaw can be salvaged for parts for the next project: several paragraphs from the intro, descriptions of some methods, formatting of results, figure designs, and the like can be used to make the next project better.  

Control what you can. Make your project the best possible manuscript. Have others review or use a pre-print service to get feedback. Match your work to a journal. Format it correctly to the idiosyncratic issues of the journal. I know what people say about that, “I don’t have time for that.” My response is, “Do you have time for a rejection?” Make the manuscript your best effort. Submitting a poorly edited half-assed effort because you expect the reviewers to write your paper for your is a poor strategy. Even when you do your very best work, there is still a chance of rejection.   

Rejection is a luxury. Weirdly, I am usually grateful that a random reviewer volunteers their time and expertise to keep me from embarrassing myself by publishing substandard work. Yeah, it’s a love-hate thing. Thanks for teaching me some new things and thanks for finding the flaws, but you suck, Reviewer #2. A bit absurd, but it works for me.

Think strategically. Many negative reviews are because there was little research put into the nature of the journal or funding agency. Carefully review and read papers that have been published under the editorship of the current editor. Your paper needs to fit perfectly with the type and style of topic and methods. If the thought is, “I want to publish in Top of the Mountain Journal X, so I will argue my paper that does not quite fit is different and special…” Then you are going to have a bad time. Your paper will be rejected. Moreover, a poor fit between paper and journal almost ensures that the reviews will not be productive, or you will receive the merciful desk reject. If you think that your work is so pure, brilliant, and perfect that writing in a tone or using a method consistent with the journal’s style and mission is below you, then you are going to have a bad time. Editors not only evaluate quality of research and manuscripts, but also curate a collection of scholarship in a volume. Time invested in finding the perfect journal or funding source to match your work strategically is time well spent.

Have multiple projects rolling into the pipeline. I like to have at least two projects under review at any one time. I am not an especially prolific author of manuscripts, probably below average for a top research university. Nor am I especially ambitious with a need to push ideas or win awards. However, I want to have multiple projects under review to protect my ego. When an inevitable rejection arrives, I have the hope that the next paper will receive a better fate. Having only one project under review is quite stressful. This is a highly motivating state for me to get something new into the review pipeline. Placing too much personal resource into a single paper that is “your baby” or “put your heart and soul” into a manuscript is a poor use of emotional resources. You produced a thing. Hopefully, you will produce more and increasingly better things.    

Share the load. Share the load and the emotional blows of early rejections with others. Co-authoring papers has many advantages. An underrated advantage is shared responsibility and commiseration when experiencing rejections. Being a member of an academic writing group that honestly shares ups and downs is also a good resource.  

Being ground down. No single rejection bothers me anymore. A recent situation was that five consecutive projects were rejected. The cumulative effect of the rejections got me down. I was wondering if I was experiencing some cognitive decline or if I were somehow blackballed from publishing. I was afraid to submit another paper. No less than 8 people reviewed the next article before I clicked the submit button. Accepted with minor revisions and all was right with the world.     

Stages

When that rejection comes, here are the stages I go through:

1)     Profanity. Then I put it away and go on with my day.

2)     I schedule an hour in my calendar within the week to review the comments carefully.

3)     I highlight the reviewers’ points, areas, and topics to be revised. Also note when the reviewers got something wrong because that usually means I was not clear enough.

4)     Develop a submission strategy to the same journal or a new journal.

5)     Same journal means a point-by-point addressing of the reviewers’ concerns. New journal means documentation is not needed. But note that even in a new journal, the same reviewer might be assigned due to subject area expertise—and they want to see their ideas incorporated into a new draft.  

6)     In my writing queue, I finish my current project first before undertaking major revisions of a rejected paper (FYI—in my mind, Revise and Resubmit decisions are the same as rejections—a lot of work to be done).

7)     Make revisions (or reanalyze data, rerun the experiment, or whatever is required) with the new journal or improving the fit with rejecting journal always in mind.

8)     Rework cover letter because the last cover letter didn’t work.  

9)     Submit. Keep those balls in the air and juggle as fast as you can.

10) Thank your co-authors. Toast your submission with the adult beverage of your choice. Celebrating submissions is far healthier than celebrating acceptances.

Conclusion

Rejections suck. No way around it. When I worked at a hospital and my kids were ask what their dad does, they would say, “He works at a hospital and helps kids.” When I moved to academia and they were asked the same question, they would say, “He stares at his computer all day and swears a lot.” Laugh at your rejections. Learn from your rejections. Always have a new project underway, something that will give you hope no matter how many rejections come your way for the previous project.

Steven R. Shaw is associate professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, QC, Canada.

Honest Productivity Hacks: How Not to Suck at Grad School

For a host of reasons both personal and professional (but mostly sloth), I have been away from writing this nominally monthly blog. I am feeling recharged and as if I have something to say again. Therefore, this marks the return of “how not to suck at grad school.” The goal is to create a new blog post every month. I am also giving some thought to putting together a series of short books based on this blog: how not to suck at grad school, how not to suck as a postdoc, how not to suck as a new professor, and how not to suck as a research supervisor. There may be a need for short, easy to read, and inexpensive books on these topics. Let me know what you think. I am also open to suggestions and ideas for putting such project together.

Honest Productivity Hacks: How Not to Suck in Grad School

Steven R. Shaw

Every day there is a growing number of articles, blog posts, websites, and aphorisms that promote productivity hacks. Academics, like all business people, worship at the altar of productivity. Maximizing productivity is the goal and ultimate achievement for everyone. But then, of course, we whine about work-life balance being out of whack. Hacks refer to magic shortcuts or workarounds from the basic rules, programs, constraints, and demands that limit functioning. Therefore, academics search for that one golden tip or miracle trick that will minimize long hours and maximize productivity. Such a thing does not exist. Probably the most effective productivity hack I can give is to stop reading articles about productivity hacks and use that time to get something accomplished.

There is no such thing as a hack or a shortcut. There is no replacement for time on task. However, there are always ways to become more efficient and effective with the time that we have for work. Everyone has a different style of work, life demands, professional expectations, and career ambitions that make a one-size-fits-all approach to work productivity impossible to achieve. Rather than productivity hacks, I prefer to call these efficiency increasing tactics.

Foundation

Efficiency increasing tactics are methods of fine-tuning along the fringes of a strong foundation of productivity. Typically, the foundation consists of seven stages. 1) goals: articulation of the end state or result of productivity efforts; 2) priorities: because you can only do one thing at a time, goals must be sorted into a sequence from immediate to long-term; 3) scheduling: a to-do list of goals and priorities without a time scheduled and dedicating to complete the tasks is nothing more than a wish list; 4) habit: professionals do not run on inspiration, they run on habit and discipline. Productivity requires consistent effort whether the mood is there or not; 5) execution: during the time required to work on goals there must be effort, focus, and single-minded energy directed to the task; 6) follow-up: when the task or work is complete for the day, the final step is to develop a new plan for what comes next; and 7) revisions: no set of goals, priorities, and scheduling will be perfect. Unexpected demands, bad days, and external pressures may require revising the stages of the foundation of productivity. Understanding that revising the plan is part of the plan helps to reduce stress, self-flagellation, and overall feelings of failure when events interfere with the original foundation.

Four Efficiency Increasing Tactics

Forget hacks. Here are four tactics for increasing efficiency within your foundation.

Investment. All goals require significant behind-the-scenes work to support them. Investment of time and energy is something that is always ignored, underestimated, or not considered in the time budget for any project. Investments include things such as reading literature; researching appropriate journal and grant funding outlets; receiving input from peers; manuscript preparation; troubleshooting errors in data, coding, and analysis; maintaining a laboratory or idea notebook; monitoring the most recent research; and revising multiple drafts of product. All projects require an investment of time and energy that is often thankless and necessary. Usually, the more experienced one becomes the less time-intensive the investment is. Failure to plan for this investment is why time allotted for a project is nearly always underestimated. Develop a schedule that accounts for the investment of time and you are less likely to be frustrated, timelines for achieving goals will be more accurate, and the quality of work will be better.

Focus. There may be time scheduled, but monkey mind frequently gets in the way. The focus bounces from one task to another. The basics are to make sure that you have eaten, bladder is comfortably empty, your door is closed, and you are at an ergonomically effective workspace. Remember your priorities and work on the current and most urgent project with full focus. For me, usually this is enough to stay on task. During challenging times, I switch to the Pomodoro method that requires 25 minutes of intense time on task followed by a five-minute break. If I am really struggling with monkey mind, then I take a five-minute break for simple breathing meditation that helps to manage intrusive thoughts. You can only do one thing at a time, so focus and do it well and efficiently. Only when one thing is finished, can you move on to the next thing. Thinking about the large number of projects ahead is the enemy.

Downtime. Everyone requires downtime during the day. Forcing yourself to work every second of the day is not realistic. During the day, downtime is used to play Candy crush, mindlessly scroll through Twitter or Facebook, stare into the void, or otherwise waste time. Nearly everyone needs mini-breaks. My advice is to make sure that your downtime is full and useful downtime. Semi-working or multitasking between productivity and downtime means that you are not using your downtime effectively or achieving productivity effectively. The worst of both worlds. Examples of a full downtime include a 20-minute nap, in-office yoga session, going for a walk, or another form of full relaxation and removal from activities. Most of us need downtime for mini-rest and recovery period. Make sure that you use your downtime well.

Time scraps. We all have 10 minutes or so here or there, multiple times in the course of the day. Waiting for meetings to begin, waiting for a late colleague, 30 minutes between appointments, time saved by eating lunch at your desk, and many other time scraps. Most of us waste these times and treat them as inefficient downtime. Not coincidentally, most emails and administrative tasks require less than two minutes for full completion. Before the day begins, collect mini-tasks and have them at the ready. Then use your time scraps for emails, filling forms, some grading, signatures, and administrative tasks. Time scraps for substantive and thoughtful work is possible, but requires the ability to shift focus on a dime. Most of us cannot do that with any effectiveness.

These four tactics for increasing efficiency are not hacks. There is no magic or new way of thinking. These are simply easy approaches that can make the core process of productivity work a little bit better.

Conclusion

Productivity hacks are usually ways of deluding ourselves into thinking that somehow we can beat the system to improve our work life balance. Most often this effort is a fool’s errand and increases imbalance of work and life. The best way to have a quality life and a strong career is to have developed a strong foundation for productivity and to develop a set of tactics to fine-tune your efficiency. Not hacks, smart habits.

Mental health and senior faculty: How not to suck in grad school (a post for your future)

Disclaimer 

As always, this is a personal blog. If you want research on the matter, this is not the place. This is my place to rant and try to be helpful. Welcome. 

Mental health and senior faculty: How not to suck in grad school (a post for your future) 

SRShaw 

Twitter is lousy with comments about how academia is bad for mental health. It seems to be. Here is my perspective, a white male who has had some career success, good luck in life, and is in mid-career; but also has experienced a host of stressors and the onset of mental health issues. The nature of the stressors is serious, but personal. Not a secret, but I will keep these things to myself for purposes of this post. I hope that it is helpful for people to read that no matter how events might appear on the outside, mental health issues can happen to anyone. 

Academia as a Cause of MH Issues

I am not sure that academia causes MH problems. I have worked in far more stressful, pathogenic, and competitive environments. Remember that in my last jobs I had to make profit or my unit (with 21 employees) would be eliminated, I was threatened with a gun, cut with a knife, conducted CPR twice, attended 32 child and adolescent funerals, bitten twice, and a host of other challenging stuff I do not want to discuss. I am reasonably well tempered to stress. A paper rejection, senior colleagues with world-class toxic insecurity issues, and general unfairness and pettiness do not phase me much. I have a minor fear of beating colleagues, who abuse or harass students and junior colleagues, to a life-altering pulp, but I am a gentle soul—so that feeling passes quickly. But I get it, the sometimes arbitrary and often actively unfair nature of the work can be dispiriting, maddening, and is a stressor.       

Self selection in academia tends to collect a population of people who are conscientious, driven, and often feed on heavy workloads and stress. These traits have much overlap with anxious traits. We probably start out at higher risk for MH problems. To survive graduate school and pursue a tenure-track position or persist in adjunct positions requires a set of characteristics and skills that are far different than most non-academics require and may place us at risk for mental health issues. 

Deviation from norm. Academics are unusually smart folks (if you persist in not believing this, then you are clearly sheltered, only hang out with other high intelligence people, and are ignoring over 100 years of solid research). Typically, academics differ from the mean in intelligence, ambition, focus, and many other traits. And academia seems to be one of a handful of endeavors where a lack of social skills does not disqualify a person from achieving at the highest levels. I suspect that the more a person deviates from the mean on any trait, the higher stressors they are required to address (this is why changing and broadening norms and means in academia are valuable goals).  

High competition environments that are zero sum tend to lead to isolation, feelings of failure, and distrust of others. Adding to the isolation is the cloistered aspect of academia that creates a feeling that no one understands the rarified work and culture of the profession. The only people who understand are those who are potential competitors. Not much support.      

Senior Academic Issues 

Bad news. Many of you think that grad student or early career mental health concerns will get better when you graduate, when you get married or have life stability, when you gain a tenure track job, when you save money, when you get tenure, when you win a grant, when you make full professor. Nope. Hate to spoil your life. Mental health problems get worse. Even those of you without mental health issues still can develop problems even if all seems good from the outside. 

Worse coping. I always thought that my coping skills would improve as I become older and wiser. Not so much. For me, stressors hit harder emotionally and require more energy to cope. Regulating emotions is no longer an effortless activity, it takes a lot more of energy and work as I age.  

Accumulation of issues. Stressors do not come and go, they accumulate. The older you get, the more challenging the barnacles of life become. Stressors stick, they do not slide off, no matter how skilled you may be at coping. Every stressor leaves a heavier and deeper mark as I get older. 

Defending the old. The saying that “the first half of the life of an academic is building and creating ideas and the second half is defending those ideas against inevitable change” has some truth. Even if the destructive nature of this thinking is apparent, problems remain. Staying relevant as new ideas surpass and replace the ideas that one has learned, mastered, and has had success with is difficult and consuming. As mental energy is not what it was, the task of continuously growing becomes more challenging. 

You will be passed. Every scholar will find that their ideas are surpassed or disproved. That is what should happen. The ideas and mistakes are the foundation on which the next generation builds. It is still a blow to ego when the field has moved on and you are still alive and working. Training and socializing the next generation of scholars and thinkers is the only real way to have long term influence. So support and help those people. Simply leaving as solid a collection of errors and rubble for others to build upon needs to be good enough. 

Loss. This is the worst. At some point, you realize that you are attending more funerals than marriages and baptisms. As a side note, this is why academics should attend their students’ graduation ceremonies—a rare positive major event. There is a loss of hair, energy, mental clarity, fitness, and health is no longer taken for granted. People lose their parents, spouses, and friends drift away. It happens to everyone. And the coping with inevitable stressors of life becomes more challenging. Loss accumulates. And each one is more difficult than the last.  

None of this is terrible. I am among the fortunate who have had these things arise later in life. Many, if not most people, are forced to face these issues much earlier.   

Some Ideas for Preventing or Addressing the Issues 

Continuously build social supports. From the age of 28 to 48, I made no new friends. I never thought about it. I met many people I liked very much, but cannot call them good friends. I think men tend to do this. There is work and there is family. Not much energy for anything else. The unfortunate saying that “friends come and go, but enemies accumulate” is quite true for me. These social supports are needed. I have met a truly special person in the last few years that I can safely call my best friend. I have been open to developing other close friendships. I appreciate how important these people are. I wish I had invested more energy into keeping old friends close and being open to new friends when I was younger. It makes a difference. I am lucky to have learned this later, rather than never. 

Get help sooner rather than later. Being very sad or extremely anxious happens to most people occasionally. Despite the discomfort, most often these issues will pass or are effectively coped with. When these issues affect family life, work life, or any other aspect of functioning; then immediately seek support. Perhaps the supports are informal at first. But don’t wait. Do not believe that you have always handled stress well and the present feelings are no different. Avoid common maladaptive coping skills—working more hours, drugs/alcohol, risky behaviours, and so on. When functioning is affected seek formal support, if needed, rather than assuming this too will pass. 

Keep pursuing the new. Becoming stagnant is becoming old, both physically and mentally. I am fortunate to have returned to judo training and regular gym work over the last 5 years. I am tackling a brand-new research program, I have come to learn the promise of ideas that I once dismissed, and trying to keep thoughts fresh and continuously improve. This is hard work. But it is renewing work and I value it.   

Conclusions 

This is not a pity situation. I remain among the luckiest of people. Few people have the quality of supports, privilege, and stability that I possess. The point is that there is no finish line. There is no time at which all your problems will disappear, and everything will be perfect. Every stage, even the most stable and successful bring challenges. And those issues are inevitable. Graduate students and early career researchers can continue to build supports and relationships that will prepare them for hard times now and in the future. Mental health issues for senior academics are common and only slightly different than the issues affecting more junior colleagues. Managing these issues well is a wonderful opportunity to grow and re-invent oneself and avoid the stagnant life that will certainly lead to a permanent decline. This is an opportunity and a challenge.  

Making Sense of the Avalanche of Advice Given to Students, Postdocs, and ECRs: How Not to Suck in Grad School

Making Sense of the Avalanche of Advice Given to Students, Postdocs, and ECRs: How Not to Suck in Grad School

SR Shaw

Advice is everywhere for academics. The paths, roles, and functions for new academics are so inscrutable that there is an entire library of books, academic Twitter, and hundreds of blog posts with advice on how to make the path knowable. For example, an article entitled, “23 books that fix 99% of PhD problems” (http://www.nextscientist.com/books-phd-problems/) is typical. There is the risk that little progress will be made on the research that needs to be accomplished because so much time and energy are spent reading books, developing increasingly efficient calendars and to do lists, and learning the latest planning and organizing software. The irony is not lost on me in that this blog post is yet another piece of advice on the topic of advice. A little meta-advice might be helpful for organizing the volumes of information that are available.

Advice has traditionally been the purview of old men who are too tired and decrepit to serve as a bad example. But given the wildly variable criteria for success as a graduate student, postdoc, or early career researcher; advice giving is a cottage industry that is mostly populated by well-meaning and talented professors. To some degree, the widely varied advice is a sure sign that no one knows what they are doing. Contrary to the common belief, academics are often kind and helpful to peers and students. Because we are all in this together, sharing information is most often a kind act.

Be Skeptical

There are still a few families of advice that are not particularly helpful. One is the meaningless advice that includes words such as should, must, ought, needs to, and similar judgment words. This is not honest advice. This is someone’s opinion of the way the world should be if they oversaw everything. This form of advice is rarely useful. Old man status quo advice is also not useful. This is the type of advice that reports on the way things used to be and assumes that there is a universal and one-track approach to success. This form of advice ignores the heterogeneous paths to success, diversity, changes in culture, and consideration that there might be a better way. A related type of useless advice is “this is what I do, so unless you want to fail, you should do it, too.” When advice glorifies the advisor without providing ideas that can be implemented, and there may be a different agenda than being helpful.

Beware of Cynicism

The response to much academic advice is cynicism. I recently heard an experienced academic give the advice that he has no advice to give because the job market is so different than it was 20 years ago. This was lauded as excellent and accurate advice. This is not useful advice, but it is accurate. That this comment was given such plaudits is a good measure of the degree of cynicism concerning academic advice.

Much advice from senior academics is dismissed as survivorship bias. This is certainly an issue if the assumption is that the advice is essential to discriminate successful from unsuccessful people. I doubt there is any advice that can withstand scrutiny of a serious program evaluation. This claim takes the validity and importance of advice a little too seriously.

Another popular cynical line of thought is that luck plays such a large role in academic success that any advice on behaviour is not useful. This way of thinking is not only cynical, but absurd. Just about everything in life is a stochastic process. It is true that luck plays a large role in the job I have, whether grants are funded, or papers accepted. But luck also played a role in my parents meeting, surviving an auto accident when I was two years old, being assigned an inspirational teacher in grade 6, not getting meningitis during a local outbreak, and countless events that did or did not happen and which I had no control over. Academia, like life, is a noisy system. I believe that any information that can change the probability, even a little bit, can be helpful.

Criticizing the source of information is also cynical and not particularly useful. If advice comes from people of a different age, discipline, gender, ethnic group, linguistic group, or sexual orientation; information can still prove helpful. The assumption of such criticisms is that there is that advice is necessarily universal. Only the truly arrogant and addled make the case that their advice is perfect, universal, and should be implemented by everyone. As in nearly all cases when information is intended to change behaviours to result in a better outcome, context is everything. There is likely a slightly higher probability that advice will be effective if it comes from individuals with similar life experiences and applied in similar contexts, yet valuable information can come from any source.

Organization

Communicating specific information to be implemented in a public platform is always difficult. Broad information is universally appealing, but not useful. Specific information may be useful, but has appealed to only a limited number of users. Information such as “be kind” is appealing to a large number of people, but is so vague as to be functionally useless. Specific information such as “the time spent disinfecting materials when working with preschoolers is a sound investment” is helpful, but only applies to a few people. Knowing exactly what you are looking for helps to locate narrow and useful advice that may not receive a lot of retweets and likes, but is extraordinarily useful. Broad information is like other aphorisms: may be true and are nice inspiration, but not practical advice to change your behavior.

Purpose

The true value of advice found in books, blogs, and on the Internet is what purpose that you have for these nuggets of potential wisdom. Knowing your purpose is a critical component of accepting and implementing any advice or wisdom. What you hope to gain from the advice? Where are your systemic limitations? What skills do you already possess? What goals would you like to achieve with new advice? What are the values that you wish to communicate and implement following advice? Unless you know where you want to go, there can be no filter to determine which advice is valuable and which is useless.

Change. If you are trying to change from an unsuccessful process or behaviour, then searching about the Internet and books for life-changing bits of information is inefficient and barely more useful than random. If you have inefficient work habits or ideas and wish to change, the most efficient and best approach is to have a consultant, mentor, instructor, coach, or therapist listen carefully to your needs, resources and previous efforts to address the issue, the needs of your context and environment; and then develop a detailed strategy with you. That strategy can then be modified, implemented, evaluated, adjusted, re-implemented, and reevaluated with guidance.  

Confirmation. Many times, we read bits of advice from experienced scholars to confirm that what were already doing is the right thing. Given the diversity of work habits, procedures, and processes; it is easy to be insecure about such things. If your approaches and processes result in efficient and quality outcomes, then do not worry about it. Second-guessing is not an efficient way to go through your career. There are no magic bullets for academic work. You are doing fine. If there is a need to change, then see the above paragraph.

Exploring ideas. The best reason to seek out advice books is to browse. Academic advice is very much like aphorisms for life, easy to read, witty, insightful, but rarely useful. Browse advice because it is fun and possible to find minor bits of information and tweaking of your current process. I find this to be the most useful approach to advice books, blogs, and tweets.

Conclusions

Most advice is probably useful for someone in some conditions. The utility of the advice tends to depend on context. And no one knows your context better than you. Because something does not work for you, does not mean the advice is bad. Most typically, the most effective advice requires an educated consumer who knows the purpose of the advice they are seeking and finds advice givers who tend to understand your values and context. Seeking professional advice on Twitter, blogs, or other Internet sites is a bit of a scavenger hunt. The best advice is to search for a mentor who can assist you in creating custom made process wisdom rather than off-the-rack advice from the Internet.

Is Academia Evil? How Not to Suck in Graduate School

Disclaimer

As always, these are simply my views now. I had a career outside of academia for 16 years (professional and academia adjacent) and then entered the academia at age 42 with trepidation and a >40% pay cut. My wife said, “It’s okay if you don’t get tenure. Because then we can go back to making real money again.” My business partner and great friend yelled at me for over an hour about how I was abandoning children who need me, so I can write papers for other people who write papers simply to grow my ego (yep, that hurt). But I like academia. After 13 years in academia, I have been assimilated. After much resistance, I acknowledge that I am an academic. With this identity, it is important to consider whether I have gone over to the dark side and embraced a profession that is evil (or at least fundamentally flawed).

Problems

On Twitter, most of my timeline consists of folks whose experience in grad school and academia has ranged from suboptimal to traumatic. Racism, misogyny, ableism, and classism seem to be the norm. Exploitation, harassment, and assault are common. Unfair, arbitrary, capricious, and unethical decision making are the rule. Mentoring ranges from neglectful to indentured servitude to worse. Funding is low, poor, and unevenly distributed. The currency of academic success is a publication model more conducive to publisher profit than science curation. There are also the endlessly humourless tone enforcers, grammar pendants, and formatting fops. Hard and high-quality work receives lean intermittent and delayed reinforcement that can crush motivation to continue. And so many people are cripplingly insecure, have mental health issues, or are just plain mean and horrible that developing and maintaining relationships are challenging. There is also the fun realization that everything I spent many hard years learning in graduate school is now wrong, so starting over is the norm. Sounds kinda like an evil system to enter willingly.    

Academia has Value

My view is that academia is overrepresented in the vanguard of advances in civilization for science, art, philosophy, engineering, drama, medicine, economics, and many other fields. To step out and away from the known to discover new ideas necessarily means that being wrong, facing ridicule, aggressively breaking from the old, repeated failure, and offending the status quo go with the territory. Moreover, communicating and implementing novel and challenging ideas with stakeholders is extraordinarily difficult and likely to result in rejection, accidental misunderstanding, and willful misconstruing of the new ideas. When academia is at its best, these features can grind normal humans down intellectually, physically, and emotionally.

There are systemic protections to protect academics: sabbaticals, tenure, and peer supports. All these protections are under external assault from society and policy makers who are either invested in continuing the status quo of society, do not see the long-term value of advancing society, or believe that there are better mechanisms for advancing a dynamic society than universities (i.e., private sector). These external pressures have resulted in increased teaching loads, cutting sabbatical leaves, reducing government funding for arts and science, reducing tenure track positions in favour of sessional and adjunct positions, and instilling a capitalist model of competition over cooperation. Rather than pulling together as professionals, we are fracturing as academic communities under these external pressures and the subsequent erosion of protections. Obtaining and maintaining power, excluding outsiders, gaming the system, cutting corners, financial gain, reputation management, and quantifiable metrics of evaluation have replaced communities of discovery in academia.  

Other professions and work environments are also difficult, face challenges, and advance civilization. The primary differences are that reinforcements in other professions are shorter term, more clearly defined, and competition is often more explicit. Evaluations, and supervision are equally, if not more, abusive and of lower quality than academia. Peers are often competitors more so than partners. The primary difference is that working for a corporation usually involves more short-term accountability and structure. There is nothing inherently less free or less scientific about working in the private or non-academic government sectors when compared to academia. Opportunities to make discoveries, advancements, and be creative are just as available in non-academic jobs as in academia. The major advantage is that there are more non-academic employment opportunities than tenure-track academic positions.

Academia is a system that is inherently challenging to individual ego. The structural, emotional, and reward system supports are eroding. Graduate students and academics are now to the point that one must wonder if the entire enterprise is hopelessly spoiled or possibly evil. Promoting approaches to adding supports and supporting academic communities is one approach to making academia sustainable as a system and for its members.

Gross Rules

Academia is too heterogeneous as a system and the goals of individuals and higher education institutions vary, but there are four themes of activities to assist in making the profession personally and systemically sustainable.

Identify system valued units and do a lot of them. System valued units are the activities and products that each system most values. Often SVUs are grants, publications, supervising graduating students, publishing books, awards, high teaching evaluations, and such. Identifying the appropriate SVUs for each system are critical. Everyone works hard and accomplishes a lot, but many fail because their efforts are placed in activities that are not high level SVUs in their current environment. And do a lot. Submitting a single paper for publication, a job application, or a grant proposal is incredibly stressful due to the low probability and near randomness of success for each unit. Do a lot and the odds will eventually rise to generally your level of merit.

Be generous, but reserve time. Give heavily to your system, support your colleagues and students, and share expertise and data. Selfishness tends to lead to short-term advantage, but long-term problems. Moreover, academia is supported when there is a togetherness about the work. Much of open science involves assumptions of sharing and supporting, so I have become a supporter of this movement. That said, some time in the weekly schedule must be zealously reserved for individual work that is necessary to develop large numbers of SVUs.  

Building communities large and small is important for building academia. Communities range from a supportive research lab, inter-university research or teaching consortia, productive social media communities, supporting and building unions, supporting adjuncts and sessional instructors, promoting professional associations, making conferences more effective and equitable, building advocacy communities for self and others (e.g., #MeTooSTEM), journal clubs, and creating any other formal and informal system to create peer and student support. With systemic supports eroding, building communities from within academia is important.  

Fighting evil is a priority. SVUs are necessary, but not sufficient to protect the light side of academia. Make a difference through broad level advocacy, humane administration, kindness, public outreach, equity, justice, government lobbying, and using your skills and knowledge to make differences in the advancement and improvement of civilization. I had a judo instructor who was becoming frustrated with a student’s attitude*. He quoted the legendary Sensei Hatsumi, who said, “I’m not teaching you how to fight. I am teaching you how to control evil. That’s what we are really doing here.” Yeah, I know that sounds bizarre and grandiose. But I truly believe that stuff and it helps me make decisions. Will this activity promote good and contain evil or is the activity entirely self serving? This is how my activities are prioritized. Through the work of every individual academic, the system can be saved from evil.

Conclusions

I do not believe that academia is evil or fatally flawed. Certainly, academia is no more evil than other professions that value power, concentration of resources, or conflate expertise with influence. We have a lot of problems and always have had them (especially racism, abuses of power, and sexism). But as business efficiencies, market forces, and other factors that make academia more like other professions expand, the work environment is getting worse. External pressures have eroded the supports that make the best and most sustainable work possible. External pressures require academics to come together rather than turn against each other. Find your best ways to improve your little part of the world—it adds up and affects us all.

*No. The student was not me.

Bonus: See this great Twitter rant from @chuckwendig for more: https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1062341964631326720

SR Shaw