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Category Archives: Teaching and Research Statements
Gerund Addiction and Word Repetition–Two More Scourges
Faithful readers know that I have several posts on different kinds of writing tics that plague many academic writers. These include list addiction, dyad addiction, and cheap adjectives. There are two more writing tics that I’ve come to identify: gerund … Continue reading
The Weepy Teaching Statement: Just Say No
A while back I wrote a post called “The Worst Job Letter Ever Written (Not Really).” Today I want to share with you a similarly awful teaching statement (with kind permission of the writer, discipline obscured.) I don’t call it … Continue reading
Banish These Words
Do not use the words “unique” or “burgeoning” in any of your job documents. They are painfully overused. The first is just trite. The second is over-dramatic. That is all.
Posted in Graduate Student Concerns, How to Get Grants and Fellowships, How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters, How To Write CVs, Landing Your Tenure Track Job, Major Job Market Mistakes, Strategizing Your Success in Academia, Teaching and Research Statements, Teaching Portfolios, Writing Instrumentally
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Damning Yourself With Faint Praise–Teaching Edition
For some reason people love to include undergraduate student feedback in the teaching paragraph of their job letters, and that feedback usually looks like this (from an actual letter): “Former students have consistently told me that I give helpful feedback … Continue reading
Dr. Karen’s Rules of the Research Statement
Today, at long last, and in response to popular demand, a post on the Research Statement. I have, perhaps, procrastinated on blogging about the Research Statement because at some level I felt that the rules might be more variable on … Continue reading
What the Heck is “Assessment”? (A Guest Post)
Today’s post is a Guest Post from a faithful reader and client on the tenure track, and also on the job market, who discovered some interesting points about “assessment” while she was at some interviews this year. More and more … Continue reading
How to Plan Your Research and Writing Trajectory on the Tenure Track
This is a re-post of a column originally posted on August 11, 2011. As the 2011-2012 job market winds down, and various readers and clients look ahead to the new jobs they are starting in the fall, I want you … Continue reading
Posted in Strategizing Your Success in Academia, Surviving Assistant Professorhood, Teaching and Research Statements, Tenure--How To Get It, Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
Tagged first year tenure track research, how do I decide on a research trajectory, how to plan a research trajectory, research trajectory
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How Would You Mentor Graduate Students? Another #Facepalm Fail
Today I was doing an interview bootcamp and came upon yet another #Facepalm Fail of the academic interview. The #Facepalm Fail is: “How would you mentor graduate students?” Actually, this might not rise to the level of a full-size #Facepalm … Continue reading
This Christmas, Don’t Be Cheap
Regular readers of The Professor Is In know that I espouse as the cardinal rule of job document writing the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. Job documents should not make claims about your feelings or your wants or your beliefs … Continue reading
Break The Cycle of List-Addiction (Or, Just Say No To Flabby Logic)
For some reason, a bunch of the manuscripts and job documents I’ve been dealing with this past week have shared one fatal flaw. The flaw is list-addiction. It’s the oddest thing. I hardly ever saw lists in client writing, and … Continue reading
