• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

  • Home
  • Courses & Webinars
    • How To …
    • The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
    • The Art of the Article
    • Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
    • On Demand Courses
    • Upcoming Live Webinars
    • Free Productivity Webinars
    • Gift Certificates
  • Personalized Job App Help
    • Document Editing
    • Quick Reviews
    • Specials
    • Interview Prep
    • Personal Negotiating Assistance
    • One on One Career Consults
    • Testimonials
    • Interview Testimonials
    • Graduate School Application Assistance
  • The Professor Is /Out/
    • It’s OK to Quit
    • Our Art of Leaving Program
    • Prof Is OUT Services
    • Our Prof Is OUT Team
    • Prof is OUT Client Testimonials
  • Workshops
  • Coaching
    • Pre-Tenure Coaching Group
    • Leaving Academia Coaching Group
  • Blog
  • Podcast

The Baggage We Bring: An Email From A Bootcamp Client

By Karen Kelsky | January 11, 2013

This email from a client, following on an Interview Bootcamp with Kellee, is an insightful articulation of the ways that anxieties, resentments, and insecurities about your work and the profession can seep into your ability to prepare for and perform well in interview settings.  This client took a pretty horrendous Bootcamp experience, and extracted valuable insight from it.   I applaud the client’s willingness to “go deep,” and hope others will do the same when confronted with unexpected obstacles or disappointments in their process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good morning Kellee and Karen,

I just wanted to follow up after the boot camp with a bit of feedback. In sum, the Interview Bootcamp was equally excruciating and helpful to me, and I am indeed appreciative.

To give a bit more detail, the experience called my attention to the fact that I have a lot of emotional baggage tied to my relationship with my profession and the job search process, which I now am able to identify, name, and discard bit by bit. I learned that I have been angry, angry about all of this. Just being conscious of my disappointment and my resentment at this prolonged uncertainty about the future was necessary. Somehow I have been able to operate under these conditions thus far, but this can’t continue. It’s time to accept or release. I am kind of doing both right now. My core goal is to serve a greater social good, specifically with regards to race relations and ending discrimination in this century, and I can do that from within academia or from without. That goal will guide the rest of my academic job search and I trust the process to place me where I am most useful.

As boot camp flops go, I know I flopped it. You are a patient soul, Kellee. However – we get what we need when we need it and I needed to flop it in order to be able to commit to the process when it does count. That alone is immensely valuable to me. After the session I cried for an hour and took a 3 hour nap. I was demoralized for about half a day and then got back into the saddle for another go.

I learned that I ramble, that my answers are circuitous and wind-baggish. That is not too tough to be conscious of and remediate. But I learned that my own insecurities about the field and my place in it weaken my answers and that I had better believe in myself or no one else will. I learned that my voice gets high when I’m nervous or defensive but that my content off the cuff is not terrible. The intensity of having to answer for what I have and have not prepared catalyzed my recognition of the emotional obstacles I have allowed to interfere with my interview prep, so for me, the flopped boot camp was invaluable.

I also got really good notes to guide my formal preparations this week.

To both of you – I observe you as having plugged into right livelihood and I applaud your work. All the best.

Similar Posts:

  • The Value of the Interview Bootcamp
  • Preparing for Your Interviews
  • Working the Conference: A Letter from a Client
  • Be Professorial
  • Asking to Speak to Other People of Color on a Campus Visit

Filed Under: Alt-University Critique, Bad Advisors and Good Mentors, Graduate Student Concerns, How to Interview, Strategizing Your Success in Academia, Work/Life Balance in Academia

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. aggint99 says

    January 15, 2013 at 11:32 pm

    Thank you so much for posting this. I struggle with very similar issues and this is very helpful.

    Reply
  2. grad student says

    January 16, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    I feel very happy for the writer of this post–it seems like she really got a lot out of the bootcamp. It’s a bit hard as a third party to take a lesson from this post, I find–it is a really good testimonial and very raw and honest, but as so often when other people are describing their personal journeys it feels like I don’t totally understand the context. perhaps you could contextualize a bit more, Dr. Karen or Kellee?

    Reply
  3. MJ says

    December 14, 2014 at 4:50 pm

    This blog entry matches my experience, too. I failed with Kellee, but now I know better how to prepare for the interview for my dream job…this week! Thanks to TPII.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Conditionally Accepted | Is It Just Me? Slowly Disposing Of “Grad School Garbage” says:
    September 19, 2013 at 4:37 am

    […] few options exist to readily express these feelings, I am still carrying some of this “baggage” today.  Fortunately, I can already feel that I have disposed of some of […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Buy My Book!

4.8 stars on Amazon!

The_Professor_Is_In.indd

Get Immediate Help

In addition to our blog and book, we have upcoming live webinars, pre-recorded webinars and other programs that you can get started on right away:

The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
The Art of the Article
Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
Quick Reviews
Free Productivity Webinars

Categories

  • #MeTooPhD
  • #Resistance
  • Academic Job Search
    • Administrator positions
    • How To Choose and Manage Recommenders
    • How to Interview
    • How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters
    • How To Write CVs
    • Landing Your Tenure Track Job
    • Major Job Market Mistakes
    • Negotiating Offers
  • Adjunct Issues
  • Advising Advice
  • Alt-University Critique
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Christian Colleges
  • Coronavirus
  • COVID19
    • Adapting
  • Dispatches
  • Goodbye Ivory Towers
  • Graduate Student Concerns
    • Bad Advisors and Good Mentors
  • How To Do Conferences
  • How to Get Grants and Fellowships
  • International Perspectives
  • Internet and Social Media
  • Intersectional Analyses
  • Makeup
  • Marginalized Voices
  • Mental Health and Academia
  • Ph.D. Poverty
  • Podcast
  • Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business
  • Post-Ac Job Search
    • Careers Outside
  • Postdoc Issues
  • Productivity
    • Book Proposals and Contracts
    • Publishing Issues
    • Writing
  • Promote Yourself!
  • Quitting–An Excellent Option
  • Racism in the Academy
  • Rearview Mirror
  • Resumes & Postac Docs
  • Sexual Harassment in the Academy
  • Shame
  • Stop.Acting.Like.A.Grad.Student
  • Strategizing Your Success in Academia
  • Teaching and Research Statements
  • Teaching Demos
  • Teaching Portfolios
  • Tenure–How To Get It
    • How To Build Your Tenure File
    • Surviving Assistant Professorhood
  • The Campus Visit
  • Unstuck
  • Webinars
  • What Not To Wear
  • Women of Color in Academia
  • Work/Life Balance in Academia
  • Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
  • Your Second and Third Jobs

Footer

About Us

  • Who Is Dr. Karen?
  • Who Is On the TPII Team?
  • In The News
  • Contact Me
  • FAQs
    • Why Trust Me?
  • Testimonials

Community

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Peer Editing
  • PhD Debt Survey
  • Support Fund
  • I Help With Custody Cases for Academics

Copyright © 2022 The Professor Is In·