The book inches closer to actually existing in the material world (August 4)! It has gotten some lovely blurbs by amazing people, like this one by the inimitable Rebecca Schuman:
“If you would like your academic career to begin in delusion and end in disillusionment, then by all means, ignore Karen Kelsky. If, however, you want unvarnished straight talk about the academic job market—and how to navigate it—then heed her, and heed her now.”
And I’m beyond thrilled that it got a fantastic review on Kirkus Reviews (see below).
Right now, I’m doing a promotion: Pre-purchase my book and send me the proof of purchase at gettenure@gmail.com, and I’ll enter your name in a drawing for $300 free TPII services. Drawings on June 15 and July 15.
Buy it at all these places:
Remember, it also makes a great gift for the struggling grad student in your life.
If you’re interested in ordering the book for a class, please email me at gettenure@gmail.com. Desk copies will be available shortly.
Read on for the blurbs and the full Kirkus Review:
Description:
The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job
Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration.
Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options.
Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers.
Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including:
-When, where, and what to publish
-Writing a foolproof grant application
-Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV
-Acing the job talk and campus interview
-Avoiding the adjunct trap
-Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right
The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.
Blurbs:
“If you would like your academic career to begin in delusion and end in disillusionment, then by all means, ignore Karen Kelsky. If, however, you want unvarnished straight talk about the academic job market—and how to navigate it—then heed her, and heed her now.” —Rebecca Schuman, education columnist for Slate
“Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In offers a compendium of smart, clear, direct advice to anyone seeking to turn a PhD into an academic job. She covers everything from how to build a competitive profile, to writing cover letters and resumes, to negotiating for that final job, postdoc, or grant. She’s not afraid to give examples of ‘don’ts’ and she models the ‘do’s.’ I’m about to meet with a doctoral student on the job market right now—and I’m giving her my copy of The Professor is In.” Cathy Davidson, Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate College, Director, The Futures Initiative.
“Every graduate student in academe should read this book. But also: if you teach graduate students, if you mentor graduate students, if you worry about graduate students, and even if you’re thinking about becoming a graduate student, you should read this book too. It’s just that indispensable.”– Michael Bérubé, Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State University
“It’s tough out there, but no one understands how academic jobs are landed better than Karen Kelsky. If you are a graduate student, The Professor Is In offers sound, realistic advice, and it may be the most valuable book you ever read if you intend to have an academic career. – William Pannapacker, Professor of English at Hope College and columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education
“Explains in exquisite detail exactly how to land a tenure track job. In her genial yet unabashedly thorough book, Kelsky coaches readers through the critical topics they need to know. I wouldn’t want to navigate the inhospitable weirdness of the academic job market without it.” – Adam Ruben, author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School
There’s no one way to guarantee that you get a job in academia, but there’s a thousand ways to lose one. In this book, Karen Kelsky levels the playing field, providing practical insider knowledge to demystify the job market and help you improve the odds. – David M. Perry, Journalist, Chronicle of Higher Education, Director of Undergraduate Research, Dominican University
“A realistic account of what it takes to turn a Ph.D. into a job when all the jobs seem to be disappearing, The Professor is In offers sobering, impeccable advice from one of the most honest voices in higher education today.”–Greg M. Colón Semenza, Author, with Garrett Sullivan, of How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance
“Karen Kelsky tells the disheartening truth about the difficulties of getting through graduate school and finding a tenure-track job in a funny, irreverent, and ultimately encouraging way. Getting a job is about more than being smart; read this book if you want to be prepared, professional, and on your game. -Elizabeth Reis, Professor and Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, University of Oregon
“This is the book I wish I had when I was a grad student. As The Professor Is In, Karen Kelsky delivers generous, savvy advice for academic job seekers. Unflinching, supportive, and honest, there is no other book like it. All Ph.D. students (and their advisors) should have a copy on their shelf.” – Carole McGranahan, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder
Kirkus Review:
In 2010, after 15 years as a tenured anthropology professor and department head, Kelsky (Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams, 2001) left academia to found The Professor Is In, a counseling service and blog aimed at helping graduate students mount a job search. Aware of the current competitive job market, with colleges and universities increasingly trying to save money by staffing departments with part-time adjuncts, Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position. She has no illusions about her readers’ ability to do this on their own. Graduate study is infantilizing, she maintains, a process of hazing that leaves students “insecure, defensive, paranoid, beset by feelings of inadequacy, pretentious, self-involved, communicatively challenged, and fixated on minutiae.” Advisers range from moderately helpful to neglectful to downright discouraging. They may not have any idea of the realities of the market into which they are sending students, which Kelsky thinks is “terribly, patently unfair, in that several generations of Ph.D.’s are now victims of an exploitative system that trains them for jobs that no longer exist, and denies that fact.” The author covers in detail every aspect of the job search: building a strong record through carefully chosen publications (prestigious peer-review journals are the gold standard, and in the humanities and social sciences, a book contract is crucial); going after grants; presenting at national conferences; honing a CV; writing a succinct, sophisticated cover letter and teaching statement; presenting oneself in an interview and during a campus visit; and negotiating an offer. “Grad students,” she writes, “remain in an extended juvenile status long after their peers outside of academia have moved on to fully adult lives.” For those students—and anyone who cares about them—this cogent, illuminating book will be indispensable.
Hello. I’m an assistant professor and I’ve been considering your book for a grad school course on professionalization. I’m very excited to read it. However, my understanding is your promotion may not be legal:
http://sarafhawkins.com/blog-law-is-your-giveaway-legal/
I felt like I should mention it, just in case you haven’t heard this before. Possibly, you’ve already looked into this and figured out that your promotion is kosher.
What is best way to have an article (already accepted for publication) read and critiqued by other relevant scholars in order to improve it before publication? How can I reach out to them–both scholars I know and those I don’t–in professional and effective way?