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Advice for PhD students

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Are You Tired of the Academic Run-Around -- an Advisor Who's Never In, a Grad Program That Doesn't Care, Funding That's Never Enough, a Job Market That's in The Tank, and a Tenure System That's a Total Mystery -- And No One to Give You an Honest Answer?

I am here to help. I am Karen L. Kelsky, Ph.D.. I spent 15 years as an R1 tenured professor, department head, and university advisor, and I tell you the truth. The truth about grad school, the job market, and tenure. To the best of my ability.

I also tell you the truth about your applications and your record. If they are bad, I will tell you. And then we will get a plan to improve them.

On the 'Pearls of Wisdom' Blog (see the categories to the right), I offer the hands-on information you need now to get through the hoops of academia.

I also work with you, one-on-one, with complete confidentiality, on the writing, speaking, and interview skills you need to move closer to your professional goals. I focus on your particular strengths and challenges, and outline the steps you need to take to be successful in each of your specific applications and projects. Together we chart a path to make you competitive. I can't guarantee a particular outcome, but I can guarantee that I will deliver to you, to the best of my ability, bullshit-free advising on your grants, writing, the job market, and tenure, as well as coaching on professional and career dilemmas.

I am the available and career-savvy adviser you need, that you should already have, but probably don't.

Interested? Please get in touch with me by email to inquire or make a plan. Gettenure@gmail.com

And I love coming to your campus or disciplinary meeting to speak! Learn more about that here. I speak regularly on campuses both private and public, large and small, and to graduate student and administrator organizations.

~~"After talking with her I aced my next telephone interview and was invited for an interview. I was offered 2 post-docs at a VERY prestigious university. Thank you Karen!"- 2009 Ph.D., Social Sciences

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Curious to Know More?

Read more by and about The Professor in these places: The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education (again), "From Graduate School to Welfare" (yes, Chronicle of Higher Education) and Inside Higher Ed.

Read about her personal story here: Death of a Soul on Campus, on the blog Tech in Translation.

Learn more about Dr. Karen's academic background. And read the Blog, Pearls of Wisdom.

~~"My materials sucked last year, and I can say with confidence that they no longer suck. I will absolutely use your services again. There is hope for people who do wish to continue on the path to academe, part of which comes from investing in mentors like you that can guide us in this very difficult process." 2013 Ph.D. who got R1 tenure track position.

I have mentored students and junior faculty at all levels. Clients have landed numerous prestigious national and international grants, and tenure track jobs in scholarly fields, and the junior faculty I mentored have all been successful in tenure and promotion. Do as I say and your applications, writing projects, and tenure dossiers will be as competitive as they possibly can-within the scope of what your own record permits (and by the way, I'll always tell you when and how your record is falling short, if you ask). It is a grueling process, I'm not going to lie.

"It's been a long time since anyone had been as critical about me as you have. In fact, I felt like a student again, and it wasn't always comfortable. But that is how we grow, so I am glad to have been able to work with you."

But the results are intense. A client explains:

"I wanted to let you know that I am really enjoying working on getting doc to where it should be; it's deeply satisfying. Exhausting but satisfying. Over the past 3 years, I've read, listened, watched, worked with and really LEARNED how to change my writing overall. It's great to have sustainable skills from consulting your resources and you directly. I want to be a better academic writer overall, not just a one-time improvement. I've been re-educated by you, thank goodness."

Of course it goes without saying that nobody can promise jobs where jobs don't exist in a disintegrating academic job market, or guarantee the success of any one particular job application or grant application, manuscript submission, etc. The politics and hidden agendas of any selection process are known only to the selection committee members themselves (and sometimes not even to all of them!)

But my methods will ensure that what you submit is effective, persuasive, and targeted to the competition. And more importantly, my methods take the mystery out of the hiring process. As one client recently wrote,
"I had no idea how any of this worked until I found your work."
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My method? All forms of academic writing and speaking-whether conference abstracts, grant applications, job letters, conference presentations, job talks, or tenure statements - are highly formulaic. But advisors almost never teach these formulas, and indeed the vast majority of academics don't realize just how formulaic their successful writing is. I have created schemata to articulate your record in these proven ways that that can be adapted to every project.

The goal is not to produce "cookie-cutter" applications, but to discipline your writing to meet the unspoken and unacknowledged biases and expectations of evaluation committees who are impatient, overworked, and judgmental, and who generally give applications at most a few minutes of initial review. One anthropologist client articulated it like this:

"Seeing the document improve through the different drafts is very gratifying, if also at times incredibly humbling. It's also very cathartic to work through the frustration of feeling like this should be a familiar, natural genre that I should have already mastered, and yet it is neither taught nor discussed in most grad programs (certainly not mine). It makes such a difference to be able to actively improve the documents without it feeling like a stab in the dark, learning why different elements either improve or detract. You're one of the few scholarly voices actually talking about this."

All writing is intensively tailored both to your personal project, and to the specific job or competition at hand.

One outcome of the work is that you also better understand whether or not you're ready for the job market, and how best to maximize your time to get ready. Another client email:

"Through the process of us going back and forth I've actually come to the conclusion that I am not as job market ready for this fall as I thought/would have hoped. I'm honestly SO grateful for this realization; I would have continued to spend countless hours on things that are really not at this time, the best things for me to be spending time on. In your feedback for my cover letter you've posed some really great points, given helpful comments, and have overall helped me see the real 'holes' in the way I am packaging myself in my letter - basically, I need to be further along to have a good chance. All of this is to say thank you for helping me realize these things."

Once your documents land you an interview, TPII also offers the intensive Academic Job Interview Intervention, Job Talk Intervention, and Campus Visit Intervention, 50-minute sessions by skype in which Intervention Coaches Kellee Weinhold or Petra Shenk put you through the paces of the likely interview and/or job talk.

Finally, I delight in helping you negotiate your tenure track/NTT/postdoc offer. I've worked with hundreds of clients in every field, at every rank and type of institution in the country and internationally, and will assist you in evaluating your offer or offers, deciding on what to ask for, crafting the asks, interpreting the responses, using leverage effectively, and avoiding bad feelings (or god forbid, the rescinded offer) to a mutually agreeable yes.

can assist you in your tenure case-specifically writing your research statement, teaching philosophy, and even in strategizing your external reviewers. A s a Department Head, I put a number of junior faculty through successful tenure cases in my department and learned a lot about how tenure cases are compiled and evaluated at the departmental, college, and campus level.

While - again! - no one can guarantee a positive outcome in terms of a particular grant, job, or tenure (there are variables in every selection process that no applicant can account for or predict), I guarantee that if you follow my advice, you will understand the logic behind the review process and make all parts of your application as effective as they can be.

Click on the "About the Professor" and "Why Should You Trust Me" pages above to learn more about my academic and personal background.

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I am here to help. I am Karen L. Kelsky, Ph.D.. I spent 15 years as an R1 tenured professor, department head, and university advisor, and I tell you the truth. The truth about grad school, the job market, and tenure. To the best of my ability.

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In my previous post Common Sense as a Legacy Project, I explored how common sense becomes a way of defending national culture, social traditions and social institutions from perceived threats. The book Common Sense Conservativism for a Post-Liberal Age repeatedly evokes wokeism as a summary of threats to common sense: the woke are those who are trying to take what is ours for themselves, denying reality, truth, stealing our happiness as well as our history.

Readers of this feminist killjoy blog are probably very familiar with these uses of wokeism. The projects of widening participation and social inclusion are often dismissed in these terms. Diversity training in public institutions: that's woke! Disabled dancers and "mismatched same sex couples" on Strictly Come Dancing: that's woke! A Black mermaid or a Black James Bond: it does not matter if it's a mythical creature or fictional character, that's woke! Putting your pronouns in your signature: that's woke!

Woke is a much-used term, a useful term, because of how much and how many can be dismissed by it. These dismissals can be understood as techniques. My task in writing this follow up post is not to try to persuade anyone of anything (let alone those whose careers rest on the "anti-woke" wave). I am writing this post as I think it helps to try to explain what is going on as it is going on. Let me identify three key aspects of anti-wokeism/ common sense conservatism.

A primary implication of the argument for c ommon sense conservatism is that traditions or conventions are or would be unchanging without the imposition of change. One way culture and history are treated possessively is to suggest change comes from outsiders. This is why the refusal to recognise the dynamic nature of culture is central to common sense conservatism. In my book, What's the Use? On The Uses of Use I name institutions themselves as anti-life: to stabilise the requirements for what you need to survive and thrive within institutions is to stop changes that would otherwise happen because of the dynamic nature of life. We might call these techniques for stabilising the requirements reproductive mechanisms. When diversity work is understood as imposed change, this is in part a reflection of the investment of some people in institutions not changing (and when I say investment I mean it: those who benefit from institutions do not want changes that might risk their benefits, that transmission of legacy).

When we are judged as imposing change, what is not recognised is the imposed nature of what we are trying to change. What is understood as "the way things are" has become naturalised or habitual. A good example of this is pronouns. Some people seem to experience being asked to respect other people's pronouns as an imposition on their freedom. Freedoms can be predicated on being unthinking: some people do not want to think about, or be conscious of, social conventions such as how we refer to other people.
Institutions also have habits.
Let's take one example from my own study of complaint. I spoke to a lecturer about her experience of appointment panels. Her university had introduced a numerical system for evaluating the performance of job candidates in an effort to ensure equality of treatment. She described what actually happened during the appointment process: "Someone would say, that woman's presentation was outstanding, but, really, he's the guy you'd want to have a pint with, so let's make the figures fit." The figures are made to fit when a person is deemed to fit. The person most likely to be appointed is still the one who can participate in a shared or common culture; "the guy you'd want to have a pint with," who you can relate to, whose company you would prefer. Hiring can be a habit, how the same sorts of people keep being appointed, reflecting back who is already here. When new policies and procedures are introduced to break that habit, they do not always stop what is habitually done from being done.
When change is treated as an imposition, it is made harder to change things.
Those who try and change how things have been done are often represented as having an "ideology." So "critical race theory" is treated as ideology, which is central to how the polished view of empire keeps passing itself off as reality (you will quickly find arguments that "critical race theory" is being imposed in schools as soon as teachers try and include a history of the British empire from not-polished points of view).

And also, when the project for trans liberation is understood as motived by "gender ideology," what is disguised is how gender ideologies, that is, convictions about what women and men are and what they are like (mostly, I would add, with reference to sex, that is assumptions made about men and women on the basis of the nature of their bodies) are reproduced everywhere else. These convictions often disappear, that is, they do not appear as ideology, precisely because of how they become common sense. Ideology often works by demarcating or bracketing ideology itself as happening somewhere else.

This is why freedom struggles often mean coming up against what other people call reality. Feminists should know this: our fights for freedom have often been framed as flights from reality (biology, nature, history, and so on). But given how some feminists dismiss trans liberation as a flight from reality (even using an arm wrestle to signify that reality - I am keeping this point oblique for the time being), it is clear that lessons are not always learnt.
2. The reversal of power
Common sense conservatism (as with other conservative political arguments) positions those who are fighting for equality as not only motivated as a desire for power but as having power. And those who have power (for example in the media and government) also then represent themselves as without power.

I explored this reversal of power in the first chapter of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. Consider how racism and transphobia are often articulated as if they are unpopular or even minority positions (or to be more specific many people in the public domain position themselves as being censored when their views are described as racist or transphobic).

The positioning of racial or religious minorities, especially Muslims, and of trans people as too easily offended leads to an increase in racist and transphobic speech acts. There is an 'incitement to discourse' in a story of the suppression of discourse: so many people continue to make racist and transphobic statements by saying they are not allowed to make them. One comedian at the end of a set that included much transphobic content claimed, 'I think that's what comedy is for, really - to get us through stuff, and I deal in taboo subjects because I want to take the audience to a place it hasn't been before, even for a split second." This so-called 'taboo subject' is in fact a well-travelled path, where we are used to going rather than where we haven't been; a confirmation of, rather than challenge to, the transphobia of mainstream culture. But then, if you call it out, give the problem its name, that person will most likely represent themselves as "cancelled" and quickly embarking on a cancellation tour. And so, we end up with some people speaking endlessly about being silenced, given more platforms to claim they are no-platformed.
Those who are more represented in the public domain tend to represent themselves as more censored.
I have described this mechanism in earlier posts.
Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction, you are witnessing a mechanism of power.
Note also the new habit of scholars who have best-selling "anti-woke" books representing their popularity as a sign that the public are tired of wokeism. It is rather amusing. But it is also sad and pathetic. Of course, their books are bestselling because of the alignment of their arguments with the views of the powerful: governments that are willing to stoke the anti-woke to increase their popularity; not to mention the global rise of fascism.
That's the wave you are riding on baby.
Diversity programmes and equality initiatives are also treated as evidence of wokeism. Let's pause here. Elite, white and male-dominated institutions are represented as "woke institutions" on the basis of the existence of programmes designed to make them less so, less elite, white and male dominated. Of course, many of these programmes fail because of how hard it is to intervene in the reproduction of power (that these programmes are called woke is one of these reproductive mechanisms!). Recall my earlier example of how a new system was introduced to try to ensure equality of treatment in appointments. That very system, which might be used as evidence of wokeism, was bypassed in order to select people who were deemed to fit or to fit in. One senior manager I interviewed for my complaint project summarised this mechanism as "policies are for the others."

Power can be exercised by the bypassing of policies and procedures designed to intervene in the reproduction of power. This is also how institutional change can be prevented by appearing to be enabled. An organisation can be called too woke because of its diversity initiatives, and still be successful at reproducing whiteness and other forms of power and privilege.

As feminists of colour, we know how diversity can be polish. Organisations create the appearance that something is being done; and yes, they sometimes use us, to do that. We also know that even polished versions of diversity can be quickly framed as "too much," as an ideological imposition, a way of re-naturalising hierarchies and habits of many kinds.

Consider the use of terms such as "race equality industry" to dismiss a whole history of efforts to bring about race equality or the use of the term "trans lobby" by many gender-critical feminists and their anti-woke allies. Any programmes designed to enable trans people to live their lives on their terms, to have access to public resources including health and welfare become treatable as a consequence of a "trans lobby." This is how trans people who are under-represented in positions of power in media and government can be represented as powerful.
A fight for survival is treated as the formation of an industry. The reversal of power is how power is retained.
As soon as you try to stop someone who has power from abusing that power, you will be identified as motivated by a desire for power. I think of a conversation I had with a woman professor who supported students who made a complaint about sexual misconduct and sexual harassment by a lecturer at her university. The professor defended his own conduct thus, 'He came up to me and said, "It's a perk of the job." I could not believe it. He actually said it to me. It was not hearsay; this is a perk of the job. I can't remember my response, but I was flabbergasted.' The implication is that having sex with your students is like having a company car; what you are entitled to because of what you do. She added, 'The women: they were set up as a witch-hunt, hysterical, you can hear it, can't you, and as if they were out to get this guy.' In this case, the complaint was not upheld and the lecturer returned to his post with minor adjustments to supervisory arrangements.

When you describe an entitlement as harassment you are understood as depriving somebody of what is theirs; the complainer-as-killjoy could characterize this deprivation.
3) More with Less
The "common" in common sense matters. If there is a reversal of power, there is also a reversal of position. Consider how when we try to widen the curriculum you are treated as damaging the tradition. We want more, and we are treated as stopping this or that writer from being taught. By asking for more, we are treated as less, as lessening the value of something, but also as removing what or who is already there.

I think there is another reversal here: more with less. Let me explain.

In my previous post, I described the experience of a woman of colour academic who as dropped from the diversity committee after "mentioning things to do with race." It is worth asking: why did she keep mentioning those things? Racism, that's why. She told me that in her department's research meetings, senior white men professors frequently made racist comments.This is just one example, "I'm from London and London is just ripe for ethnic cleansing." She described how people laughed and how the laughter filled the room. She decides to complain. She gathered statements from around twenty people in her department. A complaint can be a collective. A meeting is set up in response to her complaint. At that meeting she was described by the head of human resources as "having a chip on her shoulder," "they treated the submission as an act of arrogance on my part. A grievance is heard as a grudge, a collective treated an individual. She leaves, and "it was all swept under the carpet and the same things continued." Sweep; sweep; polish, polish. The same things keep happening because of how much is swept away, who is swept away.
The transmission of a legacy is dependent on stopping those who trying to stop the same things from happening.
When those of us fighting against abuses of power are dismissed as having a will to power, we are treated as depriving others of what is theirs. Some understand and describe "theirs" as "common sense."

The story of how some are losing their hand is a story of those who treat the world as their hand.
We are telling other stories.

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Academic writing advice

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The dictionary definitions of contribution are:

1. A gift or payment

2. The part played by a person or thing in bringing about a result or helping something to advance and

3. A piece of writing submitted for publication in a journal or book

When scholars talk about contribution it might be 3. A contribution might be a piece we have submitted to an edited collection, a text book, an anthology of cases or an encyclopaedia.

But the most usual scholarly formulation of contribution is as a "contribution to knowledge".

Contribution to knowledge is an apparently simple idea, but in reality it's pretty slippery. So here's few thoughts about how to make sense of it, just to start with.

A contribution to knowledge is more like dictionary definition 2. Your research and/or writing helps to advance understandings about a topic. People know a little or a lot more about a topic because they've engaged with your work, read what you've written. And you've been able to explain to readers that the work adds up to a contribution - it takes the field somewhere - through

a defensible and well-designed inquiry, investigation, exploration, interrogation, deconstruction, experimentation, testing out, bringing things together that were previously apart and so on

a thorough analysis which is explained and available for scrutiny

the development of a credible and clearly ordered argument that explains the results, which leads to

a conclusion about the specific place of the results within the existing research on the topic - and how it complements, contradicts, adds something new, challenges, questions, confirms, reframes etc what is already known.

pointers for further development in policy or practice or further research.

In English language/Western traditions of research your readers/examiners/reviewers expect you to spell the contribution out to them in detail. ( This is not always the case in other cultural traditions.)

Readers/examiners/reviewers always expect to see the particulars of where the research fits and sits in relation to published literatures. In some disciplines, there is also a strong expectation that you'll make connections to policy and professional practice.

And, justifying and explaining your contribution in relation to the field and extant literatures may well be an integral part of your viva or defense.

That's not all to contribution of course. Most university guidelines still refer to contribution as 'original'. Original doesn't mean that it hasn't been done before; in some disciplines re-doing what has been done before is very important. And original in the context of contribution doesn't mean that the researcher has made a ground-breaking discovery - although that is very occasionally the case. Nor does original mean that the research is all your own work, although that is always a requirement and, perhaps in the light of AI, this meaning of original will come to matter much more .

No, what is meant by original is very clearly definition 2. Your research has taken you somewhere new. At the end of your research you know much more about your topic than you did at the start. Even if some if it is what not to do or think.

But the research also takes the field somewhere, it sets a line of thinking or does more to an established line of thinking, it offers well argued and evidenced results which others can build on.

And this is of course how contribution relates to significance. The field won't move forward and/or no one will bother with the research if it isn't of some value. A contribution generally isn't just something that wasn't there before (ie it fills a gap) but something that, like a contribution to a conversation, supports thinking and talking in the field to go somewhere.

In this sense, an original contribution is also definition 1. A gift. A gift to the scholarly community which colleagues can use to help build their own contribution. A (re)payment for the work of others that you used to build your own. A down payment on the work of others you will use in the future.

Making a contribution to knowledge is the essence of what scholarship is about. Taking a field and its thinking forward, even if only a little.

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

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research education, academic writing, public engagement, funding, other eccentricities.

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Language a Feminist Issue