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Previous "Ms. Mentor" Columns
Words of wisdom about academic culture
Ms. Mentor
There are ways to dress in academe, Ms. Mentor cautions, and every fashion choice does send a message.
Ms. Mentor
Will a young scholar be stigmatized by association with a badly run research program?
Ms. Mentor
Tact and professionalism require not noticing in an interview what is readily apparent in the gym, if not on the street.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor exhorts full professors to honor the toilers whose work allows the tenured to teach their esoteric specialties.
Ms. Mentor
Maybe the problem is not one female colleague bad-mouthing another; it’s a bored senior professor playing head games.
Ms. Mentor
A fixation on impressing others, beyond the obvious need to get hired and tenured, is a recipe for chronic discontent.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor dissects what it means to say that your book is "forthcoming."
Ms. Mentor
Call Ms. Mentor old-fashioned but she believes that students deserve to be taught, not groped.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor counsels a job applicant on whether to let interviewers know you've read up on them.
Ms. Mentor
Ignore your febrile fantasies, decide to do a good-enough dissertation, and finish it -- or not.
Ms. Mentor
In academe, you need a public face of competence and cheer, no matter how much you're churning inside.
Ms. Mentor
Jobs for smart misanthropes are harder to come by nowadays -- even in academe.
Ms. Mentor
Will anyone be able to write great, heart-stopping stories about plagiarized footnotes or forged travel receipts?
Ms. Mentor
Teaching is universally acknowledged to be a performance, but so is being a colleague, in the first heady days at a new place.
Ms. Mentor
Encouraged to apply for an opening at her alma mater, a job candidate finds herself dismissed via form e-mail.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor chides an assistant professor for protecting his own self-interest at the expense of his graduate student's.
Ms. Mentor
All right, Ms. Mentor will admit it: Many professors do behave weirdly.
Ms. Mentor
The sad truth, says Ms. Mentor, is that job candidates able to conceal their disabilities are more likely to be hired.
Ms. Mentor
Many a graduate student hopes to get a good teaching job without publishing, but the academic market is not the place for such childish fantasies.
Ms. Mentor
Eager scholars could spend years reading up on how hard it is to have a romance in academe, without ever emerging to see if it's true.
Ms. Mentor
Where is it written that one must erase a blackboard before leaving a room?
Ms. Mentor
Many, indeed, are the provocations and small ignominies that academics mete out to their fellow sufferers.
Ms. Mentor
Sometimes seizing the floor from a long-winded speaker is not a coup, it's a mercy killing.
Ms. Mentor
Should a dean who pronounces "collegial" with a hard G be corrected? And do professors who feud over that have too much time on their hands?
Ms. Mentor
Few faculty meetings are actually dull, Ms. Mentor says, because almost all have hidden agendas.
Ms. Mentor
Words like "energetic" and "dynamic" in job ads may seem innocent, but, Ms. Mentor says, they can be code words for "young."
Ms. Mentor
If you can't be sincerely interested in the lives of your colleagues, Ms. Mentor advises, then fake it.
Ms. Mentor
In the heat of the summer, Ms. Mentor finds that some of her correspondents have very humid imaginations.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor guides a working-class TA who resents the wealthy, spoiled undergraduates in her classroom.
Ms. Mentor
You cannot force people to be warm, wise, or witty, but most can be taught to be civil.
Ms. Mentor
Losing a little money and time is nothing, says Ms. Mentor, compared with leaving graduate school exhausted, depressed, and resentful.
Ms. Mentor
In a job interview, how much information is too much when it comes to food sensitivities?
Ms. Mentor
Not everyone is cut out for the academic grind, and Ms. Mentor salutes those who realize it and move on.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor advises some overworked female faculty members to stop being stoic workhorses.
Ms. Mentor
Sometimes, Ms. Mentor says, winning over your foes is impossible and your best course of action is to move on.
Ms. Mentor
Should senior professors air the department's dirty laundry with new recruits or keep a demure silence?
Ms. Mentor
Scholars are trained to suppress their feelings and do what they're told, but Ms. Mentor seconds their emotions.
Ms. Mentor
Aside from murder, does a job candidate who lost out to a spousal hire have any options?
Ms. Mentor
Lonely and bored, a tenured professor wonders whether it's time to enter administration.
Ms. Mentor
Should a cheater who also happens to be a great teacher be outed or protected?
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor counsels an academic spouse who fears that her husband is going to be denied tenure.
Ms. Mentor
A new assistant professor who feels inadequate teaching graduate seminars seeks Ms. Mentor's counsel.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor knows that it is tiresome to be patronized or tuned out because of one's age.
Ms. Mentor
Retirement, says Ms. Mentor, crouches like an elephant in the middle of the floor at countless faculty meetings.
Ms. Mentor
Volunteering too much information is not in your best interest, Ms. Mentor says, and it might "frighten the horses."
Ms. Mentor
You've won tenure despite your critics' best efforts. Is it OK to rub it in?
Ms. Mentor
When does a gathering of same-sex doctoral students move from supportive to exclusionary?
Ms. Mentor
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to help write her dissertation?
Ms. Mentor
Should a young student be dissuaded from revealing too much on his blog?
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor observes that many academics feel victimized in the autumn by the clueless and the uncaring.
Ms. Mentor
Dr. Good Fit teaches superbly, seeks advice, shares research, joins committees, makes lasagna, smiles a lot, and is fictional.
Ms. Mentor
Choosing a dissertation adviser, Ms. Mentor says, is as important as choosing a spouse.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor knows when you should speak up and when you should shut up.
Ms. Mentor
She's got her dream job. He hates the location. What to do? Ms. Mentor knows.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor's mailbag is full of complaints about student evaluations of teaching -- none of them from students.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor explains why guilt plagues so many academics who've made it on the tenure track.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor reassures a presidential wannabe: You don't have to be a golfer to move up the ranks.
Ms. Mentor
Sure you do, says Ms. Mentor. Academics just like to think they're especially unique.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor rarely gets to tell all of her correspondents that they have done wrong. Now's her chance.
Ms. Mentor
Just because a colleague is undermining you, Ms. Mentor says, doesn't mean you should respond in kind.
Ms. Mentor
Is there an open, honest way to deny tenure to someone whose views are repellent? Ms. Mentor is stumped.
Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor counsels nervous junior scholars who fear that their odds of getting tenure are slim.
Ms. Mentor
It's easy, Ms. Mentor says, for a mentor's invitations to a young scholar to be misinterpreted.
Ms. Mentor
Search committees often have bad manners, Ms. Mentor counsels, but they rarely hate you.
Ms. Mentor
A terror of public humiliation dwells in the souls of all untenured academics.
Ms. Mentor
Even the gentlest of academics, Ms. Mentor knows, harbor fantasies of revenge.
Resources:
Library:
Landing your first job
On the tenure track
Mid-career and on
Administrative careers
Nonacademic careers for
Ph.D.'s
Talk about your career
Elsewhere Online:
University Affairs
gradPsych
Academe