Reddit reviews The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job

I wish I’d read The Professor Is In. It is NOT to early for you to start focusing on what you need to do now to land the job you hope to land after you graduate.

I just bought this book, which is less a narrative, but rather more of a hard, truthful, as well as insightful look into the problems of humanities academia, and how best you can survive them.

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494283261&sr=8-1&keywords=the+professor+is+in

My only tip for you regarding imposter syndrome, is that everyone has it. However, you keep that truth buried deep in yourself. When it comes time to talk about your work to others, or in a job interview, YOU PUT ON THAT IMPOSTER MASK AND NEVER BLINK OR TAKE IT OFF until you're back home.

We all wear masks to function. Learning to live with them is an essential life skill.

For other examples of why this is essential, I'd also like to cite Dr. David Chappelle:

https://vimeo.com/58226569

Karen Kelsky's, The Professor is in is quite good once you realize you have to read past the rhetoric of "the sky is falling!!!" Her tone can be a little stressful if you're already feeling under pressure, but the advice she gives is really solid.

Make an appointment with your university's career guidance councilor. They're paid to think about this for you and should be able to help you establish a plan.

The Professor is in is also a pretty decent book, although it's primarily geared toward securing an academic position: https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

Network with folks outside academia and try and do a research project with broader topical and methodological relevance.

Once you identify a career you'd like work to develop strong transferrable skills for that area.

I'm on the job market now. I will recommend a book that will answer your question. This book will give you an accurate state of the academic job market as it exists today. This book is dead on accurate.

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

(I have no affiliation with the author)

Read this for a sense of the discipline:

https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/Nonseries/Introduction-to-Scholarship-in-Modern-Languages-and-Literatures-Third-Edition

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Are you going to do British, American, or something else? If you're going to do American, for example, I would go through the Shorter Norton Anthology of American Lit and read anything you haven't read yet.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-norton-anthology-of-american-literature-shorter-ninth-edition-robert-s-levine/1129775656?ean=9780393264531

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Then I would read this for a sense of the market and job prospects:

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

I'm in the humanities (not English). However, while in graduate school, I wish someone had told me about this book: https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420. It's not perfect and some people hate it, but it's brutally honest and helpful. If you want to avoid buying the book, you could also just check out the website: http://theprofessorisin.com/.

There are some books that give good insights into navigating the grad school process, including useful advice about how to map out important milestones (e.g. how to publish, navigating conferences, and most importantly setting yourself up early to be successful on the job market.)

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[4] (http://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-For/dp/0374524777/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41H6-kRMd5L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&refRID=07NB1JFQT1BE3E6NARD9)

A very kind person recommended me this book the other day on this sub https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420

I have already learned SO much and I am barely a quarter of the way through. The woman who wrote it also has a blog that is absolutely stuffed with advice.

Thank you! One more suggestion is that you read The Professor Is In by Karen Kelsky, and the earlier the better. Many doctoral students are in the mindset that they are a student in relation to their professors, when actually, they should be in the mindset that they are future colleagues of current professors. They go to class, they complete their assignments, they go home, and think that's it. When actually, they should start thinking of themselves as colleagues, while respecting certain boundaries, as well as network and continuing productivity in the profession. This goes back to the creating knowledge rather than learning knowledge. This book should definitely make you think about the higher education profession as a whole and will make you better prepared.