BackStage

Lately I have been obsessed with the ASA job boards. This is for one very solid reason–I must needs find a job. Between looking at postings, looking at the departmental websites, and being terrified that the only job offer I could possibly get would be at a teaching college in Texas (no offense Texans, just the one place I really REALLY don’t think I’d ever want to live), I’ve spent very little time thinking about what to do if I ever DO get a job offer. Thankfully, part of my fellowship includes taking part in seminars on the academy — including how to get a job. Today’s seminar was on Gender and the Academy. While there were several interesting points, there were two that I was most interested in.

1. Letter of Recommendation Writing:

Letters written for males and females differ greatly. As evidence, see this article, abstract below, by Trix and Psenka:

This study examines over 300 letters of recommendation for medical faculty at a large American medical school in the mid-1990s, using methods from corpus and discourse analysis, with the theoretical perspective of gender schema from cognitive psychology. Letters written for female applicants were found to differ systematically from those written for male applicants in the extremes of length, in the percentages lacking in basic features, in the percentages with doubt raisers (an extended category of negative language, often associated with apparent commendation), and in frequency of mention of status terms. Further, the most common semantically grouped possessive phrases referring to female and male applicants (`her teaching,’ `his research’) reinforce gender schema that tend to portray women as teachers and students, and men as researchers and professionals.

One of the speakers (a sociologist who studies inequality in organizations) suggested that in order to handle this occurrence, you should have a frank and open discussion with your letter writers about what you want them to include. Rather than just give them your vita and your statement for the job, give them talking points — the things you would like them to stress. Of course you can’t demand they address these things, but it is beneficial for two reasons: (1) You can get a better letter that includes the information that is most relevant to the job search; and (2) It makes it easier on the letter writer — especially those who are not intimately familiar with your work.

2. Job Negotiation:

Women tend not to negotiate like they should when they are offered a job. Keep in mind, if you ARE offered a job, the place REALLY WANTS YOU. It is a long process to pick a candidate, and if you are the candidate picked, they do have some investment in getting you to accept. This is highly important because of the Matthew Effect. Basically, if you start out with a lower wage or getting little, you will continue to get little as you advance. Women (and anyone, really) who do not negotiate a good and competitive starting salary, will continue NOT to get all they can as the years go on. This is one reason for the discrepancy between men and women in terms of salary (of course, it’s not the ONLY reason by far).

The speakers suggested the book, Women Don’t Ask. I haven’t read this yet, but feel I should in short order, as I am hopefully about to have to do some negotiation in the next few months.

Some pointers:

• Wages: Call the library and find out what recent hirers have gotten from the department that is trying to hire you. Adjust this for inflation. You should be asking for that much to start.
• If you get an offer, call everyone else that you have applied for and let them know that you have an offer on the table. Tell them you were excited about their job opportunity, and want to know where they are in their decision. This is important for many reasons. You may want a different job more. With more than one offer you can play them off each other. Remember THIS IS A NORMAL CONVERSATION TO HAVE with the chair of the department.
• If you can’t negotiate money (and even if you can), there are other things to negotiate for. Partner accommodation, Family Leave, teaching releases, sabbaticals, computers, tenure clock put on hold if you have children, and more. These are options to think about.

The important thing to remember about negotiation is that you can’t get it if you don’t ask. You are not a bitch for asking, but you are an idiot if you don’t. That was my favorite quote of the day.

Just keep telling yourself, they want me here. They WANT ME.

It seems today is the day for videos. But sometimes, you find ones that just need to be shared. I got this from here by forward from Prof. RFB.

(I Can’t Write No) Dissertation

The Metrics Gang(X’X)ile on Main Street ABD Records

I perpetually have too much to do and not enough time to do it. I do not think I’m alone on this. I do think, however, that I tend to be a greater part of the problem with this than others. It appears I have no ability to say no to research projects. For this summer I have:

1. A network analysis paper to revise and send out
2. A paper on emotions (now with my co-author, thank goodness)
3. A paper on Wikipedia that we are waiting for vetting on
4. Three other papers dealing with business networks for my summer funding
5. A project on group negotiation and status characteristics which requires much data analysis, not to mention putting the tapes of groups onto DVD (takes lots of time) and data entry
6. A paper to revise and send out on racialization as structural symbolic interaction
7. Prepping for my fall class, and my spring class (which will be a different class, ick)
8. MY DISSERTATION

Huh, as I keep thinking about this, other things pop up. Like getting my paper ready for ASA. Oh, and there is a paper on the Jena 6 that is supposed to be this summer too. I’m sure there are others.

I’m coming to the conclusion that in order to do all of this, I’ll need to be super human. Especially since I leave for a month and a half for my fellowship (good for the dissertation, but not these other things). But what goes?

How many projects do you all have running at once? I really need to work on getting this number down, but to what?

UPDATE:

PhD Comics once again summarizes my exact feelings on this matter:

Ironically (and sadly), when Jorge Cham came to my university, I was too busy to go see him speak. Blue went though, and brought back autographed copies of the books.

I spent over ten hours in the library, and was able to produce a lit review and methods section of sorts. I wrote through the pain, and I think the pain is reflected in every single word. I honestly don’t think I’ve written anything so bad since my first year in grad school.

Thanks to Columbus for sitting in the library with me and keeping me on track. Oh, and also for doing a crap load of the work on that paper up there.

Thanks to Killa for the Chinese food and the faux-sexy crawl she did on the way out of the stacks.

I’m done for the semester. But, I’m at the stage that the semester no longer matters. I still have the lit review for publication due to the prof I’m working on this paper with. I swear, if she doesn’t kick me off the paper, I’ll be amazed.

I have recently lost TWO of my committee members. One to the search for more pubs, the other because she decided she doesn’t want to be an academic anymore… she wants to be a weaver. I think that’s pretty sweet. So, now I have to try to hustle up two more people, write my dissertation proposal, and get this done before June.

I just filled out the job market thing for ASA. That is REALLY surreal. I am SO not ready for the job market, but here I go anyway. Is there a “get me a Research I job” god that I can pray too, make a shrine, and give offerings of caffeine and Excedrin?

From an email:

2008 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first textbooks titled Social Psychology. One was by William McDougall, a psychologist. The other was by E. A. Ross, a sociologist This is an appropriate time to assess where this unique, interdisciplinary field has come from and where we are going.

Mark September 26-27, 2008, on your calendar. The celebration will run from 1:00 PM Friday until 1:00 PM Saturday. On Friday afternoon, the program includes a two-hour presentation and conversation with Glen Elder Jr. The conversation will be followed by a reception, and a gala dinner later in the evening.

On Saturday, there are three sessions. The first will feature Shelley Correll and Mitch Duneier discussing Methodological Developments in the first century. The second will feature Patricia Devine and Terri Orbuch discussing Advances in Understanding in the first century. The closing session will feature Jim House reflecting on the next 100 years.

Join your friends and colleagues in recognizing this historic milestone. The speakers will be engaging and thought-provoking, and the dinner promises to be a gala celebration. Regular registration is $90.00; student registration is $50.00. For more details or to register, go to http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/socpsych/index.php

Cordially,

John DeLamater
Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Huh, not sure about the gala part. I don’t really gala it up.

Something I have noticed when a person goes from PhD student to PhD candidate (ABD, ya’ll), is that this new candidate is suddenly full of advice for every person they run across. It’s like successfully defending your prelims suddenly gives you the license to spout off about anything and everything. I am not claiming not to be affected myself, in fact, I think I have been highly affected. Whether we are asked or not, we suddenly have no issue providing wisdom from our high horse of ABDness. And, usually, I think we run on too long and say way too much. I have been on the receiving end of this advice, even after becoming ABD myself, and have noticed that a question that you ask that should take 5 minutes to answer, suddenly becomes a marathon discussion of what you should be doing, who you should be reading, etc.

I’ve been wondering about this a lot. I have also been trying to control this advice giving disease, with limited success. Even in the responses to posts on this blog, I have found myself doing that (such as going on and on to Kristina B. about how she should visit departments. I mean, duh, I’m sure she knows that. It’s like I can’t help myself!). If I do go on and on, this is my apology. It doesn’t seem controllable.

Why does this happen? Some hypotheses please:

1. Perhaps it’s a status thing. Becoming ABD is a huge step in the PhD process. While I am constantly shifting between high status and low status depending upon my interaction partners, ABDness suddenly makes these shifts less extreme. You are very close to a lot of the newer faculty (although they still beat you with the status stick, it’s a less harsh of a beating than before). You also have higher status than most of the other graduate student in the department. Rather than the unclear 1st year, 2nd year, Nth year distinctions, this is a legitimate claim to higher status. That’s heady for someone who is usually on the low end.

2. I will never forget the talk given by the head of my MA department about what graduate school is. She indicated that our purpose here was to be an apprentice. I love that, and find it very true in the way I approach everything. Well, becoming ABD signals that the apprentiship is nearly over (especially when you ignore that pesky, pesky dissertation). We are slowly shifting our identities from graduate students to professors. I think perhaps we try to signal this shift by taking on more of the professorial roles–such as mentoring students. Not only do we say, “Look at my shinny new status,” we also get to say, “See how close to a professor I am now? Now I can start doing some of the things they get to do. So listen to me rattle on and on.”

3. At least when I do this, it is from a geniuine desire to help. Really. I want to help. I imagine that is similar for all ABDs who find themselves with the advice disease. This is the reverse of the incivility issue I discussed two days ago. But, we have to wonder how much of our motives involve: (1) Confirming my nice person identitiy; or (2) Confirming my almost-but-not-quite professor identity?

Thoughts? Anyone else have this disease? Can you tell me how to treat it?

Sometimes I really have no desire to become a professor. Although I love research and enjoy teaching in practice (I dread it in theory), there are times that I want to run screaming from the ivory tower. Today was one of those days.

I won’t go into the details of what happened. I know that my anonymity is barely shielded here, and have little to no hope that it always will be. As such, I don’t think it’s a good idea to spread dirty information about a department which can be traced back to that department (or will be able to be traced back at some point). Suffice it to say:

Politics are inherently a part of academia. Put a whole bunch of Type As on committees together and you are going to get ruffled feathers. Hell, I’m just a graduate student and there are one or two other graduate students that I wouldn’t mind never ever ever having to be in the same room with again. But, why does this lead to bullying? To pettiness? To backstabbing? I know my department is not the only one that faces these issues. And, honestly, mostly it’s not that bad. But sometimes, it just affects me and makes me angry, frustrated, and sad.

Kieran has some covered in this edition of Grad Skool Rulz over at orgtheory.

There also seems to be some newer books on it. Like this one.

So questions for all of you out there: Are there university types where this problem is less pronounced? How do you deal with the bickering? How do you not get involved?