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| Photo: Image by Flickr User Dimitry B. and used in the Creative Commons. |
If you are a graduate student and you want to get a job in academia, then you need The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. into a Job. Also, if you’re a graduate student like me, and you might be interested in academia but you really have no idea what kind of a job you’re heading towards, then this is still a really useful book.
The author, Karen Kelsky, Ph.D, is a former tenured professor who left academia and founded The Professor Is In,
a website and counseling service aimed at helping Ph.D. students land
jobs. Her book is a no-nonsense approach to navigating grad school and
the job market. Published in 2015, the book is still relevant and full
of useful tips and advice on how students can help themselves. (It has helped other GradHackers as well.)
She knows the job market is tough. She knows that advisors
don’t always help, or may not even know how to help. What do you do in
such tough circumstances? Her answer is simple: "Have your own back.
Protect yourself" (28). And this is Kelsky’s aim and purpose: to teach
us graduate students how to advocate for ourselves...
Though the book’s subtitle, "Turning your Ph.D. into a Job," appears
broad at first, the book is actually focused on one specific type of
job: a tenure track position. I was surprised at this, especially after
reading part one, which is titled “Dark Times in the Academy.’ Part of
the reason I picked up this book was because I thought it would help me
explore jobs outside of academia, but that is not really its scope.
Given that the author starts her book with facts and figures showing the
decline of the academic job market and discusses her own decision to
leave academia, I did not expect her to spend the next 300+ pages
discussing how to get a job in the very same field she left.
Additional resources
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| The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job |
