Many of us are preparing to enter the academic job market this fall and are wondering where to start and how to navigate this unfamiliar and intimidating terrain. In a recent professional development talk at Michigan State University, Dr. Sowande’ Mustakeem offered the following suggestions from her own successful experience on the job market:

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“Dissertating” is a term often used to describe the time between defending your dissertation proposal and the actual public presentation of your final dissertation. In the past, I’ve taken this to mean long hours thoughtfully sipping tea and typing away at my laptop, but since I’ve been All But Dissertation (ABD), I’ve come to [...]

In a previous post, we explained you why cutting back on sleep is never a good idea in graduate school. Hopefully, you will take action and start protecting your sleeping schedule as your most important productivity-refreshing time of the day.

If all the stress of graduate school becomes too much, sleeping might become [...]

      If you’re lucky enough to have a teaching assistantship, you know that summer classes can be an extremely rewarding experience. Here in mid-Michigan, the sunny summer weather puts everyone in a good mood, getting dressed means putting on a sundress or shorts,  and the exodus of most students means ample parking [...]

Last week, I successfully defended my dissertation. (Yay!) It’s a huge milestone, and I am exhausted and happy and proud. But my degree isn’t quite finished yet. As much as I would like to just bask in good feelings and watch some cartoons, there are a number of tiny details to finish, from submitting the [...]

In the grand scheme of grad life, teaching responsibilities loom large. Teaching is an important part of the professor’s mission and learning to teach every student well is a rewarding process that hopefully begins with your first class. In academic spaces, mentioning the word “inclusion” to grads and faculty has eye-turning effects. Some [...]

At the most recent conference of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), held last November, representatives from several academic presses and scholars who had recently published monographs based on their dissertations held a roundtable dedicated to giving current grad students tips on what they should prepare for if they intend [...]