Halfway through my second-year on the tenure-track, I see that I am faced with another important moment in shaping my career. Though I effectively proved that I am an independent scholar through the grueling process of completing a dissertation, I still face the challenge of defining my career for myself. The training wheels are off. It seems, however, that the task of professional self-definition is a more salient and intense process for me because I intend to carve out my own path — one that prioritizes difference-making, health, happiness, and authenticity.
Just after one year in my job, I have stumbled across lessons I learned in graduate school that were exaggerated, completely false, or overly-simplistic. It appears one necessary step of my journey toward a self-defined career as a teacher-scholar-advocate is to unlearn, or at least contexualize, such lessons. Here are 25 lessons that I have identified as problematic or untrue.
- The only fulfilling career path in academia is a tenure-track (and eventually tenured) faculty position at a research I university.
- One goes where the job is. Period.
- All new (qualified) PhDs get (and want) tenure-track jobs.
- People who do not complete graduate school are weak, stupid, or uncommitted.
- You must attend the big, national, and/or mainstream conference in your discipline in order to succeed.
- Academia and activism do not mix.
- Service should be avoided, and never includes community service.
- One only becomes relevant through publishing a lot in the top journal of one’s field.
- Teaching is not as important as research. Really, we do it just to get paid.
- Academia is an equal opportunity institution.
- Higher education is filled with liberal-minded, social justice-oriented people.
- Objectivity exists and is the ideal approach for research and teaching.
- The rankings of universities are an ideal indicator for quality of training.
- Quantitative methods are better than qualitative methods. Can the latter even be trusted?
- One should wait until they are an “expert” to blog or advance other forms of public scholarship.
- Homophobia no longer exists in academia.
- Black people are more likely than white people to get tenure-track jobs — because they’re Black.
- Graduate programs are concerned with the health and well-being of their students.
- If you do not love graduate school, you will hate being a professor.
- Race, gender, and sexuality are narrow areas of research.
- Peer-review is 100% anonymous.
- No one will get mad at you for blogging.
- Breaks during the academic year are just opportunities to get ahead on research.
- Grad students’ opinions matter in the major functions of the department.
- Sexual harassment does not occur in academia.
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