Melissa Baker
@melissabaker712
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Asst Prof @UTEP , @UCMerced PhD, Nebraskan. Political psychology and political communication. Find me @ melissabaker on the better place 🟦☁️
El Paso, TX
Joined June 2013
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Pinned Tweet
Saw a tweet in the APSA discourse wishing for a repository of groups/resources helpful for grad students/junior folks. So, a thread:
AP:
@JawsPoliSci
IO:
@jr_IOscholars
IPE:
@gradstudent_ipe
Judicial:
@JudicialWomen
Jobs (free via
@MichelLandgrave
):
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If you recently got into grad school or got a job & saw that viral tweet mocking announcements, I just need to say that most of us out here are THRILLED for you. We love the announcements, especially when they involve celebratory photos, & we are stoked about your accomplishment.
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“I have a PhD in political science” she whispers as she’s on attempt
#3
of spelling bureaucracy
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My parents don’t understand working in academia at all & have been using pandemic time to learn about academia. My mom called to ask what an h-index is because she found my google scholar page. She printed screenshots of my profile for her & my dad cause it “seemed important” 😭
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Can’t stop thinking about the rejection email I got last week because it mentioned there were 700+ applicants for a single tenure track job. 700+! Absolutely wild.
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Happy last couple weeks of the academic year, everybody
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Exciting news!! I’m joining
@UTEP_PoliSci
as an assistant professor in the Fall! To say I feel lucky to start this particular job would be a major understatement. I’m forever thankful to all the people who got me here & I’m excited to pay it forward at
@UTEP
😊🧵
We are happy to announce that
@melissabaker712
will be joining us
@UTEP_PoliSci
@UTEPLiberalArts
@UTEP
this fall!
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Hello people on the political science job market! If you're not already aware, there's a discipline-wide job market Slack. The updates channel is particularly nice, so you don't have to try to find job updates on the hell site. I can send invite links to anyone who wants to join!
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Kevin McCarthy is apparently on the academic job market
Just in a room with all your colleagues being public rejected over and over and over again.
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Exciting news: I'm joining the University of Toronto
@munkschool
as a postdoc in the Policy, Elections, & Representation Lab under direction of
@PeejLoewen
! I feel incredibly lucky to be joining a great lab & department. Please send any & all Toronto recommendations my way 🙂
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I hate being bummed that Twitter is going down but I am. I found two coauthors on Twitter. I got a grant because of Twitter. I found my postdoc on Twitter. I got job market advice from Twitter. It’s such a great networking & professionalization tool, especially for grad students.
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Used this assignment (via
@hakeemjefferson
) for my public opinion class this semester. Submissions have started rolling in and I've already received a look book, tiktok series, and a short screenplay. These are going to be so fun to grade 🙂
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And just like that, dozens of dissertations were born.
BREAKING: ABC reports that a Russian soldier was heard on radio saying 'we do not know who to shoot, they all look like us'
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Hey political scientists starting assistant professor jobs in the fall! Some of us started a slack group for community & to help with the transition. Let me know if you’d like to join or know someone who might! There are 40-50 of us after just a day so it should be a good group😊
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I spend an entire day in public opinion class talking about how most people don’t know much about politics. A student sent me a tiktok of a college student discovering Bill & Hillary Clinton are married. I’m now having an existential crisis about how old I am.
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I cannot get over this person accidentally sending a student a video of them dancing to Ariana Grande instead of a recorded lecture. The entire minute of dancing is absolutely worth watching.
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I dropped out of college after a sexist & unnecessarily cruel biology professor was my tipping point during a terrible time. Wasn’t sure I’d be able to go back.
Seeing proofs for my forthcoming paper in a biological sciences journal a few months before I finish a PhD is surreal.
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Yesterday I defended my dissertation! Forever grateful for my fantastic advisor (
@matthibbing
) & committee (
@melissaleesands
,
@AGTheodoridis
, Elaine Denny, & Steve Nicholson). I’m blinking in my screenshot attempt & look like I’m watching them do stand up in Alex’s. We tried. 1/3
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Haven’t done my monthly brag about my dad tweet yet this month so this hour’s news: after 5+ years of leukemia + stage IV cancer, countless rounds of chemo, & multiple surgeries that almost killed him, he no longer has any visible cancer. In awe of his strength dealing with this.
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Listening to a senior scholar tell junior faculty it’s weird to see that 2020s grad students have to operate like assistant professors to get a job & junior faculty have to operate like they’re going up for tenure to have a good third year review.
Going to go lie down now.
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@PSProff
Just over here trying to figure out how incorporate a scone bake off so I can get a bunch of free scones
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Ooof, rejection after two rounds of reviews. The decision didn’t seem to come from the reviewers & now I wish I knew who they were so I could send them some coffee or a beer for all that time.
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@mirandayaver
I don’t even understand. Are adults not supposed to get ice cream? Are only women supposed to get ice cream?
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I’m not convinced that APSA is a make or break experience for graduate students but if it is, and canceling APSA would make that much of a difference, we should probably be doing more as a discipline to create opportunities for graduate students.
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Professional news: I successfully logged into Editorial Manager on the first try.
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To continue job market tweet flurry…if you’re going on the poli sci job market, there’s a poli sci job market slack! Not sure who is posting the updates next year but it is a nice way to see search updates while avoiding the hellsite. Any of us in there can send you an invite 😊
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Today I watched a youtube stream of what would have been my graduation so I've now completed the pandemic PhD trifecta: dissertation defense on zoom, starting a job before ever having been in that city, & watching own graduation online. 2021 has been a wild ride.
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MPSA has started cold calling me about submitting to the conference so I have no choice but to give up the number I’ve had for almost 20 years & go into witness protection. Nice knowing everyone.
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My job offer in UX research was about 5k more than my current academic salary (& in a place with a much higher cost of living). We really need to stop implying/telling people, especially grad students, that they’ll be rolling in money in non-ac careers. It’s disingenuous.
PhDs working outside of academia: do you make more money in your post-academic role than you did in academia?
Inquiring minds (of PhDs still in academe) want to know.
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It still feels like an absolute miracle that I completed a dissertation during the pandemic. I’m convinced I can handle anything now.
(Obviously I had to share this on the doomscrolling app with this diss title)
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Thinking about when I was 19 & working three jobs from 5am-midnight six days a week, wondering if I should give up the specific goals I had for myself, & just hoping I’d get to go back to college someday.
Today I start new faculty orientation. What a surreal privilege.
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Exciting news: I received a grant to form an interdisciplinary seminar/working group on emotions & society. My hope is to get disciplines working together to research the role of emotions in topical issues such as pandemic response, misinformation, protests, & the 2020 election.
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Important APSA question: Does this mean there are going to be puppies at APSA?!
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Checking my email & seeing that someone on one of my APSA panels has already sent around their full paper
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I appreciate people looking out for me by sending rumor hellsite screenshots where I’m discussed but I’ve seen them now. My reaction is that I’m gonna go post job market slack updates for folks, send a colleague a funny link, & get ready for a date night. Stay positive, y’all.
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I'm going to say it's not a great sign for grad students that it's August and one of the three general American TT jobs that exist just canceled their search.
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So does the sticker shock over faculty registration rates ($500???) for some conferences ever go away? Or is this just one of those things where people like me who didn’t grow up with money are always going to be flabbergasted even when their university is paying for it?
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If grad students out there are interested in political science x biology work, I’m giving a workshop on biopolitics next week & happy to share materials &/or zoom you in. It’ll mainly address: 1) how poli sci benefits from incorporating bio 2) bio methods 3) data interpretation
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Got reviews back from AJPS is less than a month from submission. The peer review process has slowed down so much that I feel like I should give public kudos & gratitude on behalf of all junior scholars to this timeline.
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I am teaching political psychology this summer & hid a request for memes in the syllabus as a syllabus reading test. Gritty and Jeb(!) have already made appearances & it’s only the first day.
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Paper acceptance day 🎉
Nice way to ease the grant rejection from last week!
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Shoutout to everyone teaching presidency and US elections classes this Fall. I feel like the discipline should start a gofundme to send each of you weekly wine until winter break.
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Anybody have favorite political ads that are super ridiculous? I’m doing a political ad activity in class tomorrow & could use a few more extreme and/or funny ads to go along with the list of classics.
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I still have no idea how the job market works but I had two departments explicitly tell me that having four preps across two institutions as a grad student made me stand out as an applicant. If you’re a grad student outside the top ~15 & not teaching, you might want to start.
3) I can't speak to the experience hopping around Ivies and other name brand unis, but if you're at like the next tier below those and you're *not* teaching, you're not making the cut (at least where I am now).
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Paper acceptance 🎉
Good excuse to really properly celebrate national burrito day tonight.
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Twitter has been dwindling lately & I was worried it might die off but half my feed right now is filled with people fighting over whether it’s good or bad to tweet about APSA acceptances & being super rude about those who are excited.
Academic twitter is alive & thriving! 🙃
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Excited to go to the US next week for a needed break. Best part: after ~5 years of chemo, surgeries, & a long hospitalization, my dad finally has bloodwork labeled as normal. I don’t talk about personal stuff here much except a few mentions of my dad so I’m sharing this major win
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I knew waiting to make APSA hotel reservations would pay off.
Narrator: She did not know. She was procrastinating & is experiencing dumb luck.
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Some of the best grad school advice I received was to pick a dissertation topic you actually really enjoy & not just chase other external factors. I’m glad I listened because I have the thing formatted & the talk practiced, I’m at the finish line, & I still like the project.
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Some good news today:
@kcanelo1
& I learned we are co-recipients (w/
@jrpjrpjrp
&
@mandieatough
) of the award for best gender & politics paper at SPSA! It’s fun that ranting about politics with a friend can turn into a study, even better when other people are also interested! 1/n
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@ThatJBF
Don’t ghost people after interviews. Give candidates a real break before dinners & offer them water constantly. Tell candidates the nature of various meetings (e.g. if there’s a group meeting, explain why it’s those particular people & what the goal is).
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It has finally happened. My mom called asking me to explain Critical Race Theory.
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I know there are plenty of cons for using twitter professionally but among the (longer) list of pros: I just planned an entire paper over dms with someone I’ve never been able to meet in-person after we made a couple jokes in a thread about how we should write a paper.
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Shoutout to MPSA for charging $400 hybrid participation fees so people could pay a ton of money to be unable to access their own panels.
Planning to attend MPSA virtually? Don’t. I thought I would do that this year but the amount of technical issues they are encountering is staggering.
#HybridMPSASucks
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Me trying to explain to my family that it doesn’t really matter if I’ve decided I want to stay at a job because in five years everyone I work with votes on whether or not I get to stay and the vote happening is actually a *good* thing
Me trying to explain my PhD/research to family members I see once a year
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Done with my first year as an assistant professor! Some things I’ve learned:
1) Y’all were right about this being the best job
2) Paperwork never ends
3) Never enable email notifications
4) The approx 100 of you who spent 2022 telling me how great
@Rebecca_A_Reid
is were right
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Exciting news: I saw a roadrunner irl today for only the second time ever.
Oh, also, I got an R&R.
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Tomorrow (9am PST) I'm presenting part of my job market paper showing that certain types of people are predisposed to experience anxiety over politics and want to take political action as a result of this emotional experience.
#APSA2020
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@ozerthinking
YIKES. “Since you asked” would absolutely send me running. I hope your friend doesn’t need this particular job & can find another path that does not involve this department.
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Student: I have a random question
Me: Yeah what’s up
Student: I saw an NPR article about a political science event crossing picket lines and how the union is really mad. Do you know any more details about it?
Me:
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I feel like I can hear this photo
Now the membership + conference is worth the price of admission, many thanks mpsa
feel right at home with this zoom background
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Excited about
#MPSA2022
so I'm going to shoutout some panels w/ grad students who are doing interesting sounding work in political behavior/psychology & methodology! Hopefully we can help make up for how much of their grad school & conference experience has been virtual/remote 🧵
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@stan_okl
My rent is going DOWN in April. I also live in a neighborhood that has built two new complex properties & mixed use condos this year (and a community gym + super nice neighborhood pool with free access to neighborhood residents!). Not being in California anymore is wild haha
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& if you’re on the job market, join the job market slack for basically day-of invite & offer updates! I’m posting the confidential updates this year so you have the luxury of being able to dm your updates to someone who is not on the market so there’s less to worry about 😊
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Between Spicer in/among the bushes and Comey in/among the curtains, things are obviously going extremely well.
OMG, Jim Comey literally tried to blend into the White House curtains to try and avoid interacting with Trump
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The to-do list for finishing my dissertation that was at 60+ items not too long ago is now down to 4 items. Wrapping this up after a chaotic & brutal pandemic year feels like an absolute miracle.
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It’s a weird spot to be just one year into my job & 100% confident I have enough under review + working papers & data/planned collection to get tenure but skeptical that the peer review process will work fast enough even w/ 4 years left
*giant shrug*
Off to submit another paper
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Going on the job market during a pandemic
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Today at LAX a couple had trouble asking an employee questions so I opened a translation app & gave them my phone. They looked exhausted & the woman hugged me & started crying. I just looked at the app again & they were translating from Ukrainian. Jesus… 💔
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New challenge: Not mocking people asking international travel questions for APSA. Not only because it isn’t their fault they didn’t have privilege or means to leave the US growing up but also because most are grad students & punching down is unnecessary.
These tweets, y’all. 😑
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Disappointed to not be at the Pol Comm preconference today as I’m no longer going to APSA.
In the paper I was presenting we ran experiments showing how stress makes people susceptible to misinfo. Interventions, skin conductance data, simulated social media…fun data collection😊
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Leasing manager in Toronto: Remind me what field you’re in?
Me: Political science
Leasing manager: From the United States? Political science? ….by choice?
Whelp.
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I unfortunately was unable to attend SPSA this year so this arrived in the mail today. I love this because it’s a paper with
@kcanelo1
who is a good friend & what’s better than winning something with a friend?? 😊
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Paper acceptance! I've been working on a series of (2-3) papers with colleagues in psychology and cognitive science looking at the role of group affiliation (political, familial) on emotional reactions to moral transgressions. Interdisciplinary collaborations are a fun adventure.
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I asked students to bear with me today because I feel like garbage. After class I got an email with some funny tiktoks & another student brought me a cookie during office hours. Nothing insightful to say. Just feeling lucky & grateful.
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Weeks ago I filled out the form to withdraw entirely and was still emailed a conference badge this week. I think I’m still in the program too. I suspect I’m being counted in the 5,000 attendees, despite currently being in El Paso and not even joining anything on Zoom.
Second was the claim that because ~5000 APSA members are in attendance, this illustrates that APSA members support the org's decision to ignore the picket line.
This reasoning, too, didn't sit right with me, and now I know why
3/n
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Seeing psychologists tweet about uploading vaccine info because MPA at the Palmer House this month has a vaccine + mask requirement when MPSA doesn't even have a mask requirement, while a bunch of political scientists are tweeting about testing positive from ISA, is... something.
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I go back and forth between PowerPoint and R Markdown for slides. I don’t think I will ever fully give up PowerPoint given it does things like suggest a slide background image of a polar bear when you type “polarization.” Just can’t get this anywhere else.
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That time-honored millennials visiting their parents during the holidays tradition
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If I have submitted three new manuscripts in the last ten days, can I pretend today is Friday?
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Pro-tip: Lock down your social media accounts *before* your university puts out a press release about your recent publication on vaccine hesitancy that gets picked up by a bunch of news outlets.
That was an unpleasant few hours of deleting & blocking.
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Hang in there, y’all. I didn’t accept a job until March. There’s still time & either way, you’re so much more than a job or whatever idiosyncratic stuff happens on the job market that’s entirely outside of your control.
This tweet is for ABDs on the job market who still don’t have offers yet. This time last year, I’d had a bunch of interviews but no offers and seeing other people’s announcements was fucking horrible and all I did was cry all the time. It sucks and I’m really sorry.
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Barnes & Noble has 50% off hardcover books today and I feel like this is the place to share this information.
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New pre-print (w/
@IngridHaas
). We find that most people believe political ideology is a choice but when presented with info about the biological roots of ideology, people become less prejudiced toward and more tolerant of "the other side." Short thread:
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@adamjnafa
My first year searching for jobs was basically just a parade of me second guessing every decision I’ve ever made. It sucks. Try to take a real break this winter if you can. You more than deserve it & your mental health will thank you for it 😊
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It's July, which means I'm starting my postdoc at
@UofT
! Excited to contribute to a great lab and learn from this absolutely stacked list of people doing cool research. Also need to plan a Canadian poutine tour, I think.
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@tylerpgarrett
I’m really sorry. Some of the barriers out there really need to be rethought. I hope you can spend your weekend doing things you love & forget about this as much as possible.
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Feeling like a real academic now that I’ve gone to google scholar to see what one of my own papers said & realized I don’t even have institutional access to the paper.
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Lots of wild job market/hiring takes right now. While people are thinking about it…I’m putting together a panel on transitioning to faculty role for incoming faculty & folks going on the job market in the next couple years. If you’re interested in attending, let me know!
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Unsolicited advice to grad students: Keep a document with stuff you do that may be worth putting in job app materials but doesn’t make sense to add to the CV you keep updated.
Sincerely,
A person who has had several people tell me to add things that I completely forgot I did.
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Today I accidentally signed an email to my class with “Prof Baked.” Happy Monday!
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I've seen screenshots of similar emails from class assignments & always thought it was such a nice idea but this being about my dissertation work has me in the best kind of mental shambles over here. Absolutely assigning something similar to students in the future.
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