Posts | Cristina Lozano

Academic Job Interview Questions: Amazon Review

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Interview season is almost here and I wanted to give you a review of the interview questions I got. I’ve written already a few posts on interviews (the right mindset and what not to do). I’m trying to guess why and I believe it’s the degree of insecurity it generated for me. Job materials (the cover letter and the gazillion of statements you need to get ready) are… writing. Different from writing papers, but still writing, something we have a lot of experience with. Many academics, myself included, started school when we were 3 and we liked it so much that we never left. We beat the game of school, there were no more levels after the Ph.D. Job interviews are not really part of that game. So this new process can fill you with self-doubt.

Out of the 23 jobs I applied for, I got 10 Skype interviews and 6 campus visits. I should have probably documented better the campus visits, but I did a pretty good job taking notes of all the interview questions. Spoiler alert: they are not that different from the lists that you can find online or that your department has shared with you to prepare you. However, I do think it is important to know which ones are likely to show up on a specific interview based on the type of job and the institution. Why? Easy, you need a different mindset for each institution.

Let me start with practical issues. Interviews usually last between 20 and 45 minutes. Most will involve a video call with the search committee. Be ready for multiple platforms (Zoom, Skype, Teams, Hangouts, you name it) and try to have a backup plan in case your computer or internet connection decides to go on strike. For instance, have your iPad or phone handy (with the appropriate app already installed) or be ready to set your hotspot. You don’t want a technical problem to make even more of a train-wreck. One of my interviews was over the telephone. It is kind of awkward because the committee is together in the same room and you are not sure who you are talking to, you miss all the visual cues. But I made it to the campus visit after that interview, so the phone was not a big issue.

Now to the juicy stuff. I list the type of job and institution, followed by the interview questions and my thoughts on them. Some repeat, just remember you’re like a politician campaigning to get the committee excited and voting for you. I should also add that some of these questions were in Spanish. If you’re interviewing for a language position, the interview will probably be in both languages (or more if the job asks for more languages).

Tenure Track - R1 Institution

Why are you interested in this job?
What are your research plans?
What funding would you apply for research?
How would you teach a translation course at the undergraduate and graduate levels?
What pedagogical approach do you have in your classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels?
What [insert your field here] theories would you use depending on level and type [specific field]?
What undergraduate and graduate courses would you teach related to linguistics (beyond the courses we already teach here)?
How do you use technology in your [X field] and [Y field] courses?
How would you connect your research and your teaching to service in our university and our community?

The first question is usually to warm you up, very open, make sure you take advantage of it, and add interesting information. For this one, I would mention how my training and education prepare me for the job and what I like about the job, department, and university. A trick I learned from @jvcasill is adding a line to pick their interest. Something along these lines: “I would also see myself creating a research group on X. If you are interested, I could elaborate on this”. This gives you the possibility to highlight your strengths but also makes sure you don’t ramble and make them bored with the information they are not interested in. Ask your advisor and other professors to tell you what is “attractive” in you as a candidate. That will give you hints about what you need to highlight. But please, whatever you do, don’t ramble. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. The last thing you want is to make the search committee bored to death.

In this particular interview, you’ll notice there is a balance between teaching and research questions. Also, they are asking about how to bring in money, which gives you a hint that they don’t have a lot of money there. This is field-dependent, some fields rely 100% on grants, but the Humanities… not so much.

If the job involves both graduate and undergraduate, make sure you have an answer for how you would do organize/teach those courses differently.

For the technology question, you don’t need to go crazy. Just explain how you use it or how you plan to use it in the future. Remember that you might not have experience with every single detail they ask for, but you need to show that you can do it if they ask you to, you have a plan. If your field uses special software, make sure you mention them. They might be interested in online teaching. Check their course offerings to see if they already have some. If you feel lost with online teaching, check out this other post.

Lecturer (Non-Tenure Track) - Ivy League

How does a class from Cristina look like?
How is a typical student-centered class?
How would you create an interactive activity related to food? (I had given an example related to food earlier)
Could you tell us about your M.A. thesis? (My M.A. was in teaching, more related to the job than my Ph.D. Research)
How do you use technology in your classes?
Would you say your teaching approach is communicative? What’s the role of technology within the communicative framework?
Do you incorporate literary texts in your classes?
Have you ever used short films in your classes?
Which textbooks have you used?
How do you apply your research to the class? (plus lots of specific follow-up questions)

This interview was entirely in Spanish (the three elite universities I interviewed for were like that). Do you see how different these questions are? Here’s when the mindset shift needs to take place. Before you start this interview, think about someone you know (Paco González) who has a similar position and repeat to yourself three times (magic always happens with the number three, right?): I’m Paco González.

I didn’t do it and unsurprisingly, I didn’t get the job. The literature questions throw me off and I wasn’t ready to discuss textbooks at different levels. Why? I was still thinking like researcher Cristina, not like teacher Cristina, and this job was for teaching Cristina. Also, I emphasized what I do in translation classes, and this institution couldn’t care less about teaching technical (legal, medical) translation. Knowing the department’s culture or approach is crucial to avoid this mistake (I wrote about it here).

A word on textbooks. You can mention the ones you like, bonus points if you find out the one they use (check course hero, sometimes students upload materials). But be very careful with the ones you don’t like. They might ask you to mention some you don’t like. Refrain from saying you don’t like them and just point out how you would do it differently. You never know whether they were a reviewer for those materials you don’t like. I’ve made this mistake before (luckily not during an interview). I said I didn’t like X publisher to a new colleague only to later find out she was friends with everyone working at the publishing company.

Tenure Track - R1 Institution

What is the important contribution of your research?
What are your research plans?
1. Why is [specific phenomenon I research] important?
What courses would you teach in the [specific field] program that would meaningfully complement that program?
What courses would you teach for the [specific program]? What undergraduate and graduate courses would you teach in X program?
How would you teach a teaching methods course?
Could you explain what your vision for an ideal language program is?
What are some of the main challenges in directing an L2 program? How would you resolve them?

This job involved language coordination and it shows from the questions that the administrative portion of the job will be significant. Get ready for those questions too. This is probably harder because there is no “Administration Statement” similar to the research and teaching statements. And we thank the academic gods for not having that statement. Writing a statement forces you to reflect, and since you haven’t done it in the area of administration, this probably means you have devoted less time to defining your vision.

People who know me would tell you that I’m very organized. When I was an assistant coordinator, my coordinator was really happy with me, and… well, I just know I’m good at it. However, I was terrible at answering those questions. Why? Because I assumed that everyone thinks like me. Everyone answers emails quickly, puts things on a spreadsheet, documents the process, prepares materials, etc. Experience has taught me this is not the case, at all. What’s the most blatantly obvious thing for me, is not for many others.

Also, I had this idea that my answer had to be perfect for what they needed in each department. This would involve spending a significant amount of time working there to identify the needs and make plans. Of course, if you are interviewing, you don’t have that information. Don’t get me wrong, you need to get as much information as possible about the job, department, and university, but you won’t be able to know everything. And that is ok. Knowing what I know now after having interviewed a few people, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know specific details about the department. What matters is that you show the way you think and approach problems. Your specific proposal for an administration issue might not fit perfectly with my department, but if it is sound and logical, you will be flexible and know how to revise it once you get to know the culture better. However, you do need to show sensitivity to the university’s general culture. For instance, when it comes to teaching if you tell me that you are very strict and enforce draconian deadlines of assignments no matter what excuse the students give, you are telling me you won’t be a good fit with my department. We have a good proportion of students who work full-time jobs and have family obligations. You need to show sensitivity towards them. However, if you were interviewing for a job at West Point, strict deadlines might be the appropriate rule for their culture. I know this might sound contradictory: you don’t need to know everything about the department, but need to know the department. My point is that if you propose a course on Bilingualism in Mexico and they actually need a course on Bilingualism in Paraguay, if your explanation for the course is exciting, don’t worry about choosing the wrong country. They know you will be able to switch gears.

Tenure Track - R2

Why are you interested in this job?
How do you envision working with a diverse student population?
1. Follow up: how do you deal with the issue of correctness with a very linguistically diverse class?
Tell us about your research
What are your next plans for research?
How would your research results transfer into the X classroom?
What theories have you applied for teaching X courses?
What [specific field of study] courses have you taught?
What are the differences between teaching online and face to face?
How are you involved in the life of your department?
What are your strengths contributing to the departments' life?
Finally, what do you want to tell us about yourself that we haven’t asked you?

These questions show a balance between teaching, research, and service. They also show that the institution has a diverse population and they care about such diversity. There are a couple of questions related to the department, indicating that they expect you to be around and show some initiative. Also, you’ll notice that they had more questions (I haven’t included all the follow-up questions here, but there were a few). By the time we got to the last question, I was exhausted (this was my third interview in one day). Question 12 was a freebie, a very welcoming invitation to shine, but it caught me off-guard. I remember I paused, took a few seconds to think, I even said out loud: “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that question”, but then… I said something surprisingly good, I hadn’t planned it. It could have gone wrong. Have a list of things you want to make sure they know about you and, if they ask you a similar question, you’ll know how to shine.

Lecturer (Non-Tenure Track) - R2

What is your experience with [technical field]?
How would you prepare students emotionally for a difficult situation in [very specific field] process?
How would you structure a minor in [X field]?
What courses would you create for [X,Y, and Z technical fields]? (the three tracks they envision for the minor/major)
What is your administrative experience?

This interview was straight to the point. They want you to create a program, they care that you can handle things administratively but couldn’t care less about your research. Do you remember I gave detailed plans about my research in an interview with a Provost and it backfired? Well, this was it.

It has taken me over a year to look back and see how the interview questions tell you a lot about what the search committee is looking for. I would suggest that you write down the questions for each interview (right after the interview, to make sure you don’t forget), and then, if you get the campus visit, go over with them with your advisor or someone more senior than you. They will probably see what the questions mean, what they are looking for, and you will be better prepared for the campus visit. Good luck out there 💪🏽

Academic job market: where, when, and how

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A friend and former colleague recently message me where I looked for jobs. I sent him a quick list of sites I could think at the top of my mind. I thought my answer was pretty insubstantial, but it turned out he didn’t know about the sites I mentioned, so I figured I would write about it and let anyone interested know. I told him I could write a blog post about it, and he suggested a: where, how, and when looking for jobs. So here it is.

Let me give you some background on my journey to landing a tenure track job. In my 4th year as a Ph.D. student, I started preparing materials for the job market and sent applications to two jobs. Location was very important to me, so I only applied to the two that were located in the area where I was interested. They were both lecturer positions (for those unfamiliar with terminology: teaching, non-tenure track, non-research). That year, I was hoping I would get an extension on my Ph.D. program (it’s supposed to be 4 years, although most people take a bit longer), and I didn’t put much effort into preparing the materials. What do I mean by much effort? I wrote them (which is very time-consuming), and they underwent one round of comments from my advisor (who was not very keen on me leaving the department that year, she wanted me to stay for another year). So the first year I sent a total of two applications with materials that had not been heavily vetted. You can guess the result: 0 answers. The good news was that I got a nice competitive fellowship for my fifth year.

When

Fast forward to my second year on the job market, I knew the story had to be different. Let’s start with the when. You should have your materials ready before the semester starts, the summer before you are on the market, you should be spending a significant amount of time writing and reviewing your materials. Jobs will start coming out in September, but don’t freak out if there’s nothing on your specific area of expertise during September because they will keep coming out until mid-November (I’m not including post-docs here because 1. I barely applied to any, 2. they don’t always follow the same calendar). Also, visiting positions will come out later, during the Spring semester (March/April). We observed a new trend of certain universities posting their jobs earlier than what it used to be normal to get the best candidates early in the game. This means that you need your materials in a pristine state by early September.

Where

Now that you know when jobs come out, where do you look for them? Here is a list of what I used (and this list is probably also useful for professors who have an upcoming opening, you know where to advertise them). Note that these websites are mostly for the US and Canada.

The Chronicle of Higher Education & Higher ed jobs: these two sites have academic jobs in every field. They are very intuitive and user-friendly.
LinguistList: this is a mailing list specialized in linguistics. Here you might also find some jobs in Europe. If you are not a linguist, figure out which is the main mailing list for your server and they will also have jobs.
AATSP: this one gets even more specialized. It’s the American Association of Teachers of Spanish & Portuguese and they also have a jobs section. Again, if this is not your field, look for professional or teacher associations, they might also have a jobs section.
LinkedIn: I wouldn’t spend much time here, it’s too broad and I think most universities don’t post here. But it’s worth having a look. However, if you are looking for jobs outside the US or industry jobs, this is a good resource (I just opened it while writing this post and saw that DuoLingo is looking for an intern, make sure you follow the right people to see those positions). If you are using it, make sure your profile is in good shape.
The wiki: most fields have a wiki where people post new positions, but also whether they’ve been called for an interview, a campus visit, etc. This has a lot of information, but some people get obsessed and overthink it. Moreover, it is based on anonymous contributions. I have the impression that most are nice and honest, but people can lie (for reason I still don’t understand). If you have obsessive, tendencies, you might want to skip this one.

For all these sites, you can create alerts. That way, every there is a new posting, you’ll get an email. Well, maybe don’t do it with the wiki, you might go crazy if you get comments every time some adds information. But don’t feel the need of creating the alert. If you check the sites a couple of times a week, it’s also enough. Know what suits your personality best. And don’t forget about your network. Everyone should know that you are looking for a job, they will send you posts that might fit your profile.

How

Create a system: If you want to land a job, you are going to have to send tons of applications. Tons can mean different things in every field. In my field (Hispanic Linguistics), I have the impression that people send between 40 and 50 (all academic, mostly tenure-track, some lecturer and postdocs). A good friend of mine was in economics and he sent over 120 applications (both academic and non-academic). My point here is that you are going to need a system. I kept track of all applications on a spreadsheet on google docs, which I shared with the professors who were sending my letters of recommendation. Here’s a screenshot of how it looked by the end. Light green = submitted, bright green = Skype interview, purple = campus visit.

Workshops: attend a few workshops about how to prepare. Pay attention to who is giving the workshop, because that is the perspective you are going to get. During my job market year, the professor in my department who used to give the workshop had been on sabbatical, so we didn’t get the workshop the previous spring. Given that we didn’t have that resource, I decided to organize a series of workshops. The bottom line here is: if they don’t offer them, you can organize them. I invited a senior faculty member, the professor who’s usually in charge of this (she was back! 🙏), and the newest faculty member. Everyone offered a different and valuable perspective. Here’s the non-fancy spreadsheet I used to organize speakers, times, attendees, and questions.

One more note on workshops. If you are like me, you will feel compelled to go to all the possibly imaginable workshops offered within a 50-mile radius. Don’t. Select a few, make sure whoever gives them is competent, and then be confident that you did your job. The last workshops I attended (not the ones I’m mentioning here, others organized by the university) did not add anything new to what I already knew.

Feedback: you want to have feedback from your advisor and a few other people. Maybe someone you know is good and experienced at giving feedback. A person outside of your field would be nice too, particularly if that profile is going to be on your search committee. People in your cohort who are on the job market can also give you good feedback, they are sucking all types of information to improve their materials and can give you good comments. But, same as with workshops, don’t go overboard. At some point, you are going to get contradictory feedback, and you will be the one making the decision. Don’t forget that your materials are supposed to represent you. This is good preparation for what lies ahead on the other side of your Ph.D. defense. You will be the one making the decisions.
Interfolio & recommendation letters: you don’t need to pay for interfolio, although if you do, it might make your life easier when it comes to handling your letters of recommendation. I didn’t pay for it, so I cannot offer you much advice on that end. Letters can be tricky, make sure you give your recommenders plenty of time. You don’t want to miss a deadline because your letter didn’t arrive, so go ahead and contact them now. Tell them what your plans are (what type of jobs, where, etc.). These letters are long and take time to write, it’s only fair that you give them time.

I’m very happy my friend sent me the question formulated as when, where, and how. I wasn’t thinking of the how and I just realized it’s the glue that connects everything. This process will be probably new for most of you, it involves a lot of insecurity and uncertainty. Here, I’m giving you a plan, if you stick to it (and you did your homework building your CV throughout your Ph.D. studies), you can at least feel confident that you did a good job. The result is never guaranteed, but for sure you will learn with the process. Happy to take more questions you might have about looking for academic positions!

Ask for more

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Some of you know that I’ve been thinking about making videos about bilingualism, teaching, academia, and some random rambling. Until I figure out how to edit decent videos, I’ve decided that a blog would be an easier entry point to share some ideas with you. If you know me, you’ve probably received at some point an article or a podcast that made me think of you, or that I knew you would love. I actually heard in a podcast that sharing content with your people is a love language. This definitely resonates with me and I guess it is why I decided to start a blog: to share those ideas with more people.

The academic job market season is here and I’m not telling you anything new if I say that this year is going to be the toughest ever. For those of you in the middle of it, you probably have already read The Professor is In (if you don’t know it, stop reading here and go get that book), have prepared your materials, sent applications, and maybe even got an interview. I am going to press the forward button until you get an offer (I know, in 2020/2021, this is going to be almost impossible, but bear with me because I think this is still important). When I got my job offer I thought I was done, I could finally breath, relax and finish my dissertation. Little did I know how stressful the negotiation process would be (or at least it was for me).

I was lucky to have an advisor with top negotiation skills who helped me navigate the process. I had attended workshops on negotiating academic jobs, but the real problem was my fear of asking for things. These were some of the thoughts going through my head when I had to negotiate: “I don’t know enough”, “I’m asking for too much”, “They’ll think I’m an arrogant”, “They’ll rescind the offer”, “Can someone else do this for me?”. The trugh was that I went through a rigorous selection process and I had all the qualifications they were asking for. Why was it so hard for me to ask for the appropriate conditions to conduct my research and teach efficiently? Answering that question would probably take a few years of therapy. In the meantime, I’m going to share with you how to make negotiations less nerve-wracking.

I received an email from the provost to schedule a phone call on February 13th and accepted the offer on March 4th. During those two weeks, I had trouble sleeping and focusing on wrapping up my dissertation. This is why I’m writing this post, I wouldn’t want you to go through the same struggle. For many Ph.D. students, this is the first time you are actually negotiating an offer and chances are that you have no clue about what to do. On top of that, if you are a woman like me, you might have a hard time asking for things. But I have some good news: you can train to get over this fear and you should start practicing now.

When I noticed negotiation was getting tricky, I did a quick search on negotiation books. One idea that stuck with me was: “If you never hear no, you are not asking enough” Ask For It. However, I now realize that this behavior does not change overnight. You need to practice it and you can start as soon as you are done reading this post. You will soon notice that 1. you will get a lot more things and 2. it is ok to hear no. Where do you start? I’ll give you a couple of examples:

I’ve been buying second hand technology online and I have asked for a discount on every single item. Guess what, I’ve got the discount (or close) on all of them. I used to be afraid of asking for discounts, but after doing it a few times, the fear has completely disappear.
The other day I went to a bar with live music (I drove 1 hour to get there, that’s how much I miss live music in these COVID times). When we finally got a table, it wasn’t a great table, we were far away from the music. I had noticed that a couple sitting at a much better table was about to leave. I asked the waitress whether we could wait a couple minutes and get the nicer table. She said no, but I felt happy for having tried. A couple minutes later, after we were already sitting at our crappy table, she came and told us we could get the nicer table.
Finally, I haven’t tried this one yet, but I found it interesting. Next time you go to a coffee shop/bar, ask whether you can have a 10% discount. Most likely you won’t get it, and you will realized that you’re still alive and nobody cares that you asked for it. Remember, the purpose is getting over the fear of asking for things (and sometimes you actually get the discount).

You should ALWAYS ask for a discount.

Whether you're buying a coffee, or asking your landlord for a discount on rent during #Quarantine.

It's NOT about getting the discount.

It's about getting rejected and realizing everything's OK.

BONUS: Sometimes you get the discount 🤠
— Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) May 20, 2020

As for how my actual negotiation went, I had read and been advised to do everything via email. However, the provost insisted on talking and was not giving me any details about the job other than the salary (no info on start up funds, research funds, nothing, technology). I tried to get some information via email but after a week going back and forth, he requested to talk on the phone again. I was petrified. I sat down with my advisor and we went through a list of everything I should ask for and, most importantly, why I deserve it and how it would benefit the institution. I couldn’t sleep the night before talking to him, I was picturing him getting outraged at me for asking for an expensive eye-tracker (I actually need it to continue my research). Well, none of this happened, he was very cordial, eager for me to accept the offer. He took notes of everything I asked for and got back to me a week later saying yes to everything I had asked for. This probably means that…I could have asked for more. In the meantime, I received another offer, which I also negotiated. This second negotiation was a lot easier emotionally. However, I did not get many of the things I asked for (the department’s chair really tried to get some of my requirements, but not all universities have the same means). The decision between the two offers (both at the assistant professor level) was fairly straight forward once I knew the job conditions.

Finally, I want to emphasize that negotiating reasonable conditions required to efficiently carry out your job is not selfish. It is an act of support for all those that look like you. As I recently heard on this podcast: “you are going to ask for more, because when you teach someone how to value you, you teach them how to value all of us.” And this is crucial for women and minorities in general. We need to keep asking for more in order to normalize it and ensure that we don’t get any less than the average white guy. For some of you this post might be obvious, consider yourselves lucky! But for many of us, reaching the negotiation stage is nerve-wracking. Start practicing now and your future self will thank you.

Be the imperfect academic

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Not that long ago, I was having a conversation with someone who didn’t know me well. At some point, I mentioned that I was a perfectionist. He immediately pointed back to an earlier comment I had made about finishing something when it was good enough and, hence, he thought I was not a perfectionist. I can’t blame him, I used to have the same idea about what perfectionism was. I never gave too much thought to the topic until I bumped into this podcast (Perfect Is the Enemy, from Women at Work by the Harvard Business Review).

I used to think about perfectionism as a mixed bag of positive and negative qualities. Think about the cliché response people give during job interviews when asked about weaknesses: “I’m such a perfectionist”. This answer implies that perfectionism is “bad”, a weakness that probably makes you overthink. But at the same time… it is “good”, because, you know, it’s an interview and you have to look good. You say this because you want your potential employer to know that you produce quality work, even better, “perfect work”.

Right from the beginning of the episode, I could see myself reflected in many of the behaviors they describe. Here’s a list of ideas that particularly resonated with me and changed the way I see perfectionism:

Perfectionist tend to dismiss compliments by saying “oh, that’s nothing”
They ruminate a lot about negative feedback and spend too much time avoiding making mistakes
Someone with high standards focuses on the big picture, a perfectionist gets lost in the details
People with impostor syndrome tend to constantly raise their standards and think that high achievement is the only way to escape disaster.
Some smart kids learn that high achievement gives them social acceptance

Even if this doesn’t apply to you, chances are that it does apply to someone you work with or interact with regularly, and it’s a good idea to be aware of the process of thinking. Perfectionism, although suffered by both men and women, affects women more. Research shows that when women make mistakes, they are remembered for longer and are judged more harshly. This leads women to believe they need to be perfect to succeed. Because they cannot be perfect at everything, they develop impostor syndrome. I liked how in the podcast, they defined impostor syndrome as a reaction to sexism, and acknowledging this fact gives us power about how to react.

“Perfectionism is not a virtue, but a form of self-sabotage. If we try to be perfect, we just get on our own way. We ruminate over small mistakes and never take risks on conversations” Dr. Alice Boyes

I experience perfectionism both in my personal and professional life. I remember a few years ago when preparing dinner with my boyfriend at the time, he would try to be nice and invite his roommates to join us for dinner. I would see that there was enough food for a nice meal for two people, but it would not be enough for four people. Notice how I said a “nice meal”. He just wanted to spend a nice evening with them (which is what would happen). However, I would experience it as “they are going to be hungry”, “this is not a decent meal”. The truth is that nobody was hungry and nobody was thinking the meal was indecent, it was just all in my head. My head tends to think that if I have someone over for dinner, I need to prepare a three-course banquet with a butler (usually me being the butler). The catch point here is that, would I have been left to my own devices, those meals would not have happened, because they were not perfect. And here is where it gets dangerous and what I’ve been thinking a lot about. How many things have I missed because they were not perfect according to unrealistic expectations created in my head?

Moving to work, you have no idea how painful writing articles is for me. It is a draining experience that leaves me exhausted and makes me want to run away. Among the thoughts that cross my mind are: you are lazy, you just procrastinate all the time, this is mediocre, etc. Being realistic, I am a junior researcher, doing junior things, right? I should probably get that tattooed on my forehead because, when I’m writing, my head thinks that I should write as if I had been doing it for 20 years. Of course, compared to that imaginary noble laureate researcher, what I produce is 💩. The process is so painful, that I just reject the idea altogether and prefer not to do it. But then I go to conferences and I see that what I’m producing is not that bad at all and, actually, people find it interesting.

I first listened to this podcast in October 2020 and I’ve listened to it again a couple more times. Now that I’m forcing myself to write this blog, I realize that I have started taking some steps to try to keep perfectionist-Cristina at bay. One important takeaway is that you cannot wait for your thoughts to change your behavior. You do it the other around: you use your behavior to change your thoughts. I now serve indecent meals when I have friends over, I’m going to start a crappy research project this summer, and I will start making crappy youtube videos about bilingualism 😉.

Campus visits part 2: chit chat

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This week I answer the questions a friend sent me:

“What tips can you give me regarding what to talk about while a professor drives to/from the airport or during individual meetings with faculty? I’m guessing they should be very different types of conversations and I would appreciate your input. Also, do you think that faculty share with each other what you talk about during those conversations? Can you talk about research money? I’m afraid at a SLAC they won’t like if I make too many research questions. Finally, a family member lives close to one of the universities where I’ll interview, can I mention it?”

My immediate mental reaction was “Well, it depends”. Don’t forget that you’re interacting with regular people, everyone is different and you’ll need to adapt to their personalities. But as I gave it some more thought, there are certain general principles. A few topics stored in a handy folder in your brain disk will save you if you bump into someone on the quiet side of humanity (which happens).

While people are walking/driving you around, ask about your surroundings. Where do professors usually live? How do you commute? Do you have any favorite restaurants/supermarkets? A good search committee will tell you all this. I distinctly remember how one committee immediately understood where I was coming from and what I could like. They made sure to take me to the only hipster restaurant in town, drove me around the neighborhood where professors lived (beautiful houses), told me that there were organic supermarkets in town, and that many people from California were moving there because of its affordability. However, not every committee will plan this so well, so be prepared with a bunch of these questions. Inquiring about life in town is beneficial for two reasons: you get an idea about how life there would be, but you also show your strong interest in that interview, you are getting ready for life there. This point is important. Don’t forget the committee knows that you’re dating around other departments and they are also gauging how likely it is that you’ll choose them (read here on what you can learn about the academic market from watching The Bachelor).

Individual meetings are harder to fit in one box, they come in different shapes, but business-related topics are probably expected. If you are meeting with someone in your field of research, you could talk about your next research projects (similar to what you would do at a conference). Money, however, can be a tricky topic. Questions about the salary are out of the table. This is obviously an important factor for selecting the job, but a quick google search will give answers about what to expect and you’ll discuss it with the dean/provost when you get the offer. Nonetheless, you can ask about support for different areas of the job. If the job is research focus, what kind of resources are available for going to conferences, starting a lab? Are there programs supporting undergraduate research? What about grant writing support? I wouldn’t ask about a specific $ amount (i.e., how much money do you get for…?). Instead, ask about resources and see whether they volunteer how much money you would get. If they don’t, you can follow up with something along the lines of “and how many conferences do you usually attend?”, focusing on the outcome rather than on the figure.

As for asking too many research questions, yes, this can happen. A good idea is figuring out how much research is expected from you, which can be very difficult. Just to give you an idea, I’m in the second year of my tenure track and I’m still not clear about how many articles I’m expected to write for tenure. But you can google associate professors from the department. Do they publish every year? Or have they published only a couple of articles while working towards tenure? The former scenario would grant you permission to ask a good amount of research questions (they’ll want to hear about them too, it shows you understand what you need to do the get tenure). The latter alternative would caution you against asking too many research details, they’ll immediately see that you don’t belong there.

Personal information is also tricky. The rule of thumb is to share it only when it plays to your advantage. I needed a visa/green card sponsorship, which is “bad” (aka, you’ll cost them more money), so I didn’t mention it until I got to the negotiation. Conversely, a colleague made sure the committee he interviewed with knew he had a green card because it’s one headache less for them. Having a family member close by is usually good, it makes the place look more attractive for you, so go ahead and share it.

Faculty members will talk about you. Both during the campus visit and during the meeting where they’ll decide on which candidate they will invite. Rather than reporting on the whole conversation you had with them during lunch, they will more likely share impressions and include the snippets they took away from those conversations. And you want them to talk about you. Otherwise, it just means they forgot you. The forgetting can happen after Zoom interviews. They go through a lot of people in a short period of time, so saying generic things that seem to come out of a human resources manual won’t get you far. But campus visits are more intense and have fewer candidates, so it’s harder to forget. Remember that they point of the campus visit is to getting to know each other better. The interviews, meals, etc. are a way to achieve that goal. And committee members are looking forward to hear what their colleagues thought of you. Each one will have a different perspective and they want to hear the other parts. Just to give you an example, I want to hear about what senior members thought of a candidate and (I assume) they want to hear about my perspective as someone who just went through that experience and as someone who is specialized in the same research/teaching field.

Finally, remember these are some guidelines. Don’t freak out if you end up talking about research on the ride to the airport or the best restaurants in town during your meeting with the chair. A big part of the final decision is chemistry, just like in dating. Discussing your favorite Netflix shows might help you achieve that chemistry (but planning these conversations borders sociopath, so please, don’t plan do it). Like I’ve mentioned before, adopting an interviewer mindset can help. How would you feel if you are interviewing someone who has memorized a script to interact with people? I wouldn’t trust that person. You’ve probably prepared enough, don’t let that preparation make you sound scripted. Instead, go to the interview being curious about everything, the people, students, the place, etc. Pay attention to how you feel there, did you enjoy the conversations or were you tense because you couldn’t speak your mind? This is key information for making your final decision. Good luck and let me know how it went!

Campus visits: what to expect

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, right when we were first starting to hear about COVID in China, I was preparing for campus visits. I did 6 interviews in approximately 3 weeks, traveling to 5 states all around the US. I’m not going to lie, it was very stressful. I literally started getting some grey hair during that time (and I know other people who had the same experience). However, I wouldn’t say it was a bad experience. I had been preparing for 5 years and this was the moment to show it. A couple of professors in my department advised me to “enjoy the attention”, “you’ll be like a Hollywood actress, everyone drives you around, takes you out for meals, and really wants to listen to you”. I’m not a fan of attention, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. But, to tell you the truth, the stressful part was the anticipation of each interview. The actual day of each visit was good, exhausting, but a good experience.

Statistically speaking the odds were on my side. On average, universities invite 3 people, so I was guessing I would get rejected two out of every three interviews. Obviously, this is not always the case, I have friends who had just one and got it or vice versa. But in my case, the math kind of applied. I got two offers, which gave me the leverage to negotiate. I also had to withdraw from one of the processes, which brings me to my first point.

Timing: some universities will let you choose a date. If things went well and you have multiple campus interviews, you will need to coordinate dates. When possible, try to schedule first the interview you are least interested in. The stakes will be lower and it will allow you to practice. Timing is also important for estimating when you should be hearing about an offer. In an ideal world, you get multiple offers at the same time. However, this is not entirely within your control, so don’t obsess about it because there is not much you can do.
Coordination: if you have to fly to multiple interviews, you can fly from one interview to another (just tell them the airports where you need to fly from and to), but plan a free day in between the two interviews. Campus visits are intense and you will need some time to rest. Also, flights get canceled and you don’t want to stress about not making it to one of your interviews. This happened to me, a storm hit the city where I had a layover, and I got stuck for an extra night. That buffer day allowed me to arrive at my next interview right on time. Make sure you pack for both consecutive interviews. Having the second suitcase ready proofed really handy. I literally went home from the airport, showered, got the new suitcase, and took the train to go for dinner with the search committee of my third campus interview.
Teaching demo: ideally you can reuse your teaching demo for multiple visits. In the real world, they can ask you to follow the syllabus and you’ll have to teach very different classes, which takes time. If you are still working on your dissertation, you can count on zero time to make some progress on that end, so plan accordingly. For the class, prepare whatever materials you need in advance. You can then ask the visit organizer to make copies for however many students you have in the class. One thing I did was give a piece of paper to each student and ask them to write their name on it so that I could call them by their names. I should say that the exact same class (that I taught three times) went great in some places and went not so great in other places. You’ve probably had this experience before. I actually liked teaching these classes, it really gives you an idea of the type of student you would be working within that institution. I’m guessing this year many teaching demos will be online (even if your campus visit is in person, classes might be happening online). This will be harder in terms of connecting with the students, but you might find these tips useful. Make sure you include some sort of interaction between students (breakout rooms, a google doc, etc.). Also, ask about camera policies or other details you might need to prepare your class.
Job talk: here is where you present your research (dissertation if you are finishing up your Ph.D.). This presentation should be accessible to a wide range of people outside of your field. Make sure you also talk about what comes next. It is important to have ideas for your next project, this shows the search committee that you are tenurable. You need to practice this presentation two million times until you can recite it by heart, but sounding natural. The chapter on presentations from The Writing Workshop offers great advice on how to make your presentation engaging. You usually have a few minutes alone before the presentation in order to get ready. I would advise you to refrain from checking your phone during that time. I made this mistake and 5 minutes before giving my last presentation, I saw an email with an offer from my current job (to be accurate, the provost wanted to talk to me, but I knew what that meant). I got really excited and it was probably my best job talk, but imagine the email had been bad news. You want to have your mind as fresh as possible. Despite the repetitiveness of this part of the interviews, I enjoyed job talks because they give you an idea about the intellectual environment you would be surrounded by. Even if people in that department work on areas completely different from yours, I noticed differences in the type of questions I was getting from the professors. Some were exclusively interested in what I was going to do in the class, but others were really interested in the topic. This is great information for you, do you want to be in a place focused on teaching or do you want more time for your research?
Interviews: you will have interviews with the provost/dean, the search committee, and sometimes with the chair and students. Some of the questions will be repetitive from your Zoom interview but remember you are not expected to give a different answer. Search committee members have reviewed tons of applications and might not remember all your details. The interview with the Dean/Provost can go in many different directions. Some will just talk to you about the university, some will ask general questions. I don’t feel you need to prepare anything extra for this part. The only question that caught me by surprise was “What can you tell me about the school?” The dean had asked me what I knew about the department and about the university, but I didn’t know anything about the school (and she expected it, she warned me before asking the question that it was ok if I didn’t know the answer).
Meals: meals are interviews, do not forget it. It’s an opportunity for the committee to get to know you in a less formal way, see whether you would be a good colleague or someone who would stay in that position. But don’t forget it is also your opportunity to ask about what’s it like to live and work there. Prepare questions that show your interest both in the position (what kind of funding opportunities do you have? how does collaboration with students work? are there mentorship programs for new faculty? etc.) and the area (where do professors usually live? what do you do outside work? etc.). I wouldn’t order any alcohol even if other people do. You want to be as fresh as possible both that day and the following.
Personality: this post was actually a request from a friend who now has campus visits and he specifically asked about the role of personality. I would say it plays an important role, but I’m not sure there is much you can do about it :-) Humans are very good a picking when someone is not being authentic, so if you think “there’s something wrong” with your personality and try to change it, it’s going to show, and it won’t be good.
Other candidates: there is absolutely no point in trying to know who the other candidates are. I cannot think of a single reason why that information would help you. Academic profiles are so specific that there is very little you can change. You cannot change your publications or your research. You can definitely present it in different ways, but that depends on knowing what the search committee is looking for, not on who the rest of the candidates are. In a couple of my campus visits, I knew who the rest of the candidates were. In one, it was another student from my department, and through another colleague, I found out who the third candidate was. I coordinated with my friend so that I would do the interview first and I would be able to give her all the information. I actually wanted her to get the job, I was using this interview as practice. Looking at our CVs, we were both stronger than the other candidate. Wanna guess who got the job? The third candidate. The search committee saw that the third candidate was way more likely to stay in that position than either my friend or me. On another campus, I was the last candidate interviewed. Three people, two graduate students, and one professor told me or my advisor that I was the best candidate. I didn’t get that one either. My point is that you never know what they are looking for. Even when you know, there is very little you can change.

Looking back, I think one of the things I got wrong was that it was all about them and I had no say. I would encourage you to go into an interview, well prepared, but also curious about how it would be like to work there. Do you think you would get along with those people? What impression did you get from the students? Do you sense there is a good environment? What kind of resources will you get if you are there? These are all questions I was not thinking of because I was too focused on getting a job, any job. I think I didn’t feel like I was entitled to ask those questions. I now see how wrong I was. At the end of one of my campus visits, I started talking to the Uber driver. I asked him whether he was ubering full-time or part-time. He told me he had a full-time job, but he had been there “for only two years” and didn’t have many friends, so he liked to keep himself busy. I pictured myself in that town and I literally started crying on the back seat of that Uber. I think that, even if that would have been my only offer, I wouldn’t have accepted it. Obviously, it’s very easy for me to say this now, when I had two offers, and one of them was in my dream city. However, I think more and more people are leaving academia and finding very interesting opportunities. Campus visits are two-way, the search committee gets to know you, but you get to know them as well. It is important to go with an open mind and have priorities more or less clear. In my case, I was considering three points: 1. Location, 2. Type of job (tenure or non-tenure track), and 3. Type of institution (R1/Ivy League, SLAC, R2, etc.), in roughly that order. Location is very important for me, I like cities and the social and cultural opportunities they offer. The type of institution might be more important for you. Maybe you want to be in an R1 institution where research is the focus. Maybe you want to live in a house and…let me tell you that working for a public university in NYC, you won’t be able to get that pretty house you would be able to afford if you were a professor in the Midwest. But maybe you are really determined to stay in academia and are willing to accept a not-so-ideal job temporarily, as a stepping stone to your dream position. Try to think about your priorities before doing the interviews, it will guide the type of questions you ask them and what information you should pay attention to. Let me know if you have other questions and good luck! 💪

Crash course on asynchronous online teaching

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Part of my job at the university is coordinating lower-level language courses and supporting our part-time instructors. Over the last months, I’ve noticed that asynchronous online teaching causes the most anxiety among instructors. For the uninitiated in online teaching, we usually divide courses into synchronous, where the class meets “live” over a platform (e.g., Zoom), and asynchronous, where students complete assignments on their own time.

When COVID hit in the middle of the Spring semester in 2020, everyone tried their best teaching over zoom. Most courses were synchronous, the natural adaptation was keeping the same schedule and meeting through an online platform. Fall 2020 brought new challenges, such as figuring out which modality (synchronous, asynchronous, or hybrid) was best. Different factors play into how to make this decision for each course. First, the decision has obvious implications for schedule planning. Administrators need to ensure that students can complete class sequences and requirements on time. Second, different subjects might be more suitable for one modality or another. And third, most importantly, the instructor’s preference. Why the most important? When instructors are not comfortable or trained to teach on a specific modality, the content of the class will suffer and students will pay the consequences.

Unsurprisingly, over the last year, I’ve noticed that asynchronous courses are scary for instructors. This modality is further away from traditional face-to-face courses and involves a great deal of “translation”. Here are a few of the doubts I received:

I don’t really know what the expectation is. Do the students just do all of the homework and video lessons? Am I supposed to record lectures? Are the students supposed to film themselves or record themselves speaking?

And we could even go into more big-picture questions: How can we create a community of learners? How do we recreate class discussion? How do send reminders and warnings? Answering all these questions requires training and careful planning. Untrained instructors even doubt it is possible to teach asynchronously, how effective can be a course whose instructor believes it is useless?

I have met with a couple of instructors in our department to explain to them how I organize my courses and I figured out other people might want to see it as well.

Home page

I don’t know about your institution, but mine gives me a course landing page that is crowded with information nobody uses or needs. In my home page, I’ve embraced minimalism in online courses. Give your students the bare minimum to get started and to get to know you. I include links (and schedule) to office hours, optional live sessions, my email, technical support, and a brief introduction of myself. Period. They don’t usually need links to all the repositories they can find at the library or the McGraw-Hill tool that nobody knows what it is for.

I’ve been surveying my students and I have the impression that the social media they use the most is Instagram. When you are on Instagram, you are seeing one picture with one comment. That’s it. Then you have menus and options. But the main thing is fairly simple. Why? It gets your attention, and we know that Facebook companies would do anything to get your attention 😬 Think about when you visit those websites full of pop-ups and ads moving around the screen, isn’t it the most annoying thing ever? I feel like a crowded landing page has the same effect on students. It’s overwhelming and it makes you want to run away.

Weekly assignments

Now, how do I organize my materials? The specific tool is going to depend on the platform you are using. But the idea can be implemented in any of them. In my case, it’s Blackboard (don’t tell anyone that I hate it 🤫). I create a new section on the left menu and call it weekly assignments. Inside that menu, there are folders with instructions for each week, and I also include the dates for that week (this was a suggestion of a former student). Notice that including the dates will involve changing the dates the next time you teach the course, but more on this later. Other platforms such as Canvas (CUNY, if you’re reading, I’m giving you hints here 🙏🏼) have more user-friendly ways of organizing the information: modules that are easy to navigate and you can even make them sequential, such that students cannot move forward until they complete a specific assignment.

On a typical week, I include a summary video (2-4 minutes), a lecture video (never ever more than 15 minutes), reading + forum on the reading, and an assignment (in my case, simultaneous interpreting, but think about what they would do on a regular week). They love short videos.

Group work

I’ve given workshops on how to organize group work in online courses, but I’ll keep it short. Do not assign group work in the first 2 weeks of class. Use them to organize the groups. I’ve tried a couple of methods:

Using the forum tool of your platform.
Slack (here’s a picture of how Slack looks like)

Ask students to post a message saying when they can meet (i.e., weekends at 5 am, a very popular time). They should assign a leader (who will be in charge of recording the sessions and uploading them), and write the names of the people of the group as well as the time/days they meet on a google doc. This makes it easy for the professor to keep track of the groups and, if for whatever reason a student cannot make it to their group meeting, they can see when other groups meet and join one. I would suggest they use zoom to record the meeting, and then you can create a google doc folder where they upload them. This saves you from having to deal with big video files as you can watch them on the folder without downloading them.

Repetition

During in-person classes, professors present the syllabus, explain deadlines, and when the deadline gets closer, they remind students about it during class: “remember next week you’ll submit your first essay”, “don’t forget about the midterm in two weeks”. Online is the same. You have to repeat things, so think about how you are going to do it because otherwise, this will probably happen

I send announcements (a couple a week) and I send some messages on slack. I don’t trust that all of them check slack, so if it’s something important, it goes to announcements.

Maintenance

Organizing everything I’ve mentioned is a lot of work, indeed. But once you have it, it’s ready to go and you just have to tinker with it. One thing I would advise you is keeping your text and videos as timeless as you can. For my lectures, I don’t mention whether it is Spring break, Christmas, or anything that has been on the news. If you do that, you’ll have to record them again because the next time you teach the course, it won’t be the same piece of news. However, for the introductory videos, I do mention current events. I update these videos every time I teach the course, so it makes sense.

Whenever you put dates, be aware that you’ll have to update them. In the case of the weekly folders, I do think it’ll be useful for students to see the date there, and I take the extra time to change them every semester. You can assess what adds value and what’s not worth it.

Videos

I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get into video editing for a while (I’ll get you dinner if you want to teach me the basics). Hence, I don’t edit anything and I keep it as low-tech as I can. I record them using zoom (but I do have a ring light 🙃). I create a new zoom meeting, hit record on the cloud (again, saving you from having to deal with big video files)

Then you go to your account on the web, find your recordings and there it is. You can change the name (you should, something that allows you to easily find it later, I put the course code and the week), and you get a link that you can then paste on your weekly assignments. Make sure that you either make the recording public or share the password with your students.

I think with this, you should be able to create a solid structure for your course. A while back I also wrote about what I learned from online teaching, you might find it interesting. Let me know if you want to know about any other aspect of online teaching.

Do you ever feel like you need permission?

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When you were a kid, were you the good kid that always asked for permission to do things? This is what we are taught. In a class, if you need to go to the restroom, you raise your hand, and the teacher decides whether you can go. You are rewarded for this behavior. This is great to keep things under control. The problem comes when you subconsciously get stuck with that behavior for the rest of your life. To me, this came in the shape of: “oh, it would be great if someone would…” And then I would proceed to say something that I am perfectly capable of doing, but because it hasn’t been done yet, I don’t even consider that I could be the one doing it. I was mentally raising my hand, but nobody around me was there to give me permission.

In a recent Facebook post, I mentioned I had just created a lab. A colleague, who’s a brilliant researcher a few years ahead of me in the academia game, mentioned she was jealous of me having a lab. I haven’t talked to her about why she doesn’t have one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was because of that feeling of needing to ask for permission. If you are now thinking that I have an illegal secret lab, don’t worry, I did talk to my department’s chair about it. At first, he was suspicious of me asking for space (you know, we’re in NYC, space is not in abundance), but after I told him I wasn’t going to ask for anything from him, he was happy as a clam: “yes, go ahead, sounds great”. I am in a modern language department and I am the only experimental researcher. Labs are not a tradition here and nobody had a lab before. But I had worked with undergraduate students while doing my Ph.D. and I liked the idea of working with a group of motivated students. We should be more comfortable with the idea of doing things differently.

I started this blog by telling you why you should practice asking for more. I feel both ideas are linked. It all boils down to making your needs met and your voice heard. When you ask for more, you want to optimize your conditions (to work better, to enjoy your dinner by being in a better location, etc.). And when you decide to go ahead with an innovative project, you’re setting yourself apart and leading towards change. And change is indispensable for improvement.

You might be wondering (I certainly was), how did Cristina get to this idea? Multiple factors have brought me here. First, going to therapy for a couple of years made me realize that not getting my needs met and feeling that I needed permission was a pattern for me (and I suspect many fellow females are on the same boat). This is like AA, you need to recognize your problem first. Second, seeing other people doing things they were not great at, but enjoying the process anyway. Some of the YouTubers I started following would be proud of their improvement in their new hobby and it got me thinking: “wait a minute, I used to be better than that, and I stopped because I thought I wasn’t good enough” (remember perfectionism?). And third, seeing how one of my friends doesn’t get stopped by mental obstacles. If he gets an idea of something cool, he finds a way of getting it. Importantly, he dreams big. He thought of celebrating his girlfriend’s 30th birthday on a boat in the Virgin Islands and…we found a way of doing it (all within a grad student budget).

What do I mean by mental obstacles? It’s the believes you hold onto that stop you from doing what you really want. I’ll give you an example. When I was 18, I got introduced to sailing. I worked as an au-pair in Ireland for a family that had a sailing boat. Part of my job was taking care of the kids while the family was on vacation in the boat. I thought I would be scared of sailing, but, to my surprise, I loved it. When I came back home, my environment repeated the idea that “sailing was for rich people”. I wasn’t rich, so it wasn’t for me. This was the mental obstacle that was stopping me from doing something I fell in love with. Long story short, thanks to my friend, I went on a few sailing trips and… I was able to see the mental obstacle. None of us were close to rich and we were doing it anyway. I did some research and, a month ago, I joined a sailing club. I already have the basic keelboat certification and love seeing NYC’s skyline from the Hudson river every week ⛵

Now, think about all the things, work or personal, that you find yourself saying: “it would be cool if…” Why aren’t you doing them? What if you just focus on figuring out how to do them? Make sure you tell me so I get more ideas! 😉

Don't do this in an interview

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post, I talked about how important it is to start thinking like your interviewer. This time, I’m sharing some of the things I got wrong in my first interviews. I was determined to apply only for jobs in locations where I saw myself living (mainly big cities with an international community). I’m a city person, I had already experienced rural America and I knew it was not for me. Professors had warned me against this strategy because it would significantly reduce my chances of landing a job. They did not convince me, mainly because I knew they just wanted me to get a job, regardless of where. It turns out that the “where” was very important to me. It was actually a conversation with my colleagues who were also in the job market that really pushed me to apply for more positions. Despite the amount of additional work it involved, I’m happy I did. Let me explain why.

Being on the job market is like playing Risk, there’s a great deal of strategy involved. Your goal is landing a job you like. But if you have no previous experience applying for jobs, it’s very likely that you will make mistakes in your first interviews. How do you solve that? Apply to all possible jobs, even the ones that seem less than ideal. If you get the interview, you have an opportunity to practice, to make mistakes in a low-stakes environment.

I know we all like to hear other people’s miseries, so I’m gonna share with you some mistakes I made in my first campus visits and interviews:

Not reading the job add carefully: during the only phone interview I had (the rest were videocalls), they asked me about a very specific theory I had never heard of. The question was: “Do you know X theory? If so, how would you use it in our program?” I had never heard of that theory, so my answer was “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that theory”. They explained the theory to me and I then told them how I would apply it. After the interview, I asked everybody in my department about that theory, nobody had heard about it. Then, I got an offer for the campus visit and re-read the job ad in preparation… the theory was mentioned in the job ad 😬 I eventually got an job offer, which shows that even if you don’t know the answer to one question, you can get the job. Nevertheless, not having researched the theory before the interview was a big mistake.
In my first campus visit, I made two big mistakes:
1. I was not ready to explain why I was interested in a position that required only an M.A. when I had a Ph.D. This was one of the questions the provost asked me, but not the first one. First, he made me talk about my research, he let me develop all my future research plans (set the trap) and then he said: “but…you wouldn’t be able to do all that research here. This is not a research position, don’t you think you would feel frustrated?” He was right, I would have felt very frustrated and I did not get that job. If you are applying for a teaching position requiring only an M.A., be ready to minimize your research agenda and explain why you are not interested in research at the moment.
2. I had not researched the faculty in the department thoroughly. I just focused on the professors in the committee. There was another professor who joined my job talk and lunch. While we were eating, I asked him which department he was in 🤦🏻‍♀️ He was one of the faculty members in the department I was interviewing for. In my defense, he was acting as the chair of a different department and that might be the reason why his name escaped me when doing my research. If you are not sure who someone is, you can ask something more vague to get an idea: “Are you working on any exciting projects at the moment?”
Not understanding the culture: my second campus visit was in a small place in the south of the US. The first question I was asked upon getting in the car of the professor who picked me up at the ariport (I’m not exaggerating) was: “Do you see yourself living here?” I was ready for that question, especially coming from a university so close to NYC, but I was not ready to sustain that mindset. The conversation kept going and I accidentally revealed that I loved going to NYC to dance salsa. Mistake, big mistake. My interview went great, I had ideas for their program, they seemed happy with my research, but they saw I wouldn’t stay there and I was not offered that job. I am not recommending that you lie, you should never do that, but you can choose to display only the hobbies that you could do in that area, showing that you understand what your life there would be like.

Switching gears to the type of questions you should be making, I thought I would share with you advice from a seasoned professor. The chair of my former department, Prof. Marcy Schwartz, commented the following in my last post:

“the candidate needs to show interest in the people interviewing them too! Do your homework, make sure to ask a few well-informed questions (“I saw on the dept website that you offer X, please tell me more about it/how I could help with it”). And during campus visits, when there’s much more time and informal meals, etc., ask those colleagues about themselves, their work, what they’re teaching.”

You might be thinking: Cristina, these mistakes show that you didn’t prepare enough. This is probably true, but consider the following: I had six campus visits all around the US in four weeks, while the only thing I really wanted to do was finish writing my dissertation. There are certain things that will be out of your control, so if you remember just one thing from this post, make it this one: get opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. Your dream job is not the interview you want to bomb because you had no experience. Be strategic about your interviews and apply for the less ideal jobs. They could become a low-stakes situation to practice. Also, you might be pleasantly surprised by places. I actually liked the university where I got my second offer, even though it was a small place. In the meantime, learn from my mistakes and get ready to ace those interviews.

From interviewee to interviewer

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

About a year ago, I was immersed in interviewland. I read the interview chapter on The Professor is In, I got lists of typical questions in academic interviews, more lists for linguistics-related jobs, I created a document with my answers to all those questions, I attended workshops on how to prepare for the skype interview, I did a mock interview organized by my department, I recorded myself, etc. In retrospect, I probably overprepared but, hey, it worked 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Funnily enough, a few months after I started my current job as an assistant professor, I was asked to participate in a search committee for a visiting lecturer position at my department. And something inside me changed, it was an aha moment. I suddenly understood that I had focused too much on myself while preparing for interviews, and too little on understanding “their problem”.

Let me explain what I mean by “their problem”. When a department opens a new position, it is because “they have a problem” and they need someone to fix “that problem”. The problem could be that they need a person who researches X topic or they need someone to teach Y course, either because none of the faculty members have expertise on that area or simply because they don’t have time to do it. Dr. Karen Kelsky says in her job market workshops: “The interview is not about you, it’s about them”. I didn’t pay that much attention to that sentence, but I now realize it is key. Hopefully this post gives you an advantage.

What the search committee wants to hear is how you are going to fix their problem. In academia, this means showing how you will: teach, research and do service. I will focus on teaching here because my experience as an interviewer has been in that area.

The do’s:

Come up with a sentence summarizing your approach to teaching (it can be taken from your Teaching Philosophy, yes you can copy it), give them an idea of what you include in the syllabus, give an example of how a typical lesson or class looks like, and give examples of how you assess students' learning. That’s it, you don’t need to read books about 200 types of teaching methodologies (which was what I thought I should do when preparing for interviews).
How are you going to connect with their students? Students at an ivy-league institution are very different from students at a community college. You will need to show that you understand the student body and that you are able to connect with them. Check out current offerings at the department, are courses focused on getting a job (Business Spanish) or on developing a well-rounded citizen (Islamic Spain through the Colonial Period)? Make sure you understand the focus of the department.
Please, answer the question you’ve been asked 😃 If they ask you: how does your education and experience prepare you for this job? Talk about your education, talk about your experience and make connections with the position you are interviewing for. This looks painfully obvious, yet none of the people we interviewed gave a good answer: they just enumerated their education (without making connections) or they rambled (more on this in the next section). Make sure you answer the question in a clear and concise manner.

The don’ts:

Don’t tell them your life story. Committee members are busy, be brief, don’t ramble. I am the new assistant professor, not particularly entangled in a sea of commitments yet, I don’t have kids, etc. However, I do have better things to do than listening to somebody’s life in the middle of a work day. My point is, when you ramble, you make them feel as if you are wasting their time, the committee will remember you as the person that rambles and… nobody wants that.
Don’t repeat over and over that you don’t have experience in something. The committee knows that, they have seen your CV. If you got the interview is because they think you can do it, so just show that you have a plan about how to do it. You can acknowledge that you haven’t done it the past, but continue expressing how excited you are about teaching that course and give details about how you plan to teach it. Something along the lines of: “While I haven’t taught X in the past, I would structure the syllabus… A typical class would include… And X type of project would evaluate students' learning”. This answer shows the committee that you are interested in teaching such a course and you have thought about it.
Also, don’t overdo the thank-yous and how honored you are for this marvelous opportunity. This goes back to rambling. Be nice: “thank you, it was a pleasure to get to know you better”. Period, short and sweet.

So how do you get to change your mindset without being in a search committee? I have a couple of ideas. First, imagine there is a search in your current department. Go over one of those lists of questions and try to come up with great answers for those questions. You know your department well, you have been there for at least four of five years. You know what the department needs and who would be a good candidate. Think about what the ideal candidate would say.

Second, team up with other people in your cohort who are also going in the job market. Some of you might be competing for the same position. It could easily get awkward and I was scared of what would happen. Fortunately, I had a good relationship with the rest of my cohort and we worked together. We sent each other positions that could be interesting for someone in particular, we reviewed each other’s materials and we even shared interview questions when two of us got a zoom interview or campus visit for the same position (yes, a colleague from my department and I were selected for the same campus visit). Sharing all this information created a support network, much needed for such a difficult moment. Being in the job market is stressful enough, I cannot imagine adding pressure and competitiveness from your colleagues.

Also, don’t worry if you feel you are repeating yourself. I remember before the interviews, I had the impression I needed to come up with something new, something I hadn’t already said in my job materials (cover letter, teaching/research statement). However, keep it mind that the committee goes over a number of applicants and they do not remember details, so be ready to repeat yourself over and over. As Kelskey’s says, you become a political candidate, ready to campaign wherever you go.

To wrap up, interviews are not that different from having a conversation. What do you like when you talk to someone? Do you like when they go on a tangent and don’t get to the point? Committee members are just regular people who need to fix a problem. If they like the way you propose to fix that problem, they will be excited about you (they found a solution!). You have the credentials for the job (otherwise you would not be in the interview). The interview allows them to check whether the paper matches the person and whether you are going to be a nice colleague.

Is the diversity statement the candy crush for diversity points?

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Academia is the weird world in which sometimes you need to prepare a portfolio of over 100 pages to apply for a job (yes, I counted them, some departments required me to send that many pages, not sure who in their sane mind would read them). One relatively recent addition to those wordy documents is the diversity statement. Similar to how big companies created departments to promote diversity in the workplace, universities now ask their candidates to explain how their teaching, research, and service address diversity in concrete ways. I am not sure about the motivations that lead departments to ask for a diversity statement. Some might be genuinely interested in your thoughts on the topic, and others might just want to comply with HR policies. Either way, you will be a stronger candidate if you show genuine reflection on why this is an important issue and how to approach it in your job.

I’ve heard multiple people saying that the diversity statement is awkward to write and also awkward to read. I guess it’s not surprising that they get uncomfortable about diversity in the classroom or research. I suspect that facing the diversity statement triggers a similar feeling as facing our racist behaviors. So be careful not to fill your document with platitudes that would make comedian Aziz Ansari accuse you of playing a secret progressive candy crush game. He explains (in a very funny way) how white people are starting to do very weird things just to “get diversity points”.

Looking back, I remember being surprised about the relative ease with which I wrote my diversity statement. I have a few ideas about why this was the case. Right around the time I was preparing my documents, diversity was a topic that had been on my mind. I became interested in how traditional teaching methods don’t reach the students that need them the most. Also, we had engaged in some difficult conversations at my department about how the distribution of grants among graduate students was biased against a certain group of students.

Quite simply, crafting a strong diversity statement is a matter of reflecting on the issue of diversity in your work. Notice how I said work and not necessarily life. While coming from a minority background might be advantageous, you need to make the connection about how your background helps to promote diversity in teaching and research. To give you an example of how this might play out, my colleagues and I were excited about a candidate we interviewed last year for our department. This person had a similar background to our students and, on paper, was well prepared for the job. We thought they might connect well with our students. However, during the interview, there was no mention of how their background would improve their teaching and, for that and other reasons, this candidate did not get selected.

Institutions might be interested in diversity for different reasons. Davidson College, a predominantly white small liberal arts college, might be interested in seeing how you can attract more diverse students and how you to campus diverse world-views. California State University Fullerton, a large state university with around 50% of Hispanic students, already has a diverse student body population, and they want to make sure your teaching methods are appropriate for this student body and how you are going to help them succeed.

Many think that you can only mention research if you work on issues such as gender or decolonial theory. I remember I went to a workshop to prepare the diversity statement well before I had to go to the job market. I was looking for a cookbook recipe on how to draft this document, in the words of Aziz Ansari “What do I need to say to not get in trouble?" But my approach was wrong. I was trying to find a quick fix for a problem I had: “the uncomfortable document”. So I’m going to give you a few resources that changed the way I viewed this document and, importantly, made me feel comfortable when writing it. Notice that they are agnostic to your field of research. Actually, you can apply them to any job you do.

How to make your teaching more inclusive: this article should be mandatory reading. It opened my eyes to how teaching in the same way we were taught perpetuates differences among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. It also gives you a set of tools on how to fix it (disclaimer, it is a lot of work).
This video explains in a very graphic way the diversity you will encounter in your classes. I’ve used to convince people about the importance seeing that students have different start points depending on the support they got at home (disclaimer, it might make you cry, I’ve seen it happen repeatedly).
For white folks that teach in the hood: this book explains beautifully why traditional methods don’t work and how the teacher needs to get interested and immersed in the culture of their students to connect with them.
The practice: this book is not about diversity, but about sustaining a creative practice. However, one section captures why diversity matters and might inspire your statement:

“Problems have solutions. That’s what makes them problems. […] It’s the unlikely approaches—the odd combinations that come from diversity—that often win the day. […] Diversity might involve ethnicity or physical abilities. But it’s just as likely to involve idiosyncratic approaches and differences in experience […] Of course, each of us is peculiar in our own way. Peculiar is a choice, an opportunity to bring our own experiences and our own point of view to the work. We’ve been trained for a long time to hide that unique voice or to pretend it’s not there, because the systems around us push us to conform. […] But in a world that’s changing faster than ever, that distinct skill set and point of view are precisely what we need from you. Without your specific contributions, our diversity of approach and experience fades away.”

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable: this ted talk captures why the diversity statement is important, but only if we embrace the awkwardness it provokes on us by accepting that real change will be difficult.

My goal is for you to pause and reflect on why the work and efforts on diversity matter and see they are not “just another document I need to get done.” Let me know about your struggles with the diversity statement or other job documents you are working on!

Making a Tenure Plan and Keeping Track of It

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On my last post I wrote about why it is crucial to make a plan, even if you later change it. Here I show you what my plan looks like and how I keep track of it. I struggle to make long-term plans. When I first moved to the US (10 years ago!), I was asked what I wanted to do the following year. I was startled by the question, I had just arrived in Indiana, and thinking about what would happen next seemed impossible. But the professor who asked me that question was right, if I wanted to have options, it was the moment to start planning. I’ve recently figured out that my personality has a lot to do with it. I need to have information before making decisions. So when I get somewhere, I need some time to observe, gather data, and then decide. This is probably why statements like “this is the best pizza in NY” drive me nuts. I want to see a spreadsheet full of data that leads you to that statement. And this is wrong. It’s paralyzing and doesn’t let you move forward. One needs to find the balance between absorbing relevant cues in the environment and not getting too caught up in gathering infinite information. And this is where a good plan comes in handy.

In Chapter 2: Planning Your Time, from The Writing Workshop, Prof. Barbara Sarnecka explains the different levels of planning you need: the big picture (5-year plan), term plan (semester/quarter, whatever suits your calendar year better), and a weekly plan. But before getting to those plans, Sarnecka prepares your mindset. Following the plan, as opposed to just devising it, requires adopting a specific

Think like a CEO, not a factory employee (more on this in the next post)
Distinguish between urgent and important: this is particularly important when dealing with other people’s requests. Just because it’s urgent for another person, it doesn’t make it important for you. Their lack of preparation on a project does not have to derail your plan.
Accept that not everything will get done: and now that you know that not everything will fit in your day, use the previous step and don’t let the urgent push the important away.

As a new assistant professor, one of the first pieces of advice I received was: document everything you are doing. I thought this could be a messy process, so I came up with a system. I’m now finishing writing my first-year report, and it has been very useful to have everything in one place. Here is what I did to both create a tenure plan and keep track of all my work. I used Notion and if you haven’t heard of this app, it’s without any doubt my favorite. I’m kind of addicted to trying these things, I’ve played with Todoist, Trello, Evernote… you name it. Notion is the perfect combination of all of them but easy enough to navigate (there’s another called Roam that makes my head spin). The best part, if you are in academia, you can get the premium account with your .edu email.

I have a page where I organize my work-related things that looks like this

And since we’re focusing on planning, let’s check my Tenure page

The triangles (called toggles in the app) allow you to collapse information and if we open the calendar, this is what I see

And here’s my work database (a lifesaver for writing up your tenure file)

If the app is new to you, I foresee two reactions: 1. this is overwhelming, or 2. this will save me. It indeed takes a bit of practice to get used to Notion and understanding all its features (or at least figuring out which ones are relevant for you). Leave me a comment if this is your case and want me to make a video on how Notion works. But the app is not going to save you, it’s just a tool to make your life easier. Remember how the chapter I discussed earlier started by the mindset? You can use a notebook to do exactly the same. I happen to like these apps and the flexibility of having all the information with me at all times. The key here is creating a plan and keeping track of it. I tend to feel as if I was wasting my time for 70% of the day. But when I look at that table full of things I did during my first year, I realize that’s just simply not true. Our minds are not wired for happiness, they are wired for survival and they naturally focus on the negative. Seeing the good takes practice and keeping track of it…just helps. Oh! here is the template, in case you want to steal it 😉

Pandemic lessons from online teaching

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I moved to NYC a couple of months ago and I have been meeting new people through friends and events. When they ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a professor, their reaction usually goes something like this: oh…and how was teaching online? terrible right? To which I respond: well… not that bad.

During my master’s in Indiana, I got curious about online teaching and I completed a certificate on how to do it. Back then, few people had online teaching training, and departments (or at least language departments) were eager to start offering online classes. Hence, I immediately started teaching classes online. Training on how to teach online obviously helps, especially if you are not technologically inclined. But being forced to teach all my classes online was something new and unexpected.

Thinking about this past year, it’s hard for me to compare whether they are learning the same as if we had met face to faces because it is the first time I’m teaching this class (interpreting). My colleague tells me she thinks they are learning way less than in face-to-face courses. I am pretty confident that this is because of a combination of factors not necessarily related to the online mode. First, students did not choose to take an online course, they were forced into it. Online teaching, especially the asynchronous mode, requires a type of self-discipline that not every student is ready for. Second, professors were also forced to teach online. Many were not trained and did not trust that it was possible to do it online. If you are a professor, I’m sure you’ve discussed in faculty meetings how to prevent cheating, which mode works or doesn’t work, etc. If you do not believe in what you are doing, chances are the result won’t be great. And third, we were all in crisis mode. Millions of people were dying all around the world and we were all focused on making sure we and our loved ones were safe. In summary, not the ideal environment for learning.

After having received the evaluations for both semesters, I see some patterns about what is working and what needs to be improved. Lets' start with the good stuff.

They like seeing you

If your course is asynchronous, they like seeing you in videos. Most of the positive comments I got mentioned how helpful the videos were. What’s in my videos? Nothing fancy. I typically record two per week. One explaining what they have to submit that week (forums, readings, videos, group activities, between 2 and 5 min). And another one explaining the “theory” of the week (never over 15 min). I usually present with a PowerPoint and keeping myself on the screen (small in the corner). I record them using zoom and keep them in the cloud, that way I just share the link and I don’t have to deal with large files. Here you have a typical comment from my students regarding this structure:

“It’s really nice having the personalized videos at the beginning of each week as well as the outside resources to help us better understand certain concepts”

They like seeing you synchronously

I think asynchronous courses should have a synchronous component, which could take many forms. It could be a 5 min meeting one-on-one a couple of times during the semester, a 15 min meeting with a group of 4/5 students every few weeks, or an optional weekly 30 min session. I tried different iterations of the latter. First, it was like open office hours, they would come with questions. I noticed that it became like a mini therapy session for them to vent their frustrations. I liked getting to know them, but I don’t think it was very efficient. Then, I tried going over the feedback from the previous week. I would review a selection of whatever they had to submit the week before, take some notes, and discuss my comments with them. I think this worked better. I recorded these live sessions so students that couldn’t come would be able to get the feedback as well. My only concern is how many of them actually watched the feedback videos. Finally, I tried “doing the work” during these optional sessions. In my case, it was simultaneous interpreting. We had a few technological challenges with this one. But I do see the potential for this option going forward. It would be the closest to whatever you do in your classes. I was teaching two sections of one course (32 students in total) and between 3 and 9 students would show up (usually the same group).

Creating opportunities for them to interact spontaneously

I created a slack channel for the course to allow them to make questions in a more direct way than email and to find a group for group projects. I also used it as a way to send them news or videos that I find interesting and are related to the content of the course. A couple of months into the semester, I found out the slack channel was sometimes making my life easier because they would answer each others' questions. One student asks a question in the channel (instead of emailing me) and a few others chime in with the answer. I just send them a thumbs up if the answer is correct (a lot faster than having to individually answer to multiple students who had the same question) or intervene and clarify if I see they didn’t get it right. This was cool, but I didn’t think it was anything revolutionary, there wasn’t too much action going on in the channel. Then, I found out they had created separate group chats (that I couldn’t see) and they were communicating with each other. I only found out about this during the optional live sessions and office hours. Some of them told me that their group had been of great help during difficult weeks, sending each other encouragement messages 🤯.

Like in everything, there’s always room for improvement.

Feedback

My biggest challenge was, without a doubt, providing individual feedback. Every week, my students had to complete an average of five videos (interpreting between English and Spanish) and a discussion forum (usually related to a reading assignment). Five videos of around 5 min each, multiplied by 32 students, sums up to over 13 hours of videos every week. Watching and providing feedback on 13 hours of videos every week is impossible. I tried watching around 10 videos per week and rotating who I give feedback to every week. The problem is that they don’t always complete the videos on time and end up not getting feedback. Also, I think the platform (we use GoReact) doesn’t notify them when they get a comment, so I fear they sometimes don’t see (or rather listen to, I leave a voice message) my feedback. For other assignments, I give completion points, if they completed the activity (similar to participation points in face-to-face classes), they get the points. If you have ideas about this, send help! 🆘

Group assignments

Next semester (or rather, this summer), I’ll spend some time thinking about how to improve group synchronous assignments. The first time I implemented synchronous group assignments in an online class (back in 2014, when few people knew Zoom and I had to start by teaching them how to use it), it was the highlight of the course. Both for the students, who loved getting to know each other, and for me, because I got to see their progress. I would tell them they had to talk for 5 min (this was a beginner Spanish course) and, to my surprise, they would send me 20 min videos. They sometimes would complete the assignment, but then kept going by sharing doubts, or just chitchatting (in Spanish!). Ensuring this type of connection will be a key point when preparing for my next online course.

Putting all these ideas together made me realize that it is all about human connection. What distinguishes online teaching (for credit) from MOOCs (massive open online courses) is the presence of the instructor. There is something about being in the same room with someone that cannot be reproduced online. For this reason, carefully thinking about how you are going to be present in the course is key to ensuring the best possible learning experience. For many students, doing an online course feels like homework. If all they have to do is complete assignments on their own, it’s like taking a class that is exclusively made up of homework. It doesn’t sound like a fun class to take.

I am very curious about your online teaching experiences. How did this past year go for you? What were your main issues? Did something work particularly well? Let me know!

Should researchers be more like youtubers?

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I feel like I’m a slow researcher. I read slow, I write slow, I review my writing slow, you get the idea. I should probably start the “slow research movement.” For a while, I turned to academic “media” to see whether this was normal. I am a regular consumer of The Chronicle of Higher Education, podcasts such as The Effort Report and AcaDames, and whatever The Professor is In is doing on social media. I also read books like How to write a lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing or The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia (which I highly recommend, and it’s free!). It turns out that I’m normal, but the question still lingers in my mind.

Recently, I’ve found myself looking at other outlets beyond academia. In particular, I’ve started following some content creators on YouTube. I got here because, around a year ago, my brother told me that he watches YouTube. He doesn’t watch Netflix, he watches Youtube, and apparently, this is something younger people do. I also wanted to be a cool kid and I started watching a few YouTube channels he pointed out.

One of the channels was JackConteExtras. Jack Conte is a musician and the founder of Patreon, a platform connecting content creators with their followers. He uses this channel to talk about his creative process. This video stood out to me because of the parallelisms between his music creation process and our research process.

He tells the story about how he obsessively worked on getting the kick drum in one of his songs to make it “bright enough.” Days working in his study to fix a minute detail. Does it sound familiar? Replace “kick drum” with “research question” or “discussion paragraph” and you are describing where many researchers get stuck. Importantly, Jack noticed that he had a problem. Jack and I found out that we have the same problem.

He attributes this issue to the impossibility of finding an end to the creative process. If you are playing soccer, it’s easy to find the end. There is a big-timer visible at all times and rules in case of a tie. Finishing a game feels like an end. However, finishing a song for him, a paper for us, feels nothing like an end. Jack makes this distinction between working to publish and working for pleasure.

This explanation seems pretty logical: either you focus on getting things “out there” or you focus on “having fun”. But this is not how it feels to me. I’ve come to understand that, for me, getting stuck is linked to perfectionism, and this could not be any further pleasure. But I’ll talk about perfectionism another day.

What do we do about it? If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m very pragmatic and like to jump into solutions and results. It turns out that many things don’t work like that. After a couple of years of therapy and meditation, I’m still working on figuring out how perfectionism has hampered my progress. Nonetheless, I do believe there are a few practical takeaways from Jack’s video.

“Publishing is a style of work, an attitude that persists over the creative process”

He defines publishing as the process of “deciding to stop when you want to keep going, and it is painful”. Importantly, he notices that people who produce massive amounts of content, do so because they don’t “finish” things, they “publish” them. This is an idea that I’ve encountered in other places like this interview with Seth Godin. He explains that he just writes a blog post every day, without questioning whether it is good enough, he just writes it. In the words of Jack, “Your whole mentality shifts when you work to publish”.

“Do only what matters and then stop”

This is probably the trickiest part. How can we draw the line between obsessing about a paper and making sure it is good quality? I probably have more questions than answers, but I sense that the key is 1. committing to publishing as a style of work, and 2. being clear about the goal. Thinking about our main objective will help us not lose sight of what we want to accomplish. For instance, when writing a paper, have we made sure our conclusions are contributions to the field are clear? If yes, then maybe spending 5 hours tinkering with the graphs on R to make them crisper is not worth it.

“The world is made of funnels”

The basic idea behind the funnel theory is that we need to create a lot and eventually some of it will be successful. We tend to admire people who produce high-quality work and assume they just do great stuff. What we fail to see is that they often do a lot of stuff and some of it happens to be great. This is true for singers, painters, movie directors, and researchers too! The video mentions that we cannot choose what we are famous for. I initially thought that this is a point where music and research differ, because of the “high standards” research demands. You cannot submit for publication the first random research idea that crosses your mind because it will get rejected. But the more I think about it, the more I realize research is not different. Senior researchers say that their most cited paper is often not the one they would have thought of or the one they spent more time on.

Whenever I come up with a potential research idea, my brain immediately finds all the reasons why I should not do it (I don’t know enough about it, it’s not good enough, nobody will care about it, why am I even here?). I’ve been thinking a lot about how this thinking pattern has been a form of self-sabotage. This blog an attempt to break out of that pattern 🤭 Let me know if you have experienced anything similar and we can have our mini-therapy club. In the meantime, remember what Jack told us: “you cannot choose what you are famous for” but you can choose to be “prolific, creative, create great stuff and work to publish”.

Tailoring your academic job materials

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, when I was preparing and sending job applications, differences in class titles got my attention. Some of them were intriguing, others were straight to the point. First, I realized I needed to account for this difference in my job materials. But more recently, I’ve been thinking about how dangerous this is. Let me start with the job materials.

Class titles can be a window into the department’s culture. While many private schools offer courses like “Great Latin American Artists (That Never Existed)”, “The End of Monuments”, or “Sketching Modernity”; public schools often have classes like “Spanish for Health Care Personnel”, “Introduction to Translation”, or “Introduction to Hispanic Culture”. These titles reflect what the department is trying to accomplish. The former seeks to train well-rounded global citizens, the latter wants students to get jobs. If you are applying for a position that requires you to teach, it’s a good idea to mention in your cover letter the courses you would be qualified to teach and also the courses you could add to their offering. Here is when noticing the difference between the two types comes into play. Remember that part of being a good candidate is fitting in the university’s culture and your materials should reflect that you understand what the department is trying to accomplish, you are going to connect both with the students and with your colleagues. This would be going for an A, if you want the A+, keep reading.

Beyond course titles, I noticed this difference correlated with the institution’s mission and their interest in online education (2 years ago, before COVID). Wealthy private schools want to show their uniqueness, their potential in educating well-rounded citizens who will change the world. Most of their student body comes from a privileged background and there is no doubt they are going to get a job. This uniqueness needs to be conveyed in person, they had no interest whatsoever in online classes. On the other hand, some public schools serve a student body that comes from a low socio-economic background and their mission is to move those students up the socio-economic ladder. Just to give you an example from a recent Instagram post at my institution, where the caption includes the following “Bilingual language fluency, coupled with a #JohnJay College major, will enhance a graduate’s marketability and earning potential.” Online courses were very attractive for these schools. Their students often have jobs and online courses allow them to combine school and work.

I used to see this as fact. If you want to get a job at an elite institution, you propose a mysterious-sounding course. On the contrary, if you are applying for a job at a public institution (I know I’m simplifying the categories, and not all public institutions are like CUNY), you propose a straightforward sounding course that will get students a job.

But like I mentioned earlier, I’m now realizing how dangerous this is. The basic premise of book I’m currently reading (The Linchpin, by Seth Godin) is that the successful workers of the future (and the present) will be the those capable of seeing things differently, of making a map instead of following one. The author elaborates on the qualities of what he calls “linchpins”, those people willing to take a different route and make a difference, not by following the system, but by improving it. My mind tends to make connections between what I’m reading and my students. How is this related to education? Check out this quote:

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

Those of us working in public universities whose mission is to act as the economic mobility engine, need to be aware of this. If you are applying for a job in a public institution, you also need to be thinking about this. I would encourage you to think about how that course you want to add to the department is not only going to train students to get a job but will also make them valuable citizens that will bring a new perspective to their future jobs. If you want to go for the A+ in your cover letter, add that mysterious-sounding course that will get students excited, and explain to the seach committee how it’s going to not only help them get jobs but also help them make valuable contributions to society, to change how things have been done traditionally. How do you do that? There were also some interesting suggestions in the book:

What They Should Teach in School Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead. “Interesting” is the key word. Answering questions like “When was the War of 1812?” is a useless skill in an always-on Wikipedia world. It’s far more useful to be able to answer the kind of question for which using Google won’t help. Questions like, “What should I do next?”

I would love to work with a colleague who wants to guide our students to be linchpins, who believes they have great potential to offer and believes in the mission of helping them realize they have all that potential. We are going to be hiring soon at my department, just saying 😉

The Artist Inside the Academic

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have found myself attracted to what it means to be creative in the last few months. In an earlier post, I told you about what academics —and, I suspect, anybody else— can learn from YouTubers. Lately, I’ve been reading a few books on creativity (The Practice, Big Magic, and The Artist Way). I’ve found both comfort and encouragement in them. I don’t think “this is something they should teach in grad school” because, having finished grad school recently, I have zero intentions of making it longer. Let me tell you how making connections between the arts and academia has helped me.

Grad school involves learning a method to ensure rigor. During my training, I learned how to look for flaws in every article I read. This was actually part of my homework in some classes. I’m not trying to discredit this activity. I learned a great deal about how to ensure an experiment is methodologically sound, how to go beyond a simple description of results, and how to evaluate research. These are all important skills for a researcher. However, the inner-critic got so strong that it prevented me from writing at all. Every sentence I wrote, I would delete because it had innumerable mistakes. Grad school trained the critic in me, but they forgot about caring for the artist. By artist, I mean the creative part pushing us to look for new questions. The combination of strong critic and poorly maintained artist leads many of us to paralysis. Undoing the damage is taking me time and effort, but proving to be rewarding.

I’ll tell you a bit about The Artist Way. If you are allergic to feelings and spiritual matters, this book is not for you. Or rather, it is for you, but you won’t like it and probably won’t read it. I recommended it to my brother and he asked me if he should worry about me being abducted by a cult. The book references God often, but Julia Cameron (the author) explains that it can be substituted by anything bigger than you (the Universe, the Force). I consider myself atheist (maybe agnostic, I’m still not clear about it) and God didn’t bother me. The book’s main premise is getting you out of a creative block. It’s a 12-week program revolving around two main tasks: morning pages and artists’ dates. I’ll focus on the former today.

Morning pages are 3 pages of longhand writing first thing in the morning. Whatever comes out of your mind. I’ve been writing morning pages for a few months and it’s been helpful for different reasons. It has shown me that I can write around 500 words daily. Obviously, this quantity does not immediately translate to writing academic papers at that speed. It’s been significant to look back and see how much I’ve written in a few months (I’ve finished three notebooks already). Most of it is trash (e.g., “I don’t know what to write about today”, “I want to sleep more”). But every now and then, I get a good idea that would probably not have appeared had I not been writing crap. This is a common theme to everything I’ve read on creativity and productivity. Famous artists (or researchers) are often not qualitatively better than other creators. They are just more prolific (of both good and bad creations). So I’ve learned that if you keep doing enough bad things, some good will come out (Seth Godin often mentions it in The Practice).

These readings are helping me develop a sense of self-trust that I couldn’t find in grad school. Maybe it was there and I wasn’t ready to see it. I’ve discovered that creating space to think about what you want to research, to explore questions that motivate you, has become essential to me. In the last two months, I realized my future research plans were not mine, but those my Ph.D. advisor would have liked. I signed up for a Grant Bootcamp and I was getting ready to write an NSF grant to follow up on my dissertation. It was hard for me to sell the idea and towards the end of the bootcamp I realized why. The topic was interesting, but it wasn’t a burning question for me. I was molding my head to think the way my advisor thought and, obviously, it wasn’t working. I’m not sure what will come next. It will probably not be groundbreaking. But, at least, I’ll be able to explain with conviction why I find it important.

This is why you should have a plan

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

*Note: before you start reading, be aware that you can substitute Ph.D. by any sizable project you are starting.

Did you know what you were getting into when you started your Ph.D.? I certainly didn’t. But the bigger problem was that I didn’t even know how to listen to understand what academia was like. I had developed a sort of tunnel vision focusing on the idea I had about how it would be like: a continuation of my bachelor’s and my master’s (spoiler alert: it’s very different). I’m not sure this was being naive or a mere protective mechanism. You know how parents think their kids are the best in the world? That’s the only way they endure all the sacrifices they have to make to raise them. It could be just that, in order to finish a Ph.D., you have to believe it’s going to be the best thing ever.

I remember a professor from my master’s tried to warn me about what I would find on the other side of the tunnel: slim chances of getting a job as a professor, high pressure to publish, and isolation, spending days and days alone writing articles. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. But thinking about it now, I wasn’t even capable of grasping her point. I now get her intention. She wasn’t trying to dissuade me from continuing the academic track —she actually encouraged me to go to a conference to meet some professors of the programs where I was applying (and where I eventually got in). What she was trying to do was simply giving me a complete picture of academia. She noticed I was a good student who enjoyed going to class and discussing the readings. But she knew I was only seeing that “cool” part of academia. So she tried to opened the door for me to see the not “shiny” corners.

Looking back, I’m really happy with the path I chose. I love the diversity and flexibility being a professor gives you. I have plenty of room to do whatever I want in my courses, to discuss things I find fascinating, and to see how my students' get those aha moments (my favorite part). I’m free to research whatever I want. I can adapt my schedule to buy groceries when the supermarket is not packed (although this is dangerous, see this wise tweet).

In academia you sometimes have to work 7 days a week, but the freedom to choose which 7 days is unparalleled
— Greg Bodwin (@GregBodwin) June 26, 2021

However, most people (even with a good CV) don’t get this type of job and end up living in a precarious situation. Other problems we face include low salaries, lack of resources, lack of clarity on your path, and isolation. So my master’s professor was right to tell me all about that. You need to be aware of the difficulties you are going to face further down the line.

The takeaway here is that you need a plan before you start (your Ph.D. or whatever project you are taking on). A plan gives you the intentionality to reach your destination. Not having a plan, is like getting on a bus without knowing where it is going. You might get somewhere you like, but you might end up in a shady place. Nonetheless, a plan doesn’t mean we have to stick to it no matter what. Think about it as a sailing trip, you have an idea of the route based on the wind predictions you have as of today. In a few days, when the wind changes, you can readjust your course to make the sailing smoother. What matters is that you are taking control and being intentional about where you want to go.

What I’ve noticed in the last months is that writing down your plan helps. You might think: yeah, it’s all in my head, I know what I want. But putting it down in writing forces you to structure the plan and, especially, it forces you to see it. Have it close by, check it often to remind yourself where you want to go.

If you start your project with an idea of how it will look like and the wind changes, recalculate the route. Just like your GPS (this is Rebecca Schuman’s idea, check her article). Google maps doesn’t start screaming at you “hey, you looser, why did you make that turn?” So just be like Google and recalculate as many times as necessary. Sometimes it will be because the wind changed, and other times it will be because you made the wrong turn.

How does this concept apply to your Ph.D.? You might begin your studies thinking that you are going to become a professor. Midway, you see that you will be forced to live in the middle of nowhere in the US and that idea is less than appealing to you. You apply the GPS approach and start looking (aka, planning) how to apply your Ph.D. magic to other jobs. Most people I know who have left academia started with an internship or volunteering. If you can to do this while still in your Ph.D. program, you will be ahead of the game. Now think about the alternative, you don’t know whether you want to be a professor or look for another job. You see everyone goes to the academic job market and you go too. You don’t get an offer for a full-time position and…you end up as an adjunct instructor (no benefits, low salary, no stability). It will be very hard for you to leave that situation without a clear plan. I wanna be clear here, I do think it is possible to get out of that place and I know some people that went from adjunct to assistant professor, but you need to be intentional and have a plan.

If you made it this far reading and are panicking because you don’t have a plan, I have good news for you. Just start now. Like the Chinese proverb: “When is the best moment to plant a tree? Twenty years go. When is the second-best moment? Now.” During my last year of the Ph.D., I attended a talk by Leonard Cassuto and he mentioned an idea that stuck with me: “You are the CEO of your Ph.D. Your advisor is a very important member of the board of trustees, but you are the CEO.” And this is probably the difficult part, especially for women. The entire world is designed for us to listen and follow, so most of us have zero experience being a CEO. So remember, only you know what will work best for you, and this might mean going against the crowd. In closing, I feel like this topic calls for a trilogy. You just reached the end of part I. Part II will be about how to make the plan and part III about getting CEO experience. Enjoy the trip! ⛵

What if being nervous wasn't that bad?

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Do you remember the first time you presented at a conference? I certainly do. I remember I was a train wreck right before my presentation and all I could think of was: why did I sign up for this? It’s not worth it. I was hating my adviser at the time, who had encouraged me to go and present (she’s great, by the way). Even if you haven’t presented at a conference, I’m sure you can relate to this experience. Something important is coming up and you become the most anxious person in a 100 miles radius. Everyone is going to face this situation at some point in life, why aren’t we taught about how to handle it? Wouldn’t it be useful to know how to handle yourself when this situation comes? I’ll share with you what I’ve learned about managing your difficult moments.

We need to start by understanding why we get nervous in the first place. The cause is simple: fear. Fear of failing miserably or not being good enough, not making a good decision, etc. We think we have control, but when your body senses fear, a more subconscious part of your brain takes over and tries to get you out of that situation (in my case at the conference, I wanted to run away and never sign up to present again). Your brain reacts the same way as if a mammoth was chasing you. And this is what you need to understand: your brain is doing its job, trying to protect you. The problem is that the consequences are not the same. What happens if you bomb your conference presentation? Not much, people might feel sorry for you, and then…they’ll forget (unless you are on the job market, then you might have some consequences).

Now that we understand why nervousness happens to us, let’s think about the opposite, what’s the complete opposite of being nervous? Being arrogant. Imagine that you’re interviewing people for a job hierarchically below you. Who would you rather have? Someone who is visibly nervous (but manages to give you good answers)? Or someone so confident they think they can be your boss? Reflecting on these situations gives us the power necessary to not let fear control us. Obviously, if you are so nervous you cannot even articulate an answer, that’s not good either. My point is that being nervous is not that bad. I came across this idea in the book Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks. He says the following about his more seasoned performer friend Steve:

“When Steve [more experienced storyteller] performs, he is nervous. Backstage, he paces and mumbles to himself. Onstage, he is jittery and uncertain for the first few moments of his story, despite his honest-to-goodness greatness. His nervousness serves him well. Audiences love Steve before he even says a word. […] Steve connects with the audience before he even speaks because, through his nervousness, he shows them that he is just like them. They are rooting for him before he ever says a word.”

Then he goes on to explain how he (Matt, the author) used to perform on stage:

“I stand there like a jerk. I’m not worried at all. If the audience doesn’t like me, I act as if it’s their own damn fault. Steve is right. I had better tell a great story, because I give the audience nothing to love as I stand before them. I’m an overly confident, probably arrogant.”

Think about the moments when you get nervous. I’m guessing it’s not when you do your usual business. You get nervous when something new or important is about to happen. Humans are not wired for uncertainty and “new” involves uncertainty. So it gets scary and we try to get rid of that scary feeling. But now consider the alternative. If we don’t embark on anything new or important, things won’t get better and that is what we should fear. You might wonder what happened during my first conference presentation. It went well, people liked it and came to ask me for more resources. Actually, a few years later, I ended up winning an award for best student presentation at an international conference. Had I decided to avoid the intense fear of presenting after the first time, I wouldn’t have met wonderful researchers and shared ideas with them.

This sounds pretty, but it’s easier said than done. A bit over a year ago, I was getting ready to do job interviews and the first ones were scary, but the scariest one was the fourth one, the job I currently have. I really wanted that job and I was so nervous before getting on the Skype call, I could barely sit still. I had prepared a lot, spent hours researching the school and each committee member, figured out who would be the “bad” cop, and what they were looking for. But the uncertainty was killing me, is there something I haven’t prepare for? do they want someone with my profile? etc. If I could advise myself back then, I would tell myself to remember that the nervousness is getting me ready, no need to run from it, just an indicator that something important is about to happen. There is no guarantee it will go well, but if you want something better, you need to try something new, and, yes, new involves uncertainty. So next time you (we) feel that fear, remember that something better might come. The fear is just warning you to be ready, to stay alert, and it will help you not to be a jerk.