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"Mentoring in the professional neoliberal workplace of is one of those classic words that can be used to invoke or simulate institutional benevolence when there is actually a waning of reciprocity in the employment relation. "
"Since an article consists of about forty 40 paragraphs and you should be able to write a paragraph about something you know in about 30 minutes, you should be able to draft a journal article in around 20 hours."
"I just finished the first draft of the manuscript-- as in, sent it off to my editor and agent a couple hours ago-- and while it's all still fresh, thought I'd spend a little more time on what I've learned about writing."
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The single most important thing is, be organized. The reason I was able to write this draft in a year was that I started the process with a strong, well-organized outline-- an outline that I took very seriously, because it was the basis of my book contract. So that short-circuited all that screwing around you do trying to find the perfect structure. I had one that the publisher liked, and so I was damn well going to stick with it.
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Another is to seek solitude. Turn on Freedom, or LeechBlock, or whatever. Put on the headphones. Before they exist on paper, good words live in a very quiet space, that you can only really reach in solitude. Of course you need to share your work in writing groups, with editors, and (you hope) a very big public. But in order to have ideas good enough to share, you need to seal yourself from everything but the words.
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Take every opportunity available to present your work publicly. While I emphasized the importance of national conferences for reputation purposes, actively pursue every possible local and regional opportunity for experience purposes. Public speaking is one of the core skills of an academic career. Make your mistakes in graduate school, where the stakes are low, so that you are a master of the podium when the stakes are high.
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Cultivate a letter writer who is not from your Ph.D.-granting institution. Having all your recommendation letters come from your own committee or department is the sign of a relatively immature candidate. It is not a death knell in your first or second years on the market, but be aware that the strongest and most successful candidates will have a recommendation from an influential senior scholar from outside their home department who can speak to their standing in the field (and not simply to their performance as a graduate student in the department).
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Pretty soon, you're going to be 13. It's an important year in your life, and as i'm sure you're aware, it's the year you can have an account on sites like Twitter, Gmail and Facebook. It's a point where we think that you're old enough and wise enough to do two things: act like an adult, and take a bit of advice from your geeky uncle.
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)
Listen first
Know your friends.
Nothing is private.
Stay on guard.
Don't feed the trolls.
Create more than you consume.
Right, so what the heck do i mean by all that?
Dear faculty members: I sell Ph.D. advising services on the open market. And your Ph.D. students are buying. Why? Because you're not doing your job.
Great content is contextual, based on frequency, based on a schedule, has a voice, gets shared, and is open to discourse.
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While this is - without question, the best strategy, the truth is that if you don't have something interesting to say on a frequent basis, you may want to reconsider publishing content on your own. Instead, offer up your more infrequent pieces of genius to a place that accepts guest contributors. Heresy, you say? Optically, if someone comes to your space for the first time and sees that the content hasn't been updated in months, it hardly matters how relevant that last piece of content was as it gives off the perception that things are not new and fresh.
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