Recent PhDs share advice on surviving the ups and downs of the academic search
It is the holy grail of the graduate-school career. The finish line. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It is the tenure-track job. But just how does a candidate make that all-important transition from student to faculty? In uncertain economic times, and amid the continuing challenges of a constrained job market, it is hard enough to find a suitable opening, let alone beating out the stiff competition for an actual offer.
Enter the postdoc, an opportunity once confined to the sciences, but that has been cropping up as a viable post-graduate pathway in other disciplines. And while you may think of it as the understudy to the star that is the tenure-track job offer, it’s been moving into the spotlight in recent years, and it’s getting good reviews.
As part of its January@GSAS programming, the Office of Career Services (OCS) brought in three recently hired PhDs to share their insights with GSAS students who are pursuing careers in academia, specifically in humanities or social sciences fields. And while each speaker’s story was unique — as is each candidate’s — it was hard to ignore the songs of praise for the postdoc.
Take Peter Kraus, who earned his PhD from MIT in 2011. Coming out of his fifth year of graduate work, Kraus was offered a position as assistant professor of political science at Boston College. It was his dream job, but the timing was less than ideal. Not only was he set to get married that summer, but his defense was also scheduled for September, right when he was due to begin teaching. In a bold move, Kraus asked to defer for a year, a request that BC granted, and he opted instead for a research fellowship at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.
While the idea of delaying a tenure-track job for a postdoc may seem counterintuitive, Kraus says that in hindsight, he wouldn’t have done it any other way. “I couldn’t recommend it more highly,” he told the audience at the OCS’s Real-Life Stories from the Academic Job Search, held on January 14. “Since I wasn’t going right from defending to teaching, I was able to get a couple of articles in the pipeline and my manuscript was in decent shape so that when I started at BC, I could really focus on the teaching.”
Kellie Jackson, who got a PhD from Columbia in 2010, also highly recommends applying for postdocs before the tenure track, a lesson she learned the hard way. Jackson got her start as an adjunct professor at Gonzaga University, where she quickly moved up the totem pole and was entered into the running for a tenure-track job, a position, she was told, that was created with her in mind. Yet while she loved her students and reveled in the teaching experience, Jackson felt overextended. With a 4:4 load, “I got burnt out very quickly,” she said. “I realized, I’m not getting any writing done, I’m not getting any research done. All I’m doing is teaching,” a startling realization in a publish-or-perish world. So she withdrew from the search at Gonzaga and accepted a position as a Harvard College Fellow in African and African American Studies. It’s a transitional role that will ultimately make her “much more alluring for other job opportunities,” she says.
Still, it’s important to remember that on the quest for tenure, there is no single, clearly defined model for success. Sometimes, in fact, your timing is perfect, your preparation is solid, and the stars align. This was the case for GSAS alum Margaret Healy-Varley, who earned her PhD from Harvard in 2011 and is now an assistant professor of English at Providence College. She went straight from bachelors to PhD to professor, an impressive feat that has become less and less common among recent grads looking for work. Nevertheless, her story proves it’s possible, and she’s never been happier. “I love my job,” she says. “It’s a blast.”
If you can get a tenure-track position straight after earning your PhD, and feel that you’re sufficiently prepared for the role, then go for it, but do it for the right reasons, the panelists agreed. As you develop your research and think about your future, the most important question you can ask yourself is not how you can get the job, but who you want to be when you get it. Write, teach, attend conferences, meet with peers, listen to great lecturers, and immerse yourself into the community before you get the job, so that when you do, you’ll have the knowledge and confidence to succeed.
More career news: www.gsas.harvard.edu/careers
Story credit: Emma Mueller
Photo credit: Molly Akin