Academia

Demystifying the Creative Process

“I’m not creative.” “I wish I could be more creative, but I don’t have it in me.” “Why are some people creative and others aren’t?” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard those statements or questions… The truth is almost everyone has creative potential. What separates good creatives (or dormant creatives that [...]

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When Selling Gets in the Way of Sharing

There has historically been a bias against money-makers among intellectuals. Being an academic, I inherited this bias without really thinking about it. It’s only recently that I began thinking about it again – and as normal I got there via a weird route. I’ll spare a lot of the historical details, but I’m not saying [...]

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Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing for Non-Academics

I had a forehead slap moment last Tuesday when I was proofreading a letter my wife had written to a military officer. She’s doing some research on families of Army National Guardsmen who have deployed, and she needed to write a letter to an officer to keep the research on track. She asked me to [...]

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Is the Internet killing Academia?

Dustin @Lifehack has pointed out that the model for personal productivity that I proposed yesterday seems to be an academic model. While I see where he’s coming from, I think there’s a much larger question to consider: is the Internet and its knowledgeworking minions killing the role of academia? (Introductory Sidebar: I will be using [...]

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Negotiating Your Starting Salary: The Importance of That Extra Few Grand

One thing that many academics hitting the job market overlook is the importance of negotiating the initial offer made by the interested institutions. (Historically, women and people of color are much less likely to negotiate for that few extra grand.) What I want to stress is how important this becomes in the long run. Let’s [...]

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Lifehack: Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Writing

Dustin over at Lifehack wrote a nice post for students on how to improve their writing. Last night I was going through the first round of this with my students, as well. The point I found most insightful was the following: Start in the middle. One of the biggest problems facing writers of all kinds [...]

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Yet another blog on time management?!

Okay, so there’s a plethora of blogs out there about personal productivity (I personally enjoy 43folders and LifeDev). However, their appeal is either based on programmers, as Merlin’s is, or is too general. I’ve often found myself asking, “How the !@#@! do I translate this good stuff into my academic world?” Generally, by the time [...]

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