This is Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing. I'm Rachel Gordon. Here, we aim to make the process of writing and publishing a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming. Through conversations with editors and academics at all stages, from full professors to graduate students, independent scholars, and postdocs, We share stories, lessons, and helpful habits from our writing lives. Today we're speaking with Karen Kelske, who is the founder and president of The Professor Is In, which provides advice and consulting services on the academic job search and all elements of the academic and post-academic career. She speaks nationally and internationally on topics related to the PhD professionalization and is a weekly columnist at the Chronicle Vitae. Did I say that right? Chronicle, how did I say that? 
Vitae. Chronicle Vitae. Chronicle Vitae. Oh, no, actually, that is, now I just, Vitae has been discontinued by the Chronicle. Oh, okay. It's one of those words I see but rarely say. Her book, The Professor is in the Essential Guide to Turning Your PhD into a Job, was published by Random House. And Karen is also a former tenured professor and department head. with 15 years of experience teaching at the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her PhD is in cultural anthropology with a focus on Japan from the University of Hawaii. And her first book, an academic monograph, was Women on the Verge, Japanese Women, Western Dreams, was published by Duke University Press. And as your website says, you provide guidance for all things PhD, so grad school, job market, college, 
career in the academy and out. And this is a special episode we wanted to do for application season. So the applying to grad school and the applying to jobs that both start to happen in the fall. I wanted to ask you then, Karen, your book came out some years ago. And if you're going to update it now, since we've had the pandemic and some things have changed about grad school and jobs, what would you change or update now? What a great question. I have been in conversations with Random House about an updated edition. And the things that I want to focus on most in that have to do with, well, to tell you the truth, most of all with leaving academia, because the conditions of academic hiring were already disastrous before, well before the pandemic. 
And then the impact of the pandemic on academia in general has just been so catastrophic in so many different ways that are not necessarily direct. So in other words, there's been this massive financial loss and the budgetary crises and the closing of small colleges and the consolidation of programs and things like that. But also, I think indirectly coming from the kind of crisis of the pandemic has been this rise of the right wing. And the attacks, the political attacks on higher education, which of course weren't caused by the pandemic, but I think they were exacerbated by it. And of course, Trump and so on. And so basically the imperative to have a plan, a plan B, which I like to call your plan A. Plan A is your non-academic job search. 
Plan B is your tenure track job search. Because the vast majority of PhDs do not get an academic job and have to take their talent into other fields. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that in my second edition, I would be much more, much more attentive to issues of racism, structural racism in academia, microaggressions, institutionalized racism, incidences of violence on campuses and so on. So with this plan A, I'm curious what you would suggest grad students do do maybe even earlier, early-ish on in their grad school experience to start thinking about that plan A, especially if they have no idea and really came into school thinking probably a professor. But as you're saying, maybe they want to be looking around at other options. 
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the most important thing, advice that I have, and this hasn't changed since I wrote the book and since I started The Professor Is In in 2011, what hasn't changed is I to be thinking about employability from your first day in graduate school. In fact, thinking about it when you apply to graduate school, so that you have, that you never kind of allow yourself to be completely absorbed into the cult, the cult thinking of grad school and of the PhD, because it will suck you in. And your professors, even when they're They have the best intentions, even when they're really great, when they're the best they can be. They are still going to suck you in to cult thinking. If you're in the humanities and social sciences, if you're in the STEM field, you might be able to avoid it. 
But otherwise, you're going to be just absorbed into this way of life where only the life of the mind counts. And the only place you can practice it is in the professoriate. And that is the only proper fate for someone in graduate school. And your peers are going to be the most intense in that kind of judgment, those value judgments. So you may find that your friends are not your allies in terms of kind of your best financial calculation for your life as you move through graduate school. And make choices not to sacrifice your financial and your physical and your mental and emotional health on the altar of this dream of academia. So what have you seen clients or grad students you know discover or find that they could do well outside of an academic job? 
Well, they can do a thousand things outside of an academic job. And, you know, I'm a bit of a proselytizer about that. the tremendous skills and talents and aptitudes that academics bring to any field that they want to go into and that most of those talents and skills are unrecognized for a whole host of institutionalized reasons that have to do with the way academia operates and the way that we are a world focused on critique and finding lack and finding gaps and always thinking we haven't done enough and we haven't read enough and we haven't published enough and all of these things that are endemic to the academic life. But, you know, if you can step outside of that, all of the things academics can do, you know, in terms of research, all of our research skills, our public speaking skills, our social media skills, our organizational skills. 
Sometimes you have to just translate into corporate or nonprofit language like stakeholder management, which sounds completely alien to academia. But as soon as you realize that you're writing a dissertation and defending it is stakeholder management because your committee are your stakeholders. And that's just one example. You realize you have experience with stakeholder management as long as you just learn how to do this translation. So basically academics have immediately as a, you know, lowest common denominator have at least a hundred skills of that type. And then there are all of the, more unique ones, say for myself as a Japan scholar, my Japanese, you know, reading and writing, language ability and cultural knowledge, like those are things more distinctive to individuals. But yeah, a million things are possible. 
Many of our listeners have probably heard when we are thinking about these other professions or jobs far away from academia, that we might want to try to find contacts among alumni of schools. We know maybe even cold call email folks very briefly and politely and ask if we could chat briefly on the phone. How do you recommend learning more about these other possible professions and opportunities out there? Absolutely. Well, if you will allow me, the first thing I want to say is that about two and a half years ago now, I started a Facebook page called The Professor Is Out. And that I expected to have a maximum of about a thousand members and would mostly be kind of disgruntled adjuncts. Turns out it has 37,000 members and it is primarily tenure track and tenured faculty. 
And those are all people, the entire group is dedicated to leaving academia. So anyone can go on there. You have to be approved, but that's a very, very quick, almost instant process. And, uh, and you can go on there and be party to a thousand ongoing conversations about what to do and how to do it. So that's the first thing, the best thing that your listeners can take away is that is a massive compendium of valuable advice and resources and moral support. So that's the first thing, but yeah, there are that what you just described is called an informational interview. And, um, And networking. You described two things, networking and informational interviews. And both of those are absolutely essential. You do want to try and shake the bushes for people in your circle, friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends. 
You know, it can go quite distant in terms of connectivity. To find people who work in different fields, you make contact and then you do an informational interview, which, as you said, is about 30 minutes of basically saying, Hey, I might be interested in entering your industry. Can you tell me a little about it and what you look for when you hire? And those are well-established methods. And a really great way to do it beyond what you said is, of course, to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a very scary space for academics. And it does take practice. You do have to learn how to use it well. You can use it badly. Like any tool, you can use it badly. You can use it well. 
webinar, like a five webinar series that we offered two years ago. And those are still available on the website if anyone wants to look at it. But you can basically expand your network that way. I know many academic friends say they only use LinkedIn when they have to get in touch with someone outside the academic world. And they realize that's how, you know, that whole society contacts each other. But when you say that there can be bad ways or good ways of using it, any guidelines you might want to let us know about? Let's see. You know, you want to make sure that your summary, that little block at the top, is effective. And when I say effective, I mean that you are not repeating your academic biography. 
Because you can't... So maybe an example will be the most helpful. When I hire at the professor's inn, for example, I do hire PhDs. The people who work for me have to be PhDs. But when I ask people to apply... They might tell a biography that says, well, my dissertation is about Emerson and theories of the abject and their impact on Nietzsche. And I had a Fulbright fellowship and my work has been published in this journal and that journal. And I am currently an instructor at so-and-so. That's their academic biography. I can't, I won't hire them if that's the biography they send. Because the biography I need is, I have a PhD in, in philosophy, and I have published and I have taught and so on. 
But my real interest is in supporting other academics in their job search. And I have done this in both formal and informal routes by writing on these issues, blogging on these issues, helping my friends in these ways. And so in that way, they're telling a whole, they're the same person. Mm-hmm. They're telling a whole different biography. And that's the most important thing on LinkedIn, as well as in your resume and your cover letter for non-academic jobs, is to tell a story that speaks to the needs of the hiring, of the people hiring who are not university professors. Yeah, right. It does. It's a translation job. Right, right. We've been speaking a bit about looking outside of academia for folks who are starting to 
look at job positions, the job market for academic jobs, and are thinking about the cover letter for academic jobs. I wanted to ask you about advice that I got in grad school. My cover letter should sing. I'm curious whether that explanation resonates with you and what you think it means or what you would suggest people kind of aim for in that cover letter. Sure. You know, I've been thinking about cover letters since for 12 years. And then I thought about cover letters before I ever started the professorism. So I will try to distill my thoughts. The advice like your cover letter should sing is the worst advice. If your listeners were watching, they would have seen me cringe and clutch my forehead when you said that, because that's the worst advice. 
And here's why. Because it doesn't tell you what that means or how to do it. And naive young PhDs think that that means, they interpret that as meaning that they have to wax emotional. That's what sing implies. I would be thrilled and honored to join your storied institution and your illustrious faculty to continue the noble work of instructing bright young minds. And that is complete nonsense. It is absolutely worthless, right? For a cover letter, because it is all emotion, it is no content. It is no evidence. Academics want evidence. We are people who are trained to review facts and to draw conclusions from those facts. And cover letters are the same. So that means that you stick to facts, not feelings. And people often, when they hear this advice, they say, but Karen... 
It's going to be dull. It's going to be dry. It's going to be boring. It won't stand out. And let me tell you, it will stand out. And it will, in fact, sing because it's delivering all the content that those readers want, which is what was your research? How did you do it? What were your methods? What were your theories? What were your findings? What was your conclusion? Who funded it? Where did you publish it? Where are you going to publish it? What is your next project? Also, how do you teach? And then finally, final paragraph, tailoring to the department and institutions that shows you did your homework and you can see yourself actually fitting into their community there. Those are the things a cover letter needs to do. 
Related to the cover letter, we sometimes include a teaching statement or a teaching philosophy. This might overlap a little bit with our teaching paragraph in the cover letter. What do you recommend writers or academics think about in putting that together? Yeah. The teaching statement is is the most difficult document, in my opinion, because it's because teaching is such a intimate and emotional act. If you do it well, if you really care, you're you're really your whole self is involved in it, which is a great thing and should be the case. But does not but then lead you into that error that I mentioned just before, which is hyper emotionalism. So teaching statements are where people begin to substitute feelings for facts and start, you know, I am thrilled and I'm a passionate instructor and I'm always available and I care about my students and I learn more from my students than they learn from me. 
And language like that, which is, again, absolutely useless for a tenure track job application, because what that teaching statement needs to do is say, in all of my teaching in sociology, I focus on instructing students in the uses of sociology, the theories, the methods in order to understand blah, blah, blah. And then that's paragraph one. And then paragraph two, when I teach intro to sociology, I do it. I focus on these things in these ways with these outcomes. When I teach an upper level course in sociology, I do it in these ways with these methods, with these outcomes. I would look forward to creating a new course called blah, blah, blah, which I will teach in these ways and these methods with these outcomes. 
That's what a good teaching, It might also mention advising graduate students if you're applying to a Ph.D. program and so on. For the past 10 years, diversity statements have gone from being almost never requested to being almost always requested to now being attacked for being requested and now being legally, you know, made illegal in certain states. So this whole question is. which to my mind only makes it all the more urgent. This is, of course, attached to attacks on affirmative action and so on, but a consideration of race in admission to college as well as to hiring. But, you know, race and racism has never been more contested in the United States. And that's all the more reason we need to prioritize it. 
But it is, of course, also why hysterical white people are trying to stop that from happening. So in any case, if you are applying in a state where diversity statements have been made illegal, then you're gonna have to use some veiled language and you're gonna have to follow the cues very closely that the department is giving you in their job ad for how to approach it. But in the majority of states, it is still legal to ask about, to request a diversity statement. And in that case, absolutely, you need to speak Whether you're a straight, white, cisgender male or anything else, you can speak about diversity. You can. You can talk about teaching diverse students, bringing in diverse voices, having guest lectures, making sure that at least half of your readings are by diverse or all of your readings are by diverse authors. 
There are many things that anyone can do, no matter where you sit. in terms of your own identity. Thank you. Yeah, we were speaking with some grad students recently, and some specific questions that came up were about timing of applying for jobs. Some folks wait till the PhD is submitted. What do you think about applying in the end stages? And when do you know if it's worth doing that? That's another great question. And it is... I encourage people to apply as early as they can. And the earliest would be when they have a couple of chapters written in their dissertation. So that's all. Really, that's all. Just maybe two, three chapters of the dissertation have been written. That's when you start applying. And the reason is, is because most folks do have a pretty terrible first year on the market. 
And you want to get your biggest mistakes out of the way while the stakes are very low. And especially if you know you have funding from your department for an additional year, then you're not going to be unemployed and living in poverty if you don't get a job. Whereas if you wait till the end, and many, many advisors tell you to do that, and that's really unforgivable in 2023 for anyone to say that, because really the stakes are quite high, where if you wait too long, you submit that dissertation, you have nothing. I mean, because of the length how long our market is that you submit an application in August and you don't get the confirmation of hire until like April, March, maybe you really can't wait. 
You have to always be thinking at least one year ahead. Yeah. I really agree with you about getting those mistakes out of the way. I mean, I remember that feeling of, I didn't want to not have an answer of how to teach that intro class in my field because you know, more than once. Being in that position one time, those things kind of scar you. And so even though you don't, it's hard to appreciate in the moment, later, you realize how much you learn from it. Oh, I remember sitting in an interview for an Ivy League job that I really wanted. And they said, I really wasn't done. I really was very inexperienced. I can't remember when exactly. exactly this was, but they said, how would you teach our theory course? 
And for an anthropologist, we all have to teach theory courses, social theory, you know, the, the Marx vapor Durkheim and Malinowski and everybody else. And I just like, looked like a fish, you know, like gaping my mouth gaping out there with huge bug eyes. Like it had never occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah. Ever. And I, and I watched them, I watched them around the table. Shut up. Right. Done. Yeah. She's out. And the rest of the interview was just like, obviously, they were just phoning it in. So that was very discouraging. Yeah. Look at me. I remember 30 years. Yeah. But you make those mistakes. You can't not make them. Yeah. Other issues that came up is, I guess, the uncertainty. This was phrased as the uncertainty about academia that some grad students feel, you know, even maybe when you're finishing or when you have finished where you're 
You're not sure at that stage, do I really want to get into this profession of being a professor? And anyway, the job market is going to be such a pain. So when one doesn't have that full excitement, commitment, the applications are actually all the harder to do. But maybe you want to give it a shot. I'm curious if you've worked with clients like this or if you have advice for those among us who are grad students and are not feeling totally gung-ho, but maybe we want to give this a try. Hmm. That's an interesting, I've never been asked that question before. That's interesting. If you don't really, I hate to say this. Wow. This is, this is, I'm going to say this and then I'm going to think about whether I agree with it. 
If you're not really gung ho, I might suggest that's a really good clue that you should be doing something else because, because without that kind of, even with absolute obsessive fixation, even with it, Most people do not get through to a tenure-track job offer and a successful academic career. So if you don't have it, probably cut bait and move on and do something else and live your life and enjoy your life. Because the fact is, what I myself know from my own personal experience and what I have now learned from the 36,000 people who are on The Professor Is Out, as well as all the other people I know personally who've left academia, we tend to enjoy our lives more outside of academia. 
And I say that without prejudice because I was a very happy academic. I loved my time as a professor. I loved it until I didn't. But, you know, I don't hate academia. I know how delightful it can be. But people tend to have more well-balanced lives with better pay and more free time, more time for their children when they're outside of academia. So that may not have been the answer you were expecting. Right. But I think that's probably the answer I feel best about. Now, if I may, I'm always conscious on podcasts not to talk too long, but I want to add one thing. For sure. It continues to be the case that in a way, for anyone who has completed a PhD, that the lowest hanging fruit for a well-paying job with benefits and a retirement plan is in a way academia. 
It's the most obvious. And so if you think you might want to try it, I do always encourage people to try because if it works out, even if you, even if a year or two from now, you say, you know what? I really don't like it. I'm going to do something else. It does provide a full-time income, health insurance benefits, and that's nothing to sneeze at in today's economy. So if you, yeah, if you, if you do feel inclined to try it, then sure, try. That may seem contradictory, but to my mind, it isn't. There's only just one other thing I want to say. Please, listeners, please, please listen to me. It is really easy to write a bad application package. It is very difficult to write a good application package. 
You can't do it fast. You can't. So a cover letter, a teaching statement, a research statement, a diversity statement, And then whatever else, sample syllabi, dissertation abstract, if you're in English and they always require those. You know, these documents take the amount of time of at least one peer review journal article and maybe two peer review journal articles. So you need to dig in and expect to be spending months to make these documents good. That's what it takes. And I know people are going to be like, but I don't have that time, or that's stupid, or that shouldn't be the case, or why am I being judged on documents? Why am I being judged on the quality of my research? And why don't they just read my dissertation? 
Everybody has a million objections to this. Yeah, I hear you. I understand your objections, but this is the case. Speaking of difficult applications, fellowship applications are also something that academics... continue to have to work on even after they've gotten their job and are out of grad school and all of that. Do you have advice for the research proposals, how to think about writing those powerfully? I do. I have lots of advice. I have blogged and my whole section of my book is about research proposals. In fact, I have a thing you may or may not know. that I created back in the very first year of the professors in and have continued to rely on ever since called, what do I call it now? 
Dr. Karen's foolproof grant template. Yeah. And my gosh, that thing has helped thousands upon thousands of people acquire millions upon millions of research dollars because it does, because it breaks it down into a logic, which is what I always want. my readers to know that I'm not giving you fish. I'm teaching you how to fish. And what the template does is it breaks it down into building blocks that any, any academic can immediately see their organizational effectiveness. So that it's not just like, Oh, you need to listen to me. Like I'm some kind of Oracle, but it's like, Oh, Oh, of course, of course, that's going to explain what is, what a grant committee is going to want to have answered, right? in order to feel confident to give you money. 
And so basically, it is articulating a gap in language that a broad swath of academics can understand, not jargon, which only a handful will understand, but generalist language that a wide swath of academics will understand. It is articulating a gap, but it is not resting in a gap because there are many gaps exist that do not deserve to be filled. Because they're fundamentally not interesting or not valuable. So you have to make a case that the gap is a disturbing one. It has very serious stakes for your discipline, for your field, for your topic, or frankly, for the welfare of humanity. And if you can show that the gap has those stakes and then show that you have a project that will fill it, 
then you're 95% of the way toward getting funded. And the rest is just icing on the cake. And I have people do that within the first two paragraphs. What I just described, first two paragraphs, first page, so that before anyone gets bored, they have that proven. And the rest of the pages, whether it's one more page or whether it's 12 more pages, the rest of it is basically filling in, you know, literature review, methodology, timeline, publication plans, and conclusion. Okay. And in terms of academics, learning how to set aside time for fellowship applications, I think that's actually one of my biggest challenges. Those dates always come up so soon and the fall semester feels so busy that I never really understand how others get around to those fellowship applications. 
Oh my gosh, absolutely. Well, the one thing I do want The reason I call that thing that I developed, which incidentally was based on two very, very successful National Endowment for the Humanities professional fellowship applications. And I broke those down into the template. So that's where that's where it came from. But the reason I call it a template is because in the end, by using it, you create your own template. So the first time through is very time consuming and difficult and you will tweak it and adjust it with every grant for the rest of your career. Of course you will. But when you make the template the first time and you hammer it out, you're never going to have to work that hard again. 
Never. It will get faster and faster and faster. And also the more grant writing is the opposite of a zero sum game. I don't know what, if there's a word for the opposite of a zero sum game. We have a phrase for it. But in any case, the more grants you get, the more grants you will get. It's not fair. Or maybe it is. I don't know. I'm not going to attach a value judgment. I'm just going to say observationally, descriptively, people who get more grants get more grants. And so the minute you have one or two grants behind you, you are more likely, because of your CV, they are more likely to give you additional grants. In addition, your template is going to continue working for you. 
Mm-hmm. We also wanted to talk a little bit about applications for grad school. Coming up with your kind of personal statement before grad school when you're not actually sure what you're going to be doing, but you want to sound like you have some idea. How do you help clients in that situation? Sure. Yeah, back in the day before I started the professors and I used to assist with that in the McNair program at the University of Oregon. This was in between my scholarly career and starting my business. And so I gave a lot of thought to that. And what you want to do in a grad school application is articulate a project that you'd like to do. So you do, in a way, have to have a project. 
But at the same time, understand that you're not wedded to that project, that nobody's going to require you to actually do that project, that the exercise of stating it in your statement, your proposal, is to show that you are capable of thinking like a grad student in that discipline, that you basically get it. You get what topics people in that department work on, that you basically get the methods they use. You don't have to be an expert. Of course you don't. You're only applying to grad school. They're not expecting expertise. But that you basically have an idea that if you're applying to a literature program that, yeah, you're going to be reading novels and they're going to be these kinds of novels by these kinds of authors and you're going to think about them in these ways. 
Or anthropology, that you're going to be looking at this, you know, anthropological phenomenon and you're going to do some field work and interview some people. Like, you have a basic broad understanding. And then, so that's just a loose project. And then and then more equally important is that you show why that department. So you speak about specific faculty members who are there and the kind of strength of that department based on how it describes itself on its website. Really, is it one that focuses on theory? Is it one that focuses is more empirical? Is it one that has a strength in Africanist anthropology as opposed to maybe it's one that has a strength in East Asian anthropology? You know, so you're going to show that you get it. 
that you belong there, you did your homework. Yeah, I actually wonder if that might fit in for the job letters too, the cover letters, that kind of demonstrating of the kind of questions you ask and thinker you are to potential colleagues. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what the tailoring paragraph does explicitly in a cover letter for a job. That's the final... In my template, I always have people work with. That's what that does. But in addition... You're subtly tweaking and adjusting every single paragraph of your cover letter to the kind of department you're applying to. So, you know, if I'm a Japan anthropologist, you know, I'll apply to anthro jobs and Japan jobs. You know, the whole thing is going to be different based on is it an Asian studies position or is it an anthro position? 
And then it's going to be subtly different based on what kind of anthropology department is it? Is it really empiricist? Is it really theoretical? Is it four field? Is it entirely humanistic? Those are all going to impact what I say about myself and how I say it. And the courses I'll suggest that I teach. Something you mentioned earlier about starting applying early made me also wonder what you thought about the number of things people apply for. I know in both jobs and fellowships, it sometimes seems like it helps make us a little less attached to each possibility. Yeah. And in some ways also distracts, you know, you almost forget about one of them while you're focused on other of the ones that you're applying to. 
But can this get, you know, too distracting? Is it a helpful strategy to be applying for a lot at once, whether it's jobs or fellowships? My philosophy has always been, and this was the name of a forum in the Chronicle, and the Chronicle used to do forums. I don't think they do anymore. The name was called... A-F-T-D-J. A-F-T-D-J. Apply for the damn job. Should I apply? I don't know if I'm applied. Is this up? But they say they want. Just apply for the job. Actually, I think just. Just apply for the damn job. And it's basically, yeah. And this is based on something I've blogged and written about called the principle of job market unpredictability. Which started, the reason I have that principle is my own job search. 
I mean, I had jobs I thought I was perfect for. Couldn't have been more perfect. Didn't even get shortlisted. And then this job that I was just like, oh, for heaven's sake, whatever. I'll just shove it out there because I have 10 others. I might as well do 11. And that was the job I got. If I had focused on it, if I had prioritized, if I had jettisoned, I would have jettisoned that one. So that taught me right away. We don't know. And then, of course, I became a professor and then I saw how it looks from the from the backside. And that's when I realized that job ads are the product of a moment in time. When a certain group of actors who are in a certain state of mind are battling out how it's going to get written. 
And that's in spring. And then it has to go to the dean's office to get approved and it might get tweaked. And then summer happens and then people leave and go on sabbatical and take other jobs. And then fall comes and the job gets, the ad gets listed and the priorities have completely changed. The personnel have completely changed, may have completely changed. So there isn't necessarily a direct relationship between what was written in the ad in spring and the hiring priorities that are going to happen in fall. and winter. So that's why I just say, you know, yes, I do get it. Again, templates are your friend. You are not recreating the wheel every single time. You're hammering out templates, which is time consuming, but then you're just tweaking those for each job and each grant. 
There's something else I wanted to ask you about the going outside of academia or thinking about leaving it. Some academics assume this might be considered a flaw, that they're an academic type. That means that they're too into their own thing, not used to working with other people, only know about a narrow corner of the world. How do we shift that thinking or how have you seen clients make it into actually a plus or do away with whatever the negative stereotypes might be about academics and show that actually this is a feature that you want? Yeah. That's an excellent question and one that is hard to answer quickly, precisely because it covers a lot of ground. But first of all, I want to say you're absolutely correct. 
PhDs do not have a great reputation outside of academia. We are perceived as ivory tower, as prima donnas, as lone wolves, as absent-minded professors, all of these different negative stereotypes. And, and so the most important thing, you know, is to remember that your initial resume and cover letter. Well, first of all, this is not exactly your question, but I do want to make sure I answer it. First of all, you have to get through an algorithm in most jobs. Rarely are your jobs seen by humans, your application seen by humans. So you have to be very, very familiar with the algorithms and the, the tracking technology that, that most corporations and nonprofits use. So that, that, and you can do research on that. 
This is not a hidden, these aren't a secret. In fact, just today, the Washington Post has a fantastic article about eight techniques you can use to get through the algorithms for your, in your job application. So, you know, there's a lot of information out there, but, but basically having done that, you want to speak in language that, that is normal people's language, not academic jargon, not $64 words, whatever, you know. You don't have to dumb it down per se, but just don't talk in that incredibly pretentious, multisyllabic, run-on-sentence way that academics talk. You want to speak specifically to what this company or nonprofit does and show that you genuinely want to do it. You want to address directly that, yeah, as a PhD, you might not look like their first choice, but here's why, A, you are really qualified, and B, you really want to do this thing and not an academic career. 
Don't try to fake them out or pretend like you're not. Don't hide your PhD. You can't hide it. You know, you got to confront it head on and say, you might think that as a PhD, I might really want to be a professor. You And let me tell you, in fact, this job here is exactly what I want to be doing for these reasons. And I bring these skills. Yeah. Another question that we had kind of about, I guess, the psychology part of all this is in grad school. And I think this happens even after, but especially in grad school, there's a lot of comparing of ourselves to our classmates. Why does the professor seem to like this student so much? Why does everything seem to come so easily for them? 
this classmate. And it's one of the things that can make grad school difficult. I'm, I'm wondering if, if this is something that comes up in any of your work and, and what advice you have for us to get away from the negative part of that comparison. And there, there might be positive parts of it too. What an interesting question. So my partner, Cal is a, is a, is a coach and, And she primarily coaches academics. In fact, basically, she exclusively coaches academics. And one of her core tenets is a line by Teddy Roosevelt, weirdly enough, comparison is the thief of joy. And she uses this all the time. There's probably not a day goes by that she is not telling some one of her coaching clients comparison is the thief of joy. 
And if you really sit and think about that, you realize it's true. It's true outside of academia. It's true about every single thing in life. Why are they a better runner than I am? Why are they a better dancer than I am? Whatever. Anyway, so that's like at the philosophical level. Comparison does nothing good. Nothing good. But I guess more specifically to the concerns of your listeners, knowing what I do about grad school and grad students and academia and peer pressure and really cult thinking, which, by the way, I have a TED Talk called Academia as a Cult. And I wrote it for this reason. I mean, I delivered it for this reason, is that it's quite lonely. It's quite lonely to forge your own path. 
It can be lonely even within academia to forge your own path. For example, I did a doctoral project that was very strange. And nobody, none of my peers, my professors, nobody thought it was a legitimate anthropological project. And I did it anyway, and I was successful. It proved to be extremely effective, but nobody believed in it. And that was lonely and very isolating. And then when I left academia, it was very lonely and very isolating. And I guess, you know, in the end, you have to believe in yourself. I hate to say, God, it sounds so trite, but you are your own. You have the wisdom you need. You have everything you need to choose the right path. There are two questions that we're asking all guests. 
One is, what is something you wish you had known about writing or publishing earlier in your academic career? I had understood right away that it doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to be done. And that, oh my gosh, Anne Lamott has that idea. She's a fiction writer that famous, because she's written a book about writing, advice about writing, about the shitty first draft. And I cannot say enough in praise of the shitty first draft. Just get words on paper. Just get them on paper. It can be a complete shit show. The fact is, once the words are on paper, editing is a breeze compared to producing the new words. And as you write and as you edit, you begin to see that, okay, this doesn't work the way I wrote it. 
I'll move stuff around, take this stuff out. You never delete, never delete. Just have a thing at the end of your file or a file next door, a new tab or whatever, and You copy and you just cut and you paste and paste all your deleted stuff because you can always bring it back in later if you need to. And it's always there. So you never lose anything. That's probably my greatest advice. Another question we're asking is if there is a writing practice or habit that has been working for you lately. Well, I am a great proponent. So I'm going to refer again to my... a wonderful partner in life and partner in crime and partner in professors in, Kel Weinhold, who runs a coaching program for academics. 
I've alluded to it. I talked about her individual coaching, but really her main thing is her unstuck productivity coaching. And that is based on a single, well, a number of, a handful of principles. And one of them is writing for 15 minutes a day. And everybody comes into her program and says, well, pshaw. I mean, fine, Kel, but really, that won't work for me. And she started it seven years ago. And now all those people are tenured. And she's in the acknowledgments of their books. And they did it in 15 minutes a day because it is possible. It is possible. And I know there are many variations on this, like the Pomodoro method and many ways of getting stuff, limiting it. But that's one of them. 
But that's not the only one because she also, one of her other principles is tell the truth. If you have been spending a year beating yourself up for not writing an hour a day, then tell the truth. You can't write an hour a day. So stop pretending you can. So you can write, let's try 15 minutes a day. You can do that. Or Let's say you beat yourself up that you're not writing during the daytime. Well, you're not a person who writes during the daytime. You're a person who writes between midnight and one. I have a friend, very highly awarded National Book Award winner friend who writes between midnight and 4 a.m. She's written like nine books. So it's finding what works for you. 
Yeah. Yeah. So basically tell the truth about yourself. Mm hmm. And I guess part of the reason the 15 minutes a day can work too, is it often leads to more than 15 minutes a day. Well, my, uh, Kel is very adamant. Don't fall down that trap. Then one day you have an hour and then suddenly you recalibrated all your expectations. And then the next day you don't do an hour and suddenly you're back to the self-loathing. She really wants you to avoid the self-loathing, to really love yourself and to believe in yourself and have integrity. So when you say to yourself, I write every day, That you keep that promise to yourself by writing 15 minutes a day, not by writing an hour and then kind of falling flat on your face and going back to the, oh, I suck. 
I can't do this. You're really avoiding that negative self-talk by continuing to fulfill your promise to yourself. Those are just a couple, a handful of the principles that have been effective in our program. Great. That's good to know. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. This was great. Really appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. And your questions and your listeners' questions are phenomenal. So I wish everybody the best of luck. Visit our podcast description to find out how to contact us and send us your questions about academic writing and publishing. Follow us on social media at Writing at Pod and subscribe to us so you never miss an episode.