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Questions and Answers About the Academic Career

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Three senior professors try to answer some of the most common career questions asked by young scholars in a new book out this month, The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career. Here are a few questions, and the excerpted answers provided by Penny Schine Gold, John A. Goldsmith, and John Komlos:

How should I decide whether to try for an academic career?

Goldsmith: One of the odd characteristics of academia is how many people manage somehow to slide into it without ever making a serious and conscious decision to become academics.

Komlos: If you are interested in a life full of material amenities, with your talents and achievements, well, you are much better off going to a professional school or working in the private sector after you earn an advanced degree.

Can you recommend academia as a career choice?

Goldsmith If the fit is right, then becoming a professor is an excellent choice. ... There is a good deal of flexibility in the scheduling of your day: for most professors, there is nothing like the 9-to-5, stay-in-your-office, stare-out-the-window life that many of your firends know. ... Don't get the impression, however, that being a professor is like being a preacher, who only works one hour a week, on Sunday mornings -- because it's not true about the preacher, and it's equally not true about the professor.

Gold: Academic work is both flexible and all-consuming. One can read a book or journal article anywhere, and so it's a challenge to keep work from creeping into every available space. Sometimes I think wistfully of a 9-to-5 job, where I would come home at the end of the day and be done with it. So why is it worth it? ... I feel enormously privileged to have a job in which I'm paid to be continually learning.

How is it decided who will be chosen for an interview?

Komlos: We are fortunate to have an oversupply of very smart people, and usually the committee has plenty of comparably good candidates to choose from. In such cases, the reputation of the school and that of the mentor matter a lot. In addition, the committee often looks for small differences, such as taste in research. In a pool of equally qualified candidates, the impact of slight differences is likely to be magnified.

Goldsmith: I make an initial division into three categories: the truly outstanding, the ones not worth rereading, and everyone else. I think of these categories as A, C, and B, respectively. ... The sad fact of the matter is, then, that it's only those in the top category, category A, that make my first cut."

Gold: There are nonadvertised factors that will inevitably come into play when the search committee faces the daunting task of narrowing the field. ... You may come from a school where people on the committee have personal -- and hence emotional -- ties. Or there may be so many people already in the department from your school that this is a negative factor. Since there are so many factors out of your control, all the more reason to take great care with the part of the process that is in your control -- that is, your presentation of yourself in your cover letter.

What if I end the season with no job offers?

Komlos: You should not despair. You have gained valuable experience about the process of job seeking that should be useful later. For some jobs, there really was an inside favorite, someone whom the committee knew and was from the start predisposed to hire.

Goldsmith: My adviser once said to me, when I had been rejected in a job search, 'That's a chapter out of their biography -- not yours.' Meaning, in essence, that he was sure I had done my best in the task of presenting who I was and that, after that, it is a function of the complex psychology and sociology of the department doing the searching how the hiring decision will be made.

Gold: It's very difficult to second-guess the choice of any one department. People are looking not just for a beginning assistant professor, but also for a potential colleague-for-life, since institutional relationships may last longer than many marriages.