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May 5, 2008

Wise Advisories

I posted last week about bypassing a mentor’s advice against interviewing at a teaching institution. As I’ve reflected on that posting for a few days, I’ve pondered the good advice I received from my mentors. Two things come to mind.

First, they encouraged me to jump into the search process early on, when I had just reached A.B.D. status, even as they warned me explicitly that I was not likely to land a good job at that point. They told me that the search process was sort of a two-stage project, the first stage being the gaining of experience and the broadcasting of my name as a kind of advertising and the second being an earnest pursuit of my initial career appointment.

Next, they strongly urged me to pass up an appointment overseas when I was A.B.D. I had an intriguing offer, and the compensation looked pretty good relative to my graduate assistantship. One of my mentors told me, though, that accepting it while I was A.B.D. would put me into an 80-plus-percent likelihood of never finishing my dissertation because of trouble accessing resources (this was in the days before the Internet had taken over). At the time I thought he was being paranoid. Now I know that he was being judicious.

What was the best advice you ever received from a mentor? Did you realize that it was wise counsel at the time, or did you need a bit more experience to understand it better?

Comments

1. Actually, an even more important reason for not accepting an offer overseas early in one’s career is that “hopping back” will be difficult for reasons beyond the candidate’s control.

   Interviewing a candidate on campus is not always a free and easy budget decision. Many state universities may not use their funds for the foreign travel of a candidate (get yourself on American soil on your own dollar and then they can fly you to campus).

   Of course, the university stateside might worry about increased moving expenses (should they actually offer them — many fields don’t) and the whole bureaucratic nightmare of it all might just put the application to the bottom of the pile.

   Sad but true….

   — Anti-hypocrisy advocate    May 5, 06:13 PM    #

2. My mentor wisely told me that “no one owes you a job.” For a grad student, this was an enlightening idea.

   — Nixon    May 6, 03:59 AM    #

3. In my first job after graduate school, in a small college in South Dakota, I received two pieces of wise advice from the college president, who took time to get to know me and help me think about my career.

   (1) I was angry at the end of a year about not receiving a merit increase. I felt I had worked extra hard to deserve one. He told that it was not enough to work hard; I also needed to let people know I was working hard. “He that tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted,” as John L. Lewis used to say.

   (2) He also told me of the importance of presenting an optimistic and hopeful face to my students, my colleagues, and others on a daily basis. This did not mean to be a “Pollyanna”; he meant that as a professor and colleague I needed to show my commitment to my career and my institution. Doing so would mean that people would want to work with me to make a difference.

   Almost thirty years later I can say, “Thanks, Carl. Your advice put important things into perspective.”

   The world is not indifferent, but it does have a short memory. And no matter how you are feeling on any given day, there is a student, colleague or other person in whose life you can make a difference if you are ready to do so.

   — Doug    May 6, 09:00 AM    #

4. I got accetped to two doctoral programs, and funded at one—the slightly less prestigious of the two. Best piece of advice was from the director of the more-prestigious program: “If they gave you funding, you have to go there.” He went on that paying tuition for the first year ($18,000) was no guarantee of getting funded after that. And if I went into debt for a degree in this field, I’d never make that money back. Best advice I ever got, from someone at the place I did not end up attending.

   — morris    May 6, 09:04 AM    #

5. As an undergrad, I was waiting for grad-school letters to come in, and rejections arrived first. At that time, a teacher told me that if a program rejected me, I wouldn’t have been happy there anyway, because their priorities and values wouldn’t have been consonant with mine. I’ve been comforted by this wisdom through Ph.D. apps, job searches, contest applications, etc.

   At the same time, the same teacher advised me to go straight on to grad school, without time off after my BA. He was the only person I asked this question who advised me to do what he HADN’T done, and it was the right advice for me.

   — Komponist    May 6, 10:42 AM    #

6. The best piece of advice I got from my mentoring committee was NEVER to be too eager to please my seniors. You get used in the process and no one remembers. I got used, and at the time of reckoning, no one remembered

   — John Olivets    May 6, 10:45 AM    #

7. I was lucky enough to receive two best pieces of advice from the same mentor early in my career in student affairs. Both had to do with thinking carefully before making decisions. The first was always to ask the question, “What are we teaching our students by doing this?” The second was to pick my battles. Coming from an old Southern military family, her formulation was, “Is this hill worth dying on?”

   — Michigander    May 6, 11:38 AM    #

8. The best advice I have received so far was in my junior year. A very wise mentor told me to never be afraid to reach out to others with the same interest – no matter what their name was. I have followed this advice and found a whole new world and career beyond my fish bowl.

   — Still a student    May 6, 11:40 AM    #

9. The best advice I received from a mentor was to figure out quickly whether a phd program was right for me. I followed this advice and left after my first semester, eventually completing the degree elsewhere. In my case, this was a key factor in not ending up an abd statistic.

   — eisenhower    May 6, 02:05 PM    #

10. From a dean while I was ABD: “There are two types of dissertations: the perfect ones and the ones that actually get you a degree.”

    — Arnaud    May 7, 08:22 AM    #

11. For clarification, I moved from a quantitative discipline to a qualitative one within the social sciences.

    — eisenhower    May 7, 09:56 AM    #

12. Many years ago, from a professor for whom I was TAing, on the topic of “difficult” students:
    “Every semester, there is ALWAYS one…”

    — L    May 7, 03:32 PM    #

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