Reflections on a Year of Connected Academics

When I applied to the MLA’s Connected Academics proseminar early last summer, I knew I wanted to explore alt/non-academic career options, but I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. So in my application, I focused on three ideas: my “commitment to connectivity” and public discourse about the humanities; my valuation of the project of translation; and my desire to increase my professional self-knowledge. I tried to show how I had a longstanding research and teaching interest in making connections between groups—an interest that matched the CA initiative’s goal of “integrating the values of humanistic study into society.” I talked about wanting to better accomplish the crucial work of translating academic practices into more general skills and abilities. And I explained that I wanted to become a better candidate for any job, whether in or outside of academia: to know my worth and be able to articulate it convincingly to employers.

What’s Happening: April 2016

April is an exciting month here in Drown as we wrap up the academic year with a Literature and Social Justice visiting lecture, more pedagogy workshops, a transferable skills panel, and a number of dissertation defenses. As Dashielle suggested in her recent post, one way to deal with mid-semester stress and anxiety is to get out into your community to celebrate (and stress!) with them. Whether you need the teaching boost of a pedagogy workshop, the future model of a dissertation defense, the practical advice from a professionalization panel, or some big-picture inspiration from a guest speaker, find what will inspire and nourish you throughout the final few weeks.