Tag: career
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Two Potential Post-Doc Paths
Another challenge in writing this dissertation is the idea that I also have to lay the groundwork for the next phase of my academic career, such as it is. So aside from the fact that I have to believe in myself and my potential for doing good work – despite the barrage of self-reproach that…
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Dissertation blues
Dissertation Blues Writing this thing is like building a house. Only I can’t actually see what I’m doing, the plans keep changing, and there are periodic earthquakes. It’s a wonder that I’m this far along at all! A brief progress report: I broke ground on this, officially, on February 28 2018, so almost a year…
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Diverse paths to an uncertain future: Early career options in Human Geography
I co-organized a panel in the Human Geography stream at the Annual Swiss Geosciences in Bern. We aimed it at early career researchers and entitled it as shown above: “Diverse paths to an uncertain future…” Tellingingly, this appeared in the conference program as the more anodyne “PhD, What Next? Early career options in Human Geography.”…
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Travails of the dissertation, part IX
It’s not easy, doing this. I’ve never really bought into the idea – omnipresent but not so often explicitly stated – that the academy is something special, that by virtue of doing a PhD we are smart and unique. I don’t think being an academic is really much different from being an airplane mechanic, a…
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L’esprit de l’escalier, or Meddling? What meddling?
In April this year I had the opportunity to give a talk at Smith College with Martin Müller and Chris Gaffney. The event was called Sport Mega Events and Urban Development: Cases of Brazil 2014, Rio 2016, Sochi 2014, Russia 2018, and it was hosted by Andrew Zimbalist. If you don’t know him, Andrew is a…
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My Current Conceptual Quandary
Working on any large project – whether writing a dissertation, recording an album, or hosting a mega-event – means keeping track of a lot of moving parts. When I was working as a musician, I hung a large whiteboard on the studio wall where I’d draw a project management grid for each album. One axis…