:success in academe

Last night I was listening to NPR’s All Things Considered.  There was an interview with a woman who just passed her solo flight exam, the final step on her way to obtaining her pilot’s license.  She was 83 years old and lived in a retirement home.
While she talked about various aspects of continuous lifelong learning, [...]

How do you know when you’ve put too much energy into a project that hasn’t had a satisfactory return? How do you know when to sell and when to hold? When you’ve passed the point of no return? When it’s time to part ways? When it’s time to get on with the rest of your morning, your day, your life?

I was working with a client last week who made what she believed was an error in judgment that she also believed would ultimately cost her the possibility of achieving her goal of becoming a tenured professor.
First, let me be up front about the tenure process. It has its good points.  And it has [...]

Did you ever sit down to write and find that you have nothing to say?  I'm doing that right now.  I have nothing to say. 
Just yesterday, I had lots to say.  In fact, I had at least 5 topics that spewed out of my brain.  Can I recall them now?  No.  What to do?   Well, [...]

This may seem like a shameless plug for coaching, and perhaps it is. But folks really need to know that help is available and that, despite so many cultural messages to the contrary, getting the support you need is a good thing.  It could help you keep your job, for one thing.  And [...]

I have this deck of cards.  It’s called the “Creative Whack Pack”, by Roger von Oech, the guy who brought you A Whack on the Side of the Head and other creativity-enhancing products and methods.  You open up the pack, ask a question or state a place in which you’re stymied, then pick a card, [...]

A Method to My Madness
I have had the joy of struggling with transforming my computer life from the Windows world to the Mac OS X world.  While the transformation is not in any way painless, I do notice a difference between the way I move into relationship with new technology and the way many [...]

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on New Year’s Resolutions.  It was focused on the steps one needs to take to make good commitments.  After all, that’s what it’s all about.  If I remember correctly, there were 7 steps involved.  I won’t repeat them here, but point you to my other website, [...]

How do I procrastinate?  Let me count the ways?  (Oooh.  That’s a lot!)  Here are some of mine and some of my clients'.  Are any of them true for you?

checking email more than two times a day, when the incoming email you’re expecting is not [...]

In the academic world, summer is a time for rest and rejuvenation, but it's also a time for creation.  During the summer break, new classes are created and familiar ones are tweaked.  After the end-of-semester rush, many folks take a needed break.  I'm all for it, as it's real important to pull back, recharge, and [...]

I just read a blog entry by the Cranky Professor, who wrote about a recent news article in the Washington Post about the proportion of folks entering doctoral programs who actually end up obtaining their Ph.D.
One out of two. Not very high, huh?
They mention some of the following causes:
Some students, for example, have family, financial [...]

Remember when you were a kid, when you had a buddy or a bunch of buddies? Everything was easier with a buddy. Play. Homework. Chores. Challenging your fear. Getting in trouble. Dancing. Pretty much anything you wanted to do or had to do was more easily done when a buddy was alongside you. [...]

Coaching is fun. Marketing is not. At least for me.
I love to coach. I dislike having to make phone calls to strangers, people who may be busy doing just what they need to be doing. But if my business is to fluorish, this is just what I need to do.
You should know that [...]

This is my first real post to this site, the others having been tests of the system. As in any project, there comes a time to say, “OK. Time to show it to the world.” One must find a way to be comfortable with imperfection, uncertainty, incompleteness, as well as criticism, failure, and [...]