25 episodes

The Professor Is In answers all your questions about the academic career. Dr. Karen Kelsky and productivity coach Kel Weinhold, with their trademark combination of candor, humor, and compassion (and a healthy dose of critique), tell you the truth about how the academy works, with strategies for reaching your goals while prioritizing your emotional well being. We go where others don't, breaking down the unspoken rules of academic culture, including all the ways it centers white folks and marginalizes everyone else. Our mission: whether you're in grad school, on the job market, on the tenure track, adjuncting, or deciding to leave the academy and do something else, we are here to support you with insights, advice, and real talk.

The Professor Is In The Professor Is In

    • Education
    • 4.6 • 132 Ratings

The Professor Is In answers all your questions about the academic career. Dr. Karen Kelsky and productivity coach Kel Weinhold, with their trademark combination of candor, humor, and compassion (and a healthy dose of critique), tell you the truth about how the academy works, with strategies for reaching your goals while prioritizing your emotional well being. We go where others don't, breaking down the unspoken rules of academic culture, including all the ways it centers white folks and marginalizes everyone else. Our mission: whether you're in grad school, on the job market, on the tenure track, adjuncting, or deciding to leave the academy and do something else, we are here to support you with insights, advice, and real talk.

    3.29: How to Keep Going When You Don't Feel Like It

    3.29: How to Keep Going When You Don't Feel Like It

    We continue with vintage – yet evergreen – recordings. It seems like everyone struggles with the desire to quit at times. It’s a natural response to external forces, but you can summon internal forces to manage that impulse. We’re not saying don’t quit! We’re just saying, act deliberately. In this episode, Karen and Kel talk […]

    • 37 min
    Ep 3:27 #LeavingAcademia: The Great Quitting

    Ep 3:27 #LeavingAcademia: The Great Quitting

    Academics are bailing in unprecedented numbers, and academia has finally started to notice. Karen was interviewed twice in the past couple weeks–once in Nature, once in the Chronicle — about mass resignations by tenured folks, and the new Professor Is Out community on FB. COVID was the final straw–adding actual physical harm to the decades […]

    • 34 min
    Ep 3:26 Overcoming Perfectionism

    Ep 3:26 Overcoming Perfectionism

    Perfection is the enemy of productivity, but almost all academics struggle with perfectionism. How to resist its siren song? Kel shares her coaching insights from her Unstuck: The Art of Productivity program to give strategies for shutting down the delusion of perfection (which, after all, is not possible) and opening up avenues for facing the […]

    • 46 min
    Episode 3:25 Burnout Part II - Academia Has It Bad

    Episode 3:25 Burnout Part II - Academia Has It Bad

    One episode wasn’t enough to talk about burnout in the academy. Juxtaposing the WHO definition of burnout with a definition Karen read, that burnout is “investing emotionally in a job and not having that investment returned,” Karen and Kel, along with commenters on the FB Live where this was recorded, delve further into the elements […]

    • 40 min
    Ep 3:24 Academic Burnout: What It Is, Where It Comes From

    Ep 3:24 Academic Burnout: What It Is, Where It Comes From

    Burnout is on everyone’s mind right now. It’s the end of the academic year, and what an academic year it was.  Profs and students both are at the end of their ropes. Kel and Karen talk about the symptoms of burnout, including some that might surprise you, and how to recognize and make peace with […]

    • 39 min
    Ep 3:23 Prepping for Next Year's Job Market

    Ep 3:23 Prepping for Next Year's Job Market

    You didn’t get the job this year; what to do?  Kel and I talk through what makes a competitive record and competitive presentation of that record, so you can know what to prioritize this summer, if an academic job is your priority (and needless to say, it does not have to be).  This follows on […]

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

4.6 out of 5
132 Ratings

132 Ratings

Cmc22368264 ,

Essential for academics

Karen and her team offer practical, insightful tips and advice for ABD and nontenured academic professionals. Listen and learn !

Struggling PhD Student ,

No!

Karen and her team’s views are not all correct and some of them are outdated. Sometimes they just want you to buy their service, which is quite expensive. I listened to her podcast and bought her service but very disappointed. My sincere suggestion is that finding senior or junior professors or cohorts in your field and ask their opinion. Believe me—that’s way more helpful and correct!

chime714 ,

Real talk about academia

I started listening to this podcast in my final year of grad school and am really glad I did. Hosts Karen and Kel, as well as their interviewees, bring a grounded, self-aware, realistic, nuanced, and generous perspective to various topics related to surviving and thriving as an intellectual with ethics, whether inside or outside the academy.

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