

Inger Mewburn
Your survival guide for graduate school.
Welcome to the university, where the Academic Hunger Games, fueled by precarious employment conditions, is the new reality: a perpetual jostle for short-term contracts and the occasional plum job. But Inger Mewburn is here to tell you that life doesn't have to be so grim. A veteran of the university gig economy, Mewburn—aka The Thesis Whisperer—is perfectly placed to reflect on her experience and offer a wealth of practical strategies to survive and thrive.
In Becoming an Academic, Mewburn, who has spent over a decade helping PhD students succeed in...
Your survival guide for graduate school.
Welcome to the university, where the Academic Hunger Games, fueled by precarious employment conditions, is the new reality: a perpetual jostle for short-term contracts and the occasional plum job. But Inger Mewburn is here to tell you that life doesn't have to be so grim. A veteran of the university gig economy, Mewburn—aka The Thesis Whisperer—is perfectly placed to reflect on her experience and offer a wealth of practical strategies to survive and thrive.
In Becoming an Academic, Mewburn, who has spent over a decade helping PhD students succeed in graduate school, deftly navigates the world of the working academic. Offering tips and tricks for survival, she touches on everything from thesis and article writing and keeping motivation alive to time management, research strategies, mastering new technologies, applying for promotion, dealing with sexism in the workplace, polishing grant applications, and deciding what to wear to give a keynote address. These essays are funny, irreverent, and spot on; Mewburn peppers her writing with wit and wisdom that speaks to graduate students.
Constructive, inclusive, hands-on, and gloves-off, this book is a survival manual for aspiring and practicing academics, as well as for students who are considering whether to stay in academia. A field guide to living in the academic trenches without losing your mind (or your heart), Becoming an Academic confirms that—no matter what your experience is in academia—you are not alone.
Mewburn's counsel is solid. This quick and entertaining primer will appeal to students considering a career in academia as well as their advisers and anyone who has been down the path themselves.
Inger Mewburn is eminently relatable. Like many graduate students and early career academics struggling to find permanent jobs, she is a veteran of rejection and disappointment. But after years spent working in the field of research education, she knows how to roll with the punches, and she can show you how. Mewburn is the academic version of Dear Abby, the witty and warm adviser you wish you had. Partly a memoir, partly a practical field guide, and partly a self-help book, Becoming an Academic is meant to be devoured during late-night existential crises or bouts of writer's block. Mewburn deftly identifies the common insecurities that linger in the average graduate student's brain, offering pithy anecdotal examples from her own life or from the misadventures of her students or friends.
It's often said that 'anger is an energy.' In Inger Mewburn's case it's an honest, generous, and constructive energy that we need more of in the academy. Her commitment pervades this immensely readable book, drawing together the best bits of The Thesis Whisperer in a combination that is more than the sum of its parts.
Brilliant, funny, and insightful. Inger Mewburn, aka. The Thesis Whisperer, has for a long time been taming the rodeo of academic life through her blog. In this wonderful book, she offers ways to think about the practical challenges of a scholarly life, but also makes the case for the things we hold dear in the vocation of thinking.
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. The Academic Hunger Games 1
1. Becoming the Thesis Whisperer 00
2. Being Academic?
3. Being Productive
4. Being a Writer
5. Being Employed (or Not... )
6. Being Political
Ref
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. The Academic Hunger Games 1
1. Becoming the Thesis Whisperer 00
2. Being Academic?
3. Being Productive
4. Being a Writer
5. Being Employed (or Not... )
6. Being Political
References
Index
with Hopkins Press Books