Category Archives: Professionalization

From Adjunct to Tenure Track: Reflections and Advice on Navigating an Academic Career in the 21st Century

July 8, 2013

Credit: “Adjunct Instructor” by pixelsrzen on Creative Commons/Flickr.

By Ella Díaz

The academic career has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Some would even argue that things started to change long before the twenty-first century and for various reasons. However, it is now indisputable that junior colleagues and graduate students feel deep anxieties and pressure about their futures in the university. Finding a tenure-track job in the year that one completes her doctorate is unlikely, especially in arts and humanities fields. The alternative to the tenure-track or multi-year postdoc is to work as an adjunct instructor, which typically means to “teach on a contract basis, often booked one semester at a time” (Bradbury 2013). Making up 75% of higher ed faculty, adjuncts are the new majority in academia, but this predominance is not beneficial. This certainly was the case for me when I completed my Ph.D. in American Studies in 2010. I had been an adjunct lecturer for four years prior to completing my degree, and would continue as contingent faculty until 2012, when I accepted a tenure-track position, after two years of rigorously applying for lectureships, assistant professorships and postdoctoral fellowships.

In January 2012, MLA president Michael Bérubé reported that “adjunct, contingent faculty make up 1.5 million people teaching in American colleges and universities. Many of them working at or under the poverty line, without health insurance; they have no academic freedom worthy of the name, because they can be fired at will” (Bérubé 2012). A bleak outlook, Bérubé sums up the spiritual and psychological crises for recently graduated and unemployed or underemployed educators—who find their ideological and political commitments to research, teaching, and service, overshadowed by their need for health care, income to pay back student loans, and the intellectual resources that can only be guaranteed by a tenure-track position (library privileges, research funds, an office, etc.). Furthermore, Bérubé’s point on the lack of academic freedom for adjunct faculty has ripple effects. Adjunct instructors can feel an indescribable alienation from their labor and personal integrity because they are overburdened with the fear of unexpected dismissal and not knowing semester–to-semester if they will be employed. Subsequently, they self-censor in the classroom, avoid interpersonal relationships with students who seek mentorship, and withdrawal from the larger community of the university (O’Shaughnessy 2012). Aptly entitled Ghosts in the Classroom,Michael Dubson’s 2001 examination of the plight of contingent faculty elaborates on the dilemma of being expected to perform at a professional level while not being treated professionally.

I also can’t help but consider the scarcity of tenure-track jobs at present in the context of other changes and shifts that create greater precarity in our communities—from draconian immigration laws and enforcement, to the banning of books and dismantling of programs in U.S. Latino/a Studies. The point I hope to make by spelling out the individual impact and collective toll of an adjunct faculty majority is that the stakes are higher for those of us who work in Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies at the university level than for scholars in different fields. If we are not present in the university in viable and sustainable ways, we are not able to create, shape, and put forth the knowledge that heals and advances our communities. I have in mind Jason Richwine’s 2009 dissertation which contends that low IQs among “Hispanics” in the U.S. are a genetic failure and contribute to the intellectual deterioration of the nation. His manuscript has been mentioned recently in the press and factors in political discourse on immigration reform, reminding us that knowledge is always constructed, and we have to make sure that we are part of its production.

In what follows, I offer several insights into my transition from an adjunct lecturer of six years to a tenure-track assistant professor. I am aware that every situation is different, including mine. Nevertheless, I believe some of my experiences may offer a perspective to recent graduate students and adjunct faculty that can facilitate professionalization, whether or not one is on a tenure-track.

One of the most important insights I can offer adjunct lecturers and recent graduates is to think strategically about your labor. Sure, you are teaching classes—from writing lesson plans and assignments, to grading student work and holding office hours (at cafes, coffee shops, and the other meeting places of the adjunct lecturer with no office.) But look more closely at what you are doing. Are you conversing in multiple languages? Are you participating in reading or writing groups with other colleagues or graduate students? Are you discussing curriculum for the upcoming semester? I ask because I have recently realized that part of the problem of contingent labor in academia is the alienation one feels through the denial of professionalization, a process that is largely made up of vocabulary and official terms. Of course, the process of professionalization in academia isn’t only linguistic; it also includes levels of access that facilitate research and ultimately, scholarship, through funding, institutional privileges, and a sense of job security. But on the average day, reading and writing groups, bilingual networks, classroom instruction, and student tutorials, are the ways you labor, whether you refer to them as such. Each of these activities are essentially what tenure-track colleagues are doing; they are simply told what to call such activities: a writing group, a language enrichment meeting, a student research group, a curriculum committee and other academic service and research.

In my first year as a tenure-track assistant professor I have had several trainings in which I have been introduced to professionalizing vocabularies. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I have been using concepts of “universal design” in my classroom and “service-learning” components in my syllabi; I have also been a longtime contributor to undergraduate curriculum planning, but now I am on an official committee with senior colleagues. In other words, I have literally been taught how to talk about what I am doing when I am lesson-planning, writing course descriptions, instructing, researching and writing. As an adjunct instructor, your reading or writing group may not be funded by your university, but the work is the same and it is important to know how you have labored when conversing with tenured faculty, interviewing for positions and networking.

In the process of identifying your labor, it is imperative to value everything you do—be it a lecture at a local history society, a public library or a community center. I didn’t realize all of my labor value until my new senior colleagues commented on how many times I popped up on Google for 2011-2012. As an adjunct lecturer, I had to hustle for venues and invitations to present my work. I inquired with galleries, community centers and public history groups for lectures and events. In doing so, I increased my public profile in ways I did not expect because most of these organizations have websites and advertise events and programming. During my job interview and campus visit, I heard several tenured faculty remark on my community activism and creative projects. Moreover, my work outside the university also inspired new academic research and took me in directions I would have never gone if I had stayed safe and entrenched in the university. But many MALCSistas already know the value of community-based work because you’re active in local organizations and causes as part of research, service-learning, civic duty or spiritual care. It’s time to merge these activities (at least on paper) with your professional profile.

Also, how are you accounting for all of your writing? For many of us in humanities fields, we must publish a book and peer-reviewed articles to achieve tenure. But, in the twenty-first-century, other genres and outlets for writing are imperative, and many of you are blogging on your own websites, or on sites like The Huffington Post, Vice, and our fledgling Mujeres Talk. While blogging is not weighted on the level that the aforementioned publications are for tenure, it offers a particular visibility that can enhance your public profile. So, if you blog, you should make note of it in a professional way, including on your CV, school profile or even business cards. Are you linking your blogs to other known sites? Are you tracking your hits? You never know who’s reading your posts. Recently a tenure-track colleague of mine sent me an email exclaiming that she was thrilled by a blog on the very topic of obtaining a Ph.D. in a humanities field, despite the shrinking pool of tenure-track opportunities. The blog she was so excited about was written by an adjunct instructor. There are two points I hope to make with my example. The first one is that name recognition is incredibly helpful for contingent faculty. If you’re writing blogs or other online commentary, you are building a reputation that may be helpful to you down the road for getting an interview, or even while on an interview, because you never know who is a fan.

The second point I want to make with this particular example is that despite our titles, we are all colleagues, whether one is an adjunct lecturer, professor, instructor, practitioner, artist, etc. It is a system of power (that grows more corporate in structure every day), which categorizes us into different positions; it is not our degrees, nor our scholarship or very persons that have done so. Remember:numerous framers of our fields, including Gloria Anzaldúa, were contingent faculty.

Bérubé touches on the issue of collegiality in his report. He comments that after referring to an adjunct instructor as his colleague, the person thanked him because it was rare when she was referred to as such by her own tenured colleagues. While I don’t want to overemphasize Bérubé’s anecdote or suggest that it is a cure-all to the hardships faced by contingent faculty, the sentiment is not lost on me because, in my six years as an adjunct lecturer, when I was treated by tenured colleagues as, well, a colleague, it made an impact on my teaching and my occupational identity. Moreover, for colleagues who are already tenured, I suggest you reach out to your adjunct colleagues. Mentoring junior colleagues who are in departments as adjuncts can be disconcerting for tenured faculty because they are sometimes unsure how to advise them on advancing. But advice is always welcome and so is friendship.

It is important to remember that the culture of silence that surrounds the changes to the academic career is not our culture. And if the changes that are happening are not ours by desire or design, our responses to them should not perpetuate the problem by not talking about them, whether we are tenured or not. In fact, our culture offers a powerful alternative to the status quo, as lecturer and blogger Annemarie Perez recently wrote in response to the flurry of online articles on the dismal state of the academic job market: “Yes, part of me reads these articles and understands. The job market / adjunct situation is bad. Rejection sucks. Uncertainty is hard. But nothing is ever certain. My family is proud of the adjuncting work I do, proud of the editing work I do, proud of me. They wouldn’t understand (or care) about the difference between a tenured and untenured position. To them all employment is uncertain, all work has dignity” (April 16, 2013) Perez’s statement is powerful for all of us to remember. It definitely reminds me of who I am on a daily basis and motivates me to speak with undergraduate and graduate students about why I wanted a Ph.D. in the first place. Ironically, the reasons that I wanted to be a professor are the very same ones for the Chicana undergraduate, who came to my office last May to ask me to be her advisor. Her reasons for wanting to become a Ph.D. aren’t innocent, naïve or overly idealistic. They are time-tested, honorable and based on tradition. With this blog, I hope more of you will weigh in and offer advice and testimony on your experiences.

Ella Diaz is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University. Her research is on the interdependence of Chicana/o and Latina/o literary and visual cultures.

Comment(s):

Ella Diaz July 10, 2013 at 10:55 AM

I have also had time to catch up on some of my journal reading and I recommend that folks check out George Lipsitz and Barbara Tomlinson’s brilliant essay on accompaniment in this last spring’s AMST Quarterly. My thoughts in the above blog fit nicely into this larger perspective of the stakes of our work as academics: https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/american_quarterly/v065/65.1.tomlinson.pdf
Theresa Delgadillo July 14, 2013 at 9:46 AM

Ella,

Thanks for this blog essay offering both advice and perspective on the adjunct situation. Readers might also be interested in a recent blog on this topic in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “I’m an Adjunct, Not a Volunteer.”

A colleague recently asked me for advice about an adjunct offer she received and it occurred to me that we know much more about advising someone in negotiations for tenure-track jobs than we do about advising them on adjunct work. For example, must one accept the teaching load and salary that is offered or is there any room for negotiation? Where are better places for adjunct work? Should you try to do service as an adjunct to prove that you would make a good tenure track hire or do you stick just to your work? What can we do to diminish the reliance on adjunct faculty? I appreciate how your essay calls us to discuss these topics more openly.
CR September 24, 2013 at 7:22 AM

I believe this is another reason why the US can’t compete in the global marketplace– an education system can hardly thrive and remain worldclass when educators have to struggle and new talent isn’t incentivized to enter and stay in academia.

DICHOS: Tips on Seeking Tenure

April 29, 2013

: Step Junction by Prof Shorthair. Flickr/Creative Commons License.

By Catherine Ramírez and Karen Mary Davalos

Recently, the Mujeres Talk Collective asked successful women to share tips and advice on the tenure process. Below are two insightful contributions from Dras. Catherine Ramírez and Karen Mary Davalos:

Catherine S. Ramírez
Know your institution. Familiarize yourself with its policies, procedures, and expectations. Ask colleagues who’ve recently been promoted to tenure for their CVs. (Increasingly, CVs are available online.) If you have the opportunity to write a statement for your file, quote your institution’s policy manual directly. For example, if the manual states that candidates must demonstrate “scholarly progress and productivity,” write, “I’ve demonstrated scholarly progress and productivity by…” In other words, show your colleagues that you’ve played by the rules of the game.

Build bridges. While it’s essential to have allies within your own department, it’s equally important and often more illuminating to forge ties with colleagues beyond it. Senior colleagues at other institutions will serve as your external reviewers when you’re up for tenure. Get to know them and make sure they know you (e.g., by attending conferences and serving on professional organization committees). Meanwhile, reach out to colleagues in other departments at your university. Find a mentor outside of your department. Forging ties with colleagues across campus can prevent you from becoming isolated. And if any irregularities arise in your tenure review, you’re more likely to be made aware of them if you have friends elsewhere.

Stay focused. If your institution requires a book for tenure, then write a book. Scholarly projects can be a bit like lovers: it’s easy to get bored with an old one and be tempted by a newer, less familiar one. As tempting as it is to drop the older project for the newer one, finish the former (or the bulk of it, at least) before moving on to the latter. Avoid over-conferencing. Attending conferences can be rewarding, but it can also be distracting, exhausting, and expensive.

Publish strategically. A publication in a refereed journal generally carries more weight than the very same publication in a special issue or anthology. Academic presses are almost always deemed more legitimate than others.

Hustle. While requirements and expectations vary, it’s safe to say that those of us at research institutions should publish and present our work publicly on a regular basis.

Karen Mary Davalos
Email is not your friend. Learn this lesson early in your academic career and you will avoid many of the common structural challenges of higher education. One minute you are checking email, and the next minute three hours slipped past. Email can alter the time-space continuum and take up precious time for scholarship.

More importantly, email does not help you create relationships, and as our society adds texting to its mode of communication, we come to assume that less is more. As a chair, email used to give me a sense that I am connected to my faculty, accessible and available. At one point on my campus, the model faculty member was imagined as the one who immediately answered email—and at all hours of the day. What about those poor fools who were routed through the slower servers and their email arrived or was sent hours later? Well, they just could not be trusted with departmental governance! But don’t be fooled! Email is not anyone’s best tool to achieve leadership, communication, or relationships.

Try these ten simple tips to protect yourself from the vortex of email and from conflict and miscommunication in your department. The tips are not listed in any particular order, but if the institution’s legal counsel has been after you, then number three is at the top of your list. Email is a paper trail, even if it exists in virtual space. It is not private and nor does it belong to you if you are using the institution’s email address. If you find that you have been devoting several hours each day to email, then numbers 1 and 2 top your list. But stick to the plan, and don’t let one hour become three.

Finally, email is not your scapegoat. Don’t allow it to control how you use your day. You would not plan a meeting without an agenda, and you certainly would not meet with a faculty member “just to kill time.” If you need a break, take a walk. The effects will get so much more mileage than a hastily written email.

1) Turn off automatic email delivery.

2) Schedule time specifically for email retrieval and reply. Try one hour in the morning and one hour at the end of the day.

3) Never use email to discuss a personnel issue.

4) Proofread your email before you send. Email is letter writing. It counts.

5) Do not forward to another party without sender’s consent.

6) If you’re writing more than five sentences in reply, then walk over to the sender’s office and talk face-to-face.

7) If it’s a complicated reply, then call the sender for an appointment.

8) Use Reply-All with caution. Some communications should be shared with all department members, but if it really is something for everyone to know or discuss, then add it to the monthly agenda. Better yet: create an email culture in your department: Does everyone receive everything? Does every email require a confirmation of receipt? What is a reasonable time frame for reply? Talk about email communication expectations, since it’s still a relatively new genre and our cultural codes are being renegotiated.

9) Model professional communication. Don’t curse or gossip.

10) If email threads are the norm in your department, then use another application to manage electronic communication.

Catherine Ramírez is an Associate Professor in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She’s the author of The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009) and is currently writing a history of assimilation in the United States.

Karen Mary Davalos is Chair and Professor of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Her book, Yolanda M. López, (UCLA CSRC Press with distribution by University of Minnesota Press, 2008), brings together her research and teaching interests in Chicana feminist scholarship, spirituality, art, exhibition practices, and oral history.

Comment(s):

Ella Diaz April 29, 2013 at 1:24 PM

Thank you Catherine and Karen Mary for these sharp and distilled pieces of advice. Being on a tenure track and a new institution can be overwhelming and not easy to maneuver. Your direct suggestions cut through the fog. Much appreciated!
Ella Diaz

Latinas and Tenure in the Seventies: A Testimonial

February 11, 2013

Flower among the Spines by raelb. Flickr/Creative Commons License.

by Eliana Rivero

Once upon a time there were no Latinas tenured in the Arizona university system, from Tucson to Tempe to Flagstaff. This lasted until 1973, when it was my good (mis?)fortune to confront the system and see how things worked.

I had prepared diligently, and then some. When I submitted my tenure file in the spring of that year, I had one monograph in print published in Spain, one coedited critical edition by Oxford University Press, eight articles in reputable journals, several conference papers delivered, very good teaching evaluations, and quite a bit of professional service. Since the year before, I had been meeting with a group of faculty women who formed a caucus to look into our status on campus at the University of Arizona; this group would go on to form the first Women’s Studies program in the state. I remember one male colleague in French stopping me in the hall to inquire: “Why Women Studies? Why not Men Studies?” I laughed then, since I could not have known how my tenure case and the subsequent struggle would be seen first as waged by a woman, and second, by a Latina who was trying to obtain job permanence as a Latin-Americanist in the United States.

My case passed the scrutiny of a departmental committee (admittedly with some grumblings from traditional scholars, all men), and then went on to the Dean’s office for review. There my troubles began: I was called to the College of Arts and Sciences office and literally put on the carpet by the Dean, a Harvard alumnus whom (I would find out later) had been “informed” by some older colleagues at a Harvard alumni party that my work was dubious in nature and provenance. My publications were all right, but nobody knew if I had written them by myself or with help from some ghost writer, perhaps my dissertation director (!). Furthermore, my field (Latin American contemporary literature, mostly poetry) was not that important in the scheme of things.

Thus spoke the Dean: “Consider yourself lucky that we have to award you tenure, because a letter should have been sent to you a year ago indicating trouble with your CV, and it wasn’t. However, you will not be promoted to associate professor. Your title will be lecturer.”

I was speechless. I left the office, went home, got into bed, and pulled the covers over my head. How could that be? Where was justice? Two days later, I found out that the colleague who had asked me in the hall about the feasibility of Men Studies was promoted to associate professor with tenure, despite having fewer years in rank, not having a book in print, and having been hired in the position of lecturer as an ABD a year after me. The department head of Romance Languages explained to me that since the promoted colleague was in a less popular field—French Canadian literature—and I was in Spanish, they needed his services more than mine in Arizona (!!).

I consulted with my colleagues in the women’s studies group, received their moral support, hired a lawyer (who had just won a case of gender discrimination in the state), and filed a formal grievance with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education in Washington DC. Everyone on campus was amazed: “She called in the Feds!” I heard whispered behind my back. A team of investigators came to campus, and after many interviews and much examining of files and almost a whole academic year, I was given a letter with what they called the “right to sue”: yes, they had found evidence that I had been discriminated against for reasons of gender and ethnicity. It helped that a young teaching assistant (also a Harvard alumnus) told me, and later testified, that he had overheard the conversation between one of my older colleagues and the Dean in which they trashed my work, and conjectured about the authorship of my publications. That colleague was opposed to granting me tenure because according to him, Latin American literature was not a departmental priority, nor a well-respected field of research (after all, he couldn’t read more than thirty pages in García Márquez´Cien años de soledad without getting utterly bored!). At the time, out of twenty-five faculty in my department, there were only two women besides me: one was semiretired at 78 years of age, and the other was tenured but in the more acceptable field of medieval studies and linguistics. Neither was interested in women’s issues: I heard the older one say at a faculty party that she preferred to speak to men because “ladies only talk about their babies.”

It was in the spring semester of 1974 that the Dean was removed from office and another head of department was named. I received a letter from the President of the University with a new contract as associate professor with tenure, and a substantial salary increase. Both the new dean and the acting department head called me in and offered verbal apologies. But the title of lecturer for the academic year 1973-74 is still on my record, as a testimonial to that annus horribilis in which they tried unsuccessfully to hold a Latina scholar back.

Oddly enough, the only other Latina who received tenure in the Arizona system around that time was another Cuban-born woman in Flagstaff. But it would be at least five more years until the first Chicana PhD would be hired by the English department here in Tucson. She was tenured six years later, and I—already a full professor with a very substantial CV—sat on the Dean’s committee that examined her case.

It all seems incredible now, but so were the early seventies. At present, at least in my field, the tenure process for Latinas is an easier road than the one I had to travel. In 2013, there are eight tenured women scholars in my department (one Chilena, one Chicana, one Puertorriqueña, one Mejicana, one Argentina, two Brasileñas, one Española, one AngloAmericana). Three more Chicanas are untenured lecturers. We still have some way to go!

Eliana Rivero is Professor Emerita of the Spanish and Portuguese Department of The University of Arizona. During her 45 year career at the U of A, she was also affiliate faculty in Latin American Studies, Mexican American Studies, and Women’s Studies. Her current research focuses on Cuban American women writers and her recent poems and short stories appear in the online Spanish literary magazine LABRAPALABRA.

Comment(s):

Mari Castaneda February 25, 2013 at 9:01 AM
querida Eliana, thank you so much for sharing your story! It’s amazing how stories like these still abound though… I know several Latinas that were recently denied tenure and also questioned about the quality/authenticity of their work. Indeed, there’s still more work to do! But you were a trailblazer, and we wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for mujeres like you – gracias!!

Dichos: Motivation for Grad Students

January 14, 2013

Photo by Sharyn Morrow (Flickr, 03/26/05)

By Sara A. Ramírez and Profes

Today, the Mujeres Talk Collective brings together a series of dichos for graduate students as we kick off the year 2013, the winter quarter, and the spring semester. Because many of us do not have frequent access to Chicana camaraderie and mentorship and more of us cannot wait until the Summer Institute to solicit advice, I asked some professors who are MALCS members for their gut/heart-response to the following question:

In a few words, what advice can you give to MALCS graduate students as we resume our work this semester/quarter?

Below are their answers. May the words of these mujeres sabias, this chorus of fairy godmothers, enter our hearts and guide us as we continue on our journeys to do the work we have been called to do. And please, use the comments section of the blog to share dichos that have been helpful to you.

Querida/o [Insert your name here],

Keep from sabotaging yourself. We have to learn to recognize the “worm” of self-sabotage every time it attempts to invade our organism with its tactics and skills of sabotage. It may well have a symbolic relation to Gloria’s “serpents.” Or is it “maggots” I mean to call up? Among those “worms/maggots” is the feeling of incompetence which is our heritage, that is to say, as a colonized people we have always already been judged incompetent, and we become overwhelmed by the “proof” of history. Keep from sabotaging yourself.
—Norma Alarcón, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

Make sure to make time for sleep and laughter. Both are good medicine for what ails you. I think of sleep as horizontal meditation, your mind and body enter a new state in which it can heal from the demanding often bruising world of academia. Sleep still helps me process readings and arguments. As for laughter, nothing beats a loud, open-mouthed, body shaking, roaring carcajada!
—Lourdes Alberto, Assistant Professor, The University of Utah

My mom advised when I started first graduate school: Aprende todo lo que puedas. She didn’t mean just what was taught in school, I am convinced, but she was telling me to LEARN … and I have not stopped yet! Otra cosa que se me ocurre is to be patient and not think you are a failure if you don’t do EVERYTHING all at once. Be patient with yourself and acknowledge what an incredible accomplishment it is to be a Chicana/Latina in graduate school.
—Norma E. Cantú, Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas at San Antonio

Find yourself a mentoring circle/support group—preferably one that includes good food!
—Debra A. Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor, Cornell University

There are always little rituals that I have before writing—I clean the house, feed the animals, light candles, clear the air. Sometimes it is a good thing to change the ritual, to change the hour of my writing, the directions, places, mix it up a little with poetry, fiction, a short sexy-funny-clever list of words to begin my writing day. These breaks in routine help me de-stress because if I am stressed, I cannot write.
—Cindy Cruz, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

“Quien adelante no mira, atrás se queda.” Create a year-by-year plan for how you will complete the Ph.D. Study the requirements of your program and map out your course loads, your exam schedule, dissertation preparation schedule and fieldwork time if required. If your program allows it, research classes in other units that you will want to take or professors in other Departments with whom you want to study. Plan how and when you will fulfill language requirement. If your Department offers workshops or orientations on preparing for comprehensives or writing the dissertation proposals, be sure to attend those. (In my graduate study these were organized and led by the graduate student organization in the Department and featured advanced students who discussed their own preparation strategies) If your Department doesn’t offer these, then work with peers to create them with Department help. Ask whether your university offers dissertation support writing groups, which are different than writing groups. In the former, students from across disciplines meet with a counselor as a group every few weeks to share challenges and keep on track. In the latter, peers share and critique each other’s work. Talk to your advisors about your plan every year and be sure to get their feedback on it. —Theresa Delgadillo, Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University

Don’t feel guilty saying no, and trust in your abilities.
—Dora Ramírez-Dhoore, Associate Professor, Boise State University

Don’t compare yourself to other people. Remember you are on your own journey.
—Elena Gutierrez, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Contemplative practice is good, even deep breathing, even remembering to breathe! Find your optimum writing time and be faithful to it, be loyal to yourself, to your obra—that is, you.
—Inés Hernández-Avila, Professor, University of California, Davis

Mija, in all you do know what your spiritual anchor is and tend to it. It may come from your traditions, you may find it in community or perhaps you feel it when you are in nature. It is in this anchor that will always reflect back your greatness and your deep interconnectedness to la vida. The academic part is easy. You’re brilliant and you’ve been admitted, punto final. El camino es lo dificil. Cultura cura … however, spirituality is the preventative piece. —Sandra Pacheco, Associate Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies

Trust your gut, your intuition, your own judgment; avoid anyone, situations, or theories and scholars that make you feel less, badly, disempowered.
—Laura E. Pérez, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

As someone who was also a first generation grad student, it was imperative that I created a strong community of friends/colleagues and a structure of mentorship across cohorts of graduate students and faculty within my department. There is so much knowledge and experience that can be passed down to lessen the anxiety of embarking on such an enormous endeavor.
—Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

Don’t over-do. A chronic thing that haunts me is over-doing. I think that it can be equally detrimental to do too much than to do too little. And for us chronic perfectionists, it can really be debilitating. Also, I’ll say yes to too many things and then land up not doing some very well and then punish myself for it. Not over-doing is about self-care.
—Patricia Trujillo, Assistant Professor and Interim Director of Equity and Diversity, Northern New Mexico College

¡Feliz 2013 y échenle ganas, mujeres!

Sara A. Ramírez is a doctoral candidate in the Ethnic Studies Graduate Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Comment(s):

Sandra D. Garza January 14, 2013 at 9:31 AM

This is fabulous! Thank you Sara and all the mujeres that contributed to this post. I’m sharing it on FB <3
Annemarie Perez January 14, 2013 at 2:33 PM

Thank you so much for putting this up. It’s wonderful for all of us to read, graduate student or no.
Brenda Sendejo January 14, 2013 at 2:35 PM

Thank you so much to Sara and the contributors for this blog post! I think this is amazing advice for graduate students. I am also grateful for these wonderful words of wisdom as a junior faculty member. They are inspirational and beautiful reminders of how to be, become, and stay healthy and grounded in mind, body, and spirit on our paths. Mil gracias!
Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez January 14, 2013 at 10:35 PM

Muchisimas gracias for these little pearls of strength. I’ve been through a lot of pain in my doctoral program, and these words help me find survival and sustenance to carry me through.
Li Yun Alvarado January 16, 2013 at 5:10 PM

Thank you so much for these! They’re fantastic.
Angie Chabram, Professor, UC Davis January 16, 2013 at 10:01 PM

I just decided to forward my own pearl of wisdom:

Watch out for the snakes. They come in all colors and genders. Don’t assume that the academy is your home or that your colleagues are all friends. Remember that you are at work. Yes academics “work.” Live your life to the fullest. Fight hard when you need to, then rest. While you may have comadres, it is you that must wage your fight con ganas y corazon. Be a pragmatist as well as an idealist!
Sara Ramirez January 16, 2013 at 10:08 PM

I’m so happy these words could be useful to so many of us! Please, contact me at sara@malcs.org if there are any other stories you’d like to see posted for grad students!
Claudia Serrato January 29, 2013 at 9:31 AM

Medicina all the way! Gracias! <3
Noemi Martinez February 3, 2013 at 12:17 AM

Lovely, thank you.