Quotes from Karen Kelsky

the modern university system systematically requires an unending supply of young, vulnerable idealists to work for poverty wages as graduate student teaching assistants (and, of course, adjuncts). The advanced degree these students earn is, as Marc Bousquet has argued, simply a by-product of this systemic exploitation, and not meant to carry value forward as a basis for high-wage employment" (Kelsky).

We thought we only wanted X, but having read this application, it seems important to expand our thinking to include Y.

Adjectives are not arguments.

Search committees need to be easily able to imagine you as a faculty member in their departments. Invoking the names of other universities and colleges is an obstacle to that.

Because if you are fresh from the hazing of PhD training, you are: insecure, defensive, paranoid, beset by feelings of inadequacy, pretentious, self-involved, communicatively challenged, and fixated on minutiae.

so be proactive in seeking information from many, always prioritizing those who have fresh-lived experience of the job market.

A Tightly Organized Research Program. You will articulate your dissertation project/current project in approximately five sentences that sketch the topic, its data, text or objects of study, its methods, its approach, and its core argument.