Summer is a great time to take stock of your professional progress, to think about where you are and where you hope to be going, and to compile evidence of your work. What did you accomplish in the last academic year, and what do you want to try next year? Are there any gaps in your experience? The teaching portfolio provides a model of how to do that for teaching, but it could be applied to your research agenda as well.

I’ve been thinking about the tensions of what students need to be able to do, how they are being assessed, and what it really means to be “good” in an environment where Harvard is capping A grades, AI is ubiquitous, and the job market is terrible. Universities are working to frame their curricula for career readiness, and programs will be judged based on students’ incomes 4 years post-graduation. There is so much to unpack about what is happening. 

If you are writing your dissertation, or working on a project, or trying to navigate your career, or raising kids, there is seriously always something. Just when you think things are settled, bam, another obstacle! I am here to help you navigate these ups and down in your work.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, it’s easy to have big goals for summer projects, and even easier to feel like you are falling short. I have been meeting with a few students these days and see this trend. They had big plans, but oh no, it’s already the end of June! I can relate. Summer is short. How can you stay on track?

A friend shared this mantra with me when we were both job hunting, and it has stuck with me. It’s tempting when things don’t work out the way we hoped to feel that we made a mistake or we failed. But what if we believe we’re better off instead?

For academics, summer is for vacation. It also becomes the season of all the projects you don’t have time for during the year. But summer is short, really, especially if you live in New England. That list of summer goals can be overwhelming. As the days lose their structure, it’s easy to keep doing the things you have to do, and not make time for the things you really want to do. So what can we do so that we don’t spend the summer busy NOT making progress towards our goals? 

To be able to perform a task at a certain level, we have to practice at that level. I think we are better at understanding this when it comes to sports (the best runners run every day, intentionally, with a plan). But there are certain things, like speaking or making conversation, where there’s a tendency to think that you should just be able to perform well without practice. But how often do we have high-quality conversations? Today I share advice for how to practice and improve your conversational skills.

Who gets credit for your success? It’s commencement at Harvard tomorrow, and I have been thinking about this as so many proud parents and friends are here to celebrate this milestone. Last night at a farewell reception, the dean called on graduates to thank three groups of people: the faculty and staff that keep the programs running and help students learn and thrive, family and friends that supported students along the way, and the students themselves, for all their hard work 

Do you ever feel your work is going out into the void? That no one cares? Maybe you worry it doesn’t matter. I’ve definitely felt this way at times. Work, especially more academic work, is really a long game. Recently I’ve been getting gratifying signs that remind me that progress isn’t linear and we don’t always know our impact.

Yesterday I gave a communication workshop for graduate students preparing to go to summer conferences and apply for fellowships. They wanted to practice the answer to the simple, but always challenging question “what do you work on?” We talked about strategies to frame your work, with a special focus on hooks.

I help students and scholars discover and present the best versions of themselves, to find their scholarly voices. Recently I got some great feedback from a student I supported with a writing project, which got me thinking about how these skills are all connected.

These days I’ve been meeting with students preparing for final presentations and asking for last-minute feedback before their papers are due. This kind of support can be tricky in that the students don’t really have time to make big changes. They may be coming to me for a confidence boost more than anything else. So what should I do when I think their work has some fundamental challenges? How should mentors approach meetings like this?

Last week I finished a challenging knitting project. It’s the second year in a row that I’ve tackled a complicated project over the winter months that I finished in time for the Boston Marathon. It seemed like a good occasion to share the lessons I’ve learned from knitting, running, and how we think about proficiency that apply to any academic project, whether you are trying to finish your dissertation (the ultimate marathon), publish a paper, or commit to your next project.