We, the academics, like to think of ourselves as progressive and engaged but we are really not, especially when compared to other people who are doing a lot more.
For instance, did you know that there are professional associations for entrepreneurs that do so much for their members that the MLA (the professional organization of modern language and literature profs) should be put to eternal shame?
One such organization, for instance, helps businesses to progress to new stages of their development. Businesses that bill under a million dollars per year are assigned mentors. These mentors are ultra-successful businesspeople who are constantly there to help the beginners, coach them, offer advice, reassurance, and simply talk. Just imagine what it would mean for you as a beginning prpfessional to have a superstar in your field constantly being available for help and advice.
After the mentored entrepreneur progresses and grosses a million in a year, she or he is assigned to a small group of peers who become the constant and very close network of support. These groups go to resorts together, meet once a month and discuss their professional and even personal issues.
There are conferences, seminars, opportunities to socialize. The association is very invested into promoting women entrepreneurs.
And now ask yourself what the MLA or the AHA or whatever you professional association has done for you lately except charging exorbitant membership fees. Do you even know superstar academics (OK, Jonathan Mayhew is an exception) who give a rat’s ass about sharing their expertise on how to get where they did?
In the meanwhile, crowds of extremely successful and rich businesspeople dedicate time and energy to helping their younger colleagues just because they love their profession and dig talking about it.
I’m telling you, people, when I become a superstar in my field, I will totally do something like this. I will find 3 or 4 promising female academics and mentor them. There is Skype, there will be other things by the time when I do make it, so distance is not an issue. And to hell with the MLA.
Clarissa's Blog 
The Shakespeare Association of America does a great job with mentoring and mingling younger scholars with older scholars. At their annual conference, they have seminars that you can sign up for, submit a paper, and then it is read and discussed with up to 15 other Shakespeare scholars. You get specific feedback from a subgroup, but also general feedback from the rest of the group, and then, there’s a roundtable discussion of the different paper topics. It’s incredibly useful, and you get to meet really famous people in the field and talk to them. There were a few speeches last conference about how people got to where they are. It was interesting, but then, it also showed that cronyism is not foreign to the Ivory Tower. Far from it. Anyway, I have only been to the MLA once, and that was just to interview. I’m just not interested in going and seeing all the nervous early PhDs in black suits. But the SAA? I will try to never miss that conference. It’s absolutely the best thing that’s ever happened to me professionally. I’ve met good friends there and show them my writing now, and they show me theirs. That’s part of the reason I’ve managed to be so active with my writing in the last two years. It’s all because of SAA. I wish everyone had a great conference like it to go to.
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Thanks for the mention, but all I do is blog about how I get my research done. I think real credit should go more to the Marc Bousquets of the world
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I don’t know who Marc Bosquets is but I will never stop being grateful to you! You are an inspiration.
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So I Googled Marc Bousquet. And with all due respect since you seem to like him, you saved my career with your advice and mentosprship, while he’s self-promoting very well but who can claim they have a book and several articles in print thanks to him? From what I’ve seen he pushes the depression as a cultural norm in academia (c) while you demolish it.
Of course, it is very possible that there is a side to Bousquet that I haven’t been able to unearth through my Googling.
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Just mentoring a few people makes it all worth while. A lot of people could benefit by my advise but don’t. You have to be SMT ready as you were.
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Your blogging on its own is already helpful to this aspiring academic. Not only your own writing, but other academic bloggers like Jonathan that you led me to are just as useful as these seminars, workshops, and other events geared towards teaching students how to get on the academic track.
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Jonathan’s blog saved my career. I’m enormously happy that I found it.
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“I will find 3 or 4 promising female academics and mentor them.”
What can I say, you are disgusting.
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Yes, mentoring is a very repulsive activity. 🙂
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No, sexism is repulsive.
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I have sex exclusively with men. Is that sexism, too?
Don’t use terms if you don’t understand their meaning.
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No, I have only had sex with women, that does not make me a sexist. On the other hand, if I had only helped develop young male scientists but ignored equally deserving young female scientists, I would certainly considered myself a sexist.
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Deserving of what? Nobody can “deserve” my free time and effort. They belong to me, just as my body does, to be freely given as I see fit.
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Deserving the benefit of the wisdom and knowledge of a more experienced colleague. You and I clearly do have the same outlook on life ;-D
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Yes, completely agree with ladyleahjane here! Keep up the good work!
I especially found your articles on how to handle academic rejection very helpful; I am sure others did too.
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Oh, thank you, this is very good to hear.
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Your comments on MLA as a professional organization seem unfair but they also indicate a new unmet demand. Teachers of literature/language, at least its star professors, do nothing but mentor: undergraduates, MA students, PhD candidates, former students in addition to all the junior faculty. Look at the acknowledgment page of any book by an emerging star professor. See all the mentoring the author received from big name professors. It would be too much to add to their long list of unpaid and unrecognized “service” by turning the convention it a mentoring pool. BUT that said, we now have a new problem: loads of ambitious junior faculty at (former) teaching institutions who need mentoring but who do not have any senior faculty around who can help them because the senior faculty at teaching institutions never had to research. The only mentoring for us is through books on academia published by these stars or even occasional articles that appeared in Chronicle in the past. Lately, the Chronicle is useless. It has been hijacked by “adjunct journalists” who never became faculty members (by “adjunct journalist,” I mean contingent journalists who are only paid by article rather than fully employed as staff members with healthcare/retirement benefits — total exploitation that no one at Vitae ever writes about). This is a long post so I will close with this: I love your writing. This is the best blog I’ve ever read. I started coming here when the professorisin stopped publishing about tenure. You are a mentor to many!!!
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Thank you for your kind words, they made me very happy.
I wouldn’t take the Acknowledgements page too literally. In my acknowledgments I thanked people who did all they could to make sure I never published anything. The Acknowledgements are pro forma.
But I agree that the Chronicle is beyond useless.
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