Academia as apprenticeship and the purpose of this book
When I did my "Professional Psychology" course during my PhD, it was useless.
There was so much they could have taught us!
- What do you wish you knew when you started grad school?
- How do you pick a journal to submit to?
- How do you review a manuscript?
- How do you pick which conferences to attend?
- How do you establish community and industry partners?
- What's next after grad school and how do you prepare for that?
These and many more valuable questions could have been discussed, but they weren't.
Useful information has been left to what I call the "apprenticeship" model of academia: you work with a supervisor and hope they teach you everything you need to know.
Depending on your graduate supervisor, you might find that this can work well!
Some supervisors are looking out for you as a whole person, training you not only in your niche, but also as an academic in an academic tradition. Some supervisors will even help you reflect on work-life balance and the bigger picture.
Depending on your graduate supervisor, you might find that this can work poorly!
Some supervisors are brilliant researchers or fantastic course instructors, but lack certain mentorship skills. Most supervisors are incredibly busy, too! They might not notice when you could use a little more guidance. From what I've seen, a lot of graduate school seems to work this way for a lot of people. The life of a grad student involves a lot of "figure it out yourself" or "ask reddit or social media".
The limitations of apprenticeship seem to be even more pervasive for most undergraduate students.
You take courses, but nobody is looking out for you specifically and you don't have an individual supervisor to ask for help or guidance. If you are in the rare few lucky enough to have found a mentor that does look out for you, all the better, but such situations are relatively rare.
Why this book?
This "apprenticeship" model is far from ideal.
I hope this book serves you when the "apprenticeship" model doesn't.
Whether this book finds you during undergrad or grad school, or in high-school or after grad school, I hope this book provides advice of value on your path.
I figure that I can devote ten minutes for every three hours in my main lectures to talk about different real life challenges that young people might miss out on because life, essentially, is also the apprenticeship model where the "life-mentor" role is filled by parents, not all of whom teach everything that every young person could benefit from learning.
For example, maybe I'll take the first ten minutes after a mid-lecture break to talk about how investments work and how putting money in a savings account is insufficient for growing wealth. Maybe, another week, I'll talk about useful emotional coping mechanisms and how to seek psychological help for deeper issues. Maybe some basic nutrition ideas or basic fitness research. Maybe a segment on the importance of seeking diverse ideas and critical thinking.
I think these little segments could be a considerable value-add to a general education, helping to explicitly teach what is often implicitly assumed.
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