What is The Aspiring Academic and Why Should You Read It?
If you have questions about graduate school, life as a graduate student, or academia in general, you’ve come to the right publication.
Because I have questions too.
A LOT of questions.
After years spent thinking about graduate school, berating myself for not learning more about graduate school when I was in undergrad, and watching friends in different fields make different grad school decisions based on a whole host of different factors (and occasionally based on not many factors at all)… I realized that I needed help. The primary issue is that there is so much I don’t know about academia that I don’t even know what I don’t know.
So I started writing a list of things I know I don’t know.
At the time of this writing, that list is 75 questions long… and counting.
Because the more I learn, the more questions I have.
The good news?
I don’t think we have to worry about running out of material for this publication anytime soon.
Why Is This Publication Called The Aspiring Academic?
I’ve read a grand total of one post about making a publication on Medium so far.
That post told me that when it comes to naming a publication, you should be as clear and concise as possible, so that people know what it is about. The only problem is that I don’t know much at this point (part of the reason I’m doing this is that I don’t even know what I don’t know, after all), so I’m not sure how clear I can be.
What I do know is that my 75 questions are all about graduate school and what happens after, or more generally, being an academic. And those questions are asked from the perspective of someone who isn’t an academic right now. So hopefully “The Aspiring Academic” makes that clear enough.
And you can’t go wrong with a little alliteration, right?
aspiring (adjective): desiring and working to achieve a particular goal : having aspirations to attain a specified profession, position, etc.
academic (noun): a teacher or scholar in a college or institute of higher education.
Why Was This Publication Created?
To crowdsource the process of figuring out graduate school. Whenever I discuss this idea with friends, this is how I describe it. This is, first and foremost, a collaborative learning project. For years, I’ve avoided writing about things I don’t understand, and graduate school is one of those things. But avoiding things I’m not an expert in hasn’t helped me learn. So it’s time for a new approach.
To connect with people. As mentioned above, the most important aspect of crowdsourcing is to gain input, feedback, and insight from other people. I need to run my understanding and thought process by a diverse collection of people, so they can point out if I’m missing some large piece of relevant knowledge. Maybe I’ll also point out a line of questioning they have not thought of before. Hopefully we can all learn more in the process.
To help others in my situation. Although I may feel like the only person that somehow skated through 30 years of life without developing even a working knowledge of academia, I’m not. I know this because only 13.1% of US adults had an advanced degree (post-bachelor’s degree) in 2018, according to the Census Bureau. So it’s perfectly plausible to grow up in America and not know anything about graduate school. Unfortunately, many if not most of the people writing about academia online that I’ve come across are not starting from the beginning. There’s a lot of jargon, but not much general background. So I want to fill that content gap for others as I go, if I can.
To hold me accountable to keep learning. Graduate school has been an idea in the back of my mind for years, but I haven’t done much since graduating from college to make that idea a reality (or determine if I even want to make it a reality). And not doing anything hasn’t miraculously landed me in the perfect graduate program yet (shocking, I know). So I’m going to start trying to learn stuff about graduate school and stuff that would be relevant in graduate school, and see how that goes.
To think through things by writing. As you are probably able to gather from the 75 initial questions that I can write down without really trying, I tend to overthink things just a bit. Writing through things helps me figure them out, and it also helps me retain important information and insights so that I can refer back to them later.
To discuss graduate school in an accessible way. I hate jargon, and generally feel pretty strongly that if you can’t explain things in a way that the vast majority of people can understand, then you don’t understand things well enough. I certainly don’t understand graduate school well enough to explain it with or without jargon at this point, but that’s my goal here.
To share the process. In general, I think we need to share the process of doing things we don’t understand more often. Although I might have felt stupid at one time for not knowing some of the things I’m going to announce to the world that I don’t know over the next few months, I honestly don’t feel stupid anymore. If someone wants to comment to tell me I’m an idiot, I guess they can, but wouldn’t that be a waste of their time? Ultimately, there is only one way to learn: ask questions.
And I LOVE asking questions.
So this should be fun.
Is The Aspiring Academic Just for Aspiring Economists?
Economics (or an adjacent subject) is what I always thought I would study if I ever went to graduate school, but I may discover that there is a better fit for me through this process. Although I mention economics as a possible graduate school option within posts, none of my initial 75 questions are specifically about economics. I’m planning to write more subject-specific research, book reviews, and reading notes elsewhere to keep this publication about academia in general… because at this point, what I should study in graduate school is still up for debate.
Who is the Author of The Aspiring Academic?
My name is Sarah. I hold the first bachelor’s degree in my family, a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in economics and international business with a minor in math. I’ve been working full-time in finance for 7 years at the time of this writing. I hope to continue working full-time while learning more about subjects I may be interested in pursuing at the graduate level, learning more about graduate studies in general, and writing this publication. I’m not in a rush to go to graduate school, but I want to set myself up to make a more informed decision about it than I would be able to right now at some point in the future. If you want, you can read a little more about my background in this post, and I’d love to hear from you in a response, comment or on Twitter if you want to say hello or share any insights.
Why is the Aspiring Academic on Medium?
Since discovering Medium a few years ago, I’ve been a fan. I like the simple, clean aesthetic, the ability to highlight, tag, respond to, embed and link posts, the ability to connect with a wide audience of readers and other writers, and the ability to collect writing about a single topic within a publication (like this one). This is my first publication on Medium, so I have a lot to learn… but I’m looking forward to learning more as I go.
If you have ideas, resources or questions about academia, graduate school, or writing a Medium publication, please send them my way. Thanks for reading.
