The Scholar’s Dilemma: Is there a tradeoff between productivity and the measured cultivation of ideas?

Every so often, I read an online article about writing and academia that resonates with me. This article by Imani Perry struck a chord with me. She writes:

I really enjoy writing. … However, I also am aware that the pressure of writing “early and often” has led me, at certain points, to take an instrumentalist approach to projects. At times I have given up the kind of measured cultivation of ideas I highly value, in exchange for the designation “productive.” I know I am not alone in this, and even now, with tenure, I still carry a nervous buzz about “getting things out.

There are two I like about this statement.

First of all, it is remarkably rare to hear anyone say “I enjoy writing.” It is great for me to hear that, as it is a reminder that it is okay to like writing. I have the impression that most academics hate writing. This makes it difficult to have an open discussion about seeking out the joy in writing. I wouldn’t say I love writing all the time, but there certainly are times when I find it to be pleasurable, invigorating, inspiring…. I love this reminder to seek out more of those times.

Secondly, I have to admit to “guilty as charged” when it comes to exchanging productivity for the cultivation of ideas. I have published a lot over the past few years, and there can be a trade-off between productivity and letting ideas simmer.



Before I type any more, I want to point out that there is also a balance between cultivating ideas and avoiding procrastination. For me, letting ideas simmer longer would mean continuing to revise drafts, getting feedback from more people, and reading more broadly in the field. It does not mean avoiding writing or delaying sending off drafts and polished pieces.

I am currently struggling with this dilemma as I work on what will be my fifth book. Several people have told me to take my time with it. I have three years before I would even qualify for promotion to Full Professor – thus I do not have any institutional pressure to finish the book immediately. The ideas I am working on in the book are big and complex, so I have a lot of thinking and grappling to do. The conceptual field – neoliberalism – is large and fairly new to me, so I have a lot of reading to do.

The pressure I feel to get the book out soon mostly comes from myself. The topic - mass deportation - is important to me; it is in the news all of the time; and, I want to contribute to the national debate.

On the other hand, I have already written two books that cover many of the policy issues. My third book “Due Process Denied” is an expose of the injustices incurred by US immigration policies, and my second book - Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions, and Deportations in Post-9/11 America - has “deportation” in the title. So, in some ways, I have already met the goal of getting my voice into the debate. But, I have so much more to say!

I currently am working, slowly, on my book on deportees. I have been toying with the idea of getting a developmental editor to work with me to ensure it moves forward more quickly. I also need to form a new writing group in my new town so I can have conversations with local academics about the book.

In sum, as I work on my next book, I will continue to use the strategies that have worked for me in the past – daily writing, soliciting feedback, finding support, and enjoying the process. As a new thing, I will cherish more deeply the slow-moving nature of the process and work to ensure that my ideas are fully-cooked and cultivated before appearing in print.

How to Create a Power Point Presentation from a Finished Paper

Academic presentations are often based on research in progress or unfinished work. However, sometimes we may find ourselves creating presentations based on full drafts of papers.

What happens when you have completed your 8 or 10,000 word article and now you have to create a 15-minute presentation on the basis of your paper? Luckily, there is a fairly straightforward system you can use to create a presentation from a full paper.



I once heard someone say that a presentation should be viewed as an advertisement for a paper, rather than an attempt to present all of the information in the paper. Keeping this in mind will help you to focus on what’s important and avoid the temptation to attempt to convey all of the rich information in your paper in a brief presentation. Unfortunately, trying to cover too much often means you fail to highlight what’s important.

In my field – Sociology – there is a straightforward formula for giving presentations. I am sure that there is one in your field as well, and it may be very similar to the formula in Sociology. In Sociology, presenters often use Power Point, and presentations often look like this:

• Introduction (1 slide)
• Research Questions/Hypotheses (1 slide)
• Literature Review/Theory (1 slide)
• Methods & Data Collection (1 slide)
• Data Presentation/Findings (3-5 slides)
• Conclusion (1 slide)

Admittedly, many people use many more slides than this, but I advocate for sticking to the rule of no more than one slide per minute. I also think it is important to focus most of your attention on your findings, and as little as possible on other people’s theories and findings. And, you will bore people tremendously if you spend too much time on your methods and data collection. There are many exceptions of course – if your paper is all theory or primarily methodological, then it will look quite different.

To create a presentation from a full-length paper or article, you can pull out the most important parts of the article, based on the above list – or based on the subheadings in your own article.

For the introduction, you can use the same compelling introduction you use in your paper. If you are using Power Point, try and find a provocative image that conveys the point of your paper.

Your next slide should contain your research questions – which your introduction should point to.

Then, spend no more than a minute contextualizing your research questions and project within the literature. Don’t make the mistake of spending too much time reviewing what others have written about your topic. Spend just enough time on the existing literature to make it clear that your work contributes to existing research in the field. People don’t come to conferences to hear literature reviews – they come to hear about new research like yours. The purpose of the literature review is to establish the importance of your work, not to show you have read every relevant article.

Once you have established the importance of your project, explain just enough of your methods and data collection to establish your ability to speak on the topic. Think about the questions people might have – what data set did you use? How many interviews did you carry out? How many months of participant observation did you complete? How many newspaper articles did you code? What is the timeframe for the data? Give just enough information to validate your findings.

Try to get through all of the above in the first five minutes so that you can spend as much of your time as possible sharing the rich detail of your own data and analyses. If you have ethnographic data, you can tell one story from the field for each point you want to make. For statistical data, you can present a table with findings for each finding you wish to highlight. For interview data, you can use one interview quote for each theme you plan to highlight.

Once you have chosen the parts of your findings you wish to highlight, you can leave a minute or two for your conclusion.

As you make each slide, remember to put as few words as possible on each slide, and place an image on each slide to convey your points visually.

Get Your Goals and Projects out of Your Head and onto Paper

Like many academics, I often have several ongoing projects and it can be overwhelming to figure out when I will have the time to make progress on each of my projects, tasks, and goals.

Sometimes, just thinking about all I have to do is overwhelming, and it seems I may never finish my books and articles. I find writing everything I have to do down onto paper to be very helpful when I begin to feel overwhelmed.

At important milestones during the year – the beginning or end of the summer, fall, spring, or annual year – I like to sit down and map out where I am on all of my projects and when I expect to finish them. This is a great exercise to complete because it is a reminder that each of my projects is, in fact, terminable.

Today is August 5, which means that the beginning of the Fall semester looms ahead. For me, it is helpful to separate out what must be done before the semester begins and which projects can wait until I am back from my extended research trip in Peru. Unlike when I was doing my dissertation research, I now have to keep up with my other ongoing research projects and professional responsibilities even when I am collecting new data in remote locations.

Just thinking about all I have to do can be overwhelming. That’s why putting my goals and projects down on paper can be comforting. Even though it can also be scary to see all that I have to do, writing the tasks, goals, and projects down is the first step towards making a workable plan to complete them.

So, what do I actually need to do before the semester starts?

My discipline is Sociology. We sociologists have our annual meeting each year just before the beginning of the semester. This means that each year, in addition to planning classes and meeting other deadlines, I have to prepare for the annual meeting. This year, I have agreed to present three papers and serve as a discussant on one panel. Here are my four meeting-related tasks that must be completed before I leave Peru on August 15:

• Prepare race and humor presentation
• Prepare due process denied presentation
• Prepare human rights and international migration presentation
• Read and prepare comments on four paper for my role as discussant

Like most other academics on a semester system, I also have to prepare for my classes, which begin on August 24. This Fall, I am teaching just one class, and it is a class I have taught before. However, I have changed the syllabus considerably, and am teaching at a new university. I need to finalize the syllabus before the semester begins. Thus, we can add to the list:

• Finalize syllabus for race class

As the semester starts fairly late in August, and I am dedicated to writing every day, in addition to these responsibilities, I also hope to finish up two other writing projects in August. These two projects are:

• Complete tasks for R&R for LS project.
• Complete Chapter 5 of DEP book.

Now, I have a complete list of what I will focus on until August 31. There are quite a few things on this list, but having this list permits me to stay focused, and ensures I will not work on any other projects during the month of August.

I do have several other things that I could work on, but I have moved all of these other projects off of my current priority list and onto my “Fall Semester Goals” list.

My Fall Semester Goals include:

• OUP Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15
• DEP Chapters Intro, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, Conclusion
• ERS R&R
• Intro to SI for ERS
• Papers with YI and SD
• SWB Paper

Now that I have a list of all of the projects I hope to complete during the Fall Semester, I can work on a semester plan. It is clear that when I do that, I will again have to prioritize and decide what can actually be completed in the Fall and what will have to be moved to the Spring. But, having everything I have to do in front of me permits me to make a realistic assessment of what can and cannot get done. Thus, when my editor emails me to ask when I will be finished with Chapter Six or my co-author wants to know if I can finish the R&R by October 15, I can give them a reasonably accurate answer.

What about you? What do you need to finish today? this week? this month? this semester? this year? Does writing it all down help you?

How to Thrive in the Academy … With or without saving the world first

This blog is about thriving, not just surviving in academia. There is an inherent contradiction to that, though. I believe that it is important to be happy, yet I am also well aware that the world (including the academy) is unjust. How can one be happy amidst widespread injustice?



As you may or may not have been able to tell from my posts, I am deeply committed to social justice. I think that the world needs fundamental changes and favor such things as open borders, universal health care, the elimination of private property, and other drastic measures that I am unlikely to see happen in my lifetime. Although I know the world needs to be changed, I still try to be happy in the world I live in. The reason: my being sad and depressed will not do a single thing to change the things I believe should be changed.

Being mad (as opposed to sad) can sometimes lead to change, but that happens only when there are specific actions anger can inspire you to take, and when change is possible. For example, I just got a call from my husband letting me know he got a speeding ticket. I am doing my best not to be angry because being mad about the ticket is not going to change anything. We already will have to pay the fine. Why also waste precious emotional energy on things I can’t change? You see, I just need to let it go. (This isn't always easy, but it's better than being mad all day!)

I don’t like feeling sad or mad, especially when those feelings are associated with a sense of helplessness. I can’t change the fact that my husband got a ticket. I can’t make universal healthcare happen right now. What, then, can I do? What is within my control? Being happy, it turns out, is usually within reach. And, I like being happy.

I separate out my day-to-day happiness from my long-term vision for how the world should be. Kerry Ann Rockquemore, for example, once told me that one criticism she gets from her book “How to Win Tenure without Losing Your Soul” is that the book doesn’t advocate for structural changes in the academy, or even for fighting racism and sexism in the academy. Well, that is not what the book is about. It is about how to do well in the academy, despite racism and sexism. We have to survive the academy in order to change it.

Similarly, this blog is about how to be happy on a daily basis, despite all of the structural problems with the academy and widespread injustice in the world. It also seems to me that, once we have our own lives together, we can do a better job of saving the world.

No matter what situation you find yourself in, you deserve to be as happy as you can be. This is another reason I have this blog – academics often seem to think that suffering and being insanely busy are job requirements. I am here to say that, from my perspective, this is not true. I am here to provide a model for academics who want to have a life, who want to be happy, and who don’t want to feel guilty for that.

Instead, we should own our happiness. In a recent blog conversation with Jonathan and Thomas, I came to the conclusion that happy academics are actually better writers. We need time to think, to muse, to ponder, and to spend with our creative spirit to do the best we can.

So, next time you heart leads you to spend the afternoon at the Art Museum, or to go for a long run in the park, or to laugh with your kids, or go to the opera – do it! We all deserve to be happy and to live life to its fullest. Although these actions won’t fix human suffering, they may do a bit to alleviate it – one person at a time.