Over the years I’ve build myself a little collection of tools and resources to manage the weird and messy work of being an academic. I thought I’d compile them all here in case any of them are useful to you.
This Google Sheet template from Dr Bronwyn Eager lets you keep track of all the things you’ve done as an academic. I set it up after a very tedious promotion application and have found it invaluable. There’s a blog post about it as well.
This spreadsheet was developed by Brendan Keogh as a way to track where you spend your hours across the days/weeks/year as a teaching and research academic. I was already doing some gentle time tracking, this sheet has been very useful to help me reflect and think about where I’m spending my energy (and to try and rein in the overwork).
Zotero is a great reference manager, and with the browser plug in that I’ve installed, I’ve never been more on top of keeping my references up to date. It’s also really great for collaborative projects, I have a whole stack of shared collections.
I have tried using Trello for general task management, but to be honest I’m usually happy with a spreadsheet, keep note or even a physical post it note. I’ve set up a trello board to keep track of where different articles are for publication, here’s a template of it.
Paper diary
I keep a digital calendar, but I just like writing my week out and planning tasks on paper, and it’s nice to have it all in one place. There are so many different diaries, I like one that’s very minimal so I can use it as I see fit. It’s not pretty, but it’s useful. I use an emma kate co. because it has very minimalist pages, but that’s just me.
Links to other resources I’ve found helpful:
Pomodoro method (Wikipedia): A good framework for approaching writing and other tasks in short focused sessions.
Seasonal organisation (Kirby Conrod): This article is framed around adhd, but I think it’s good for everyone to know that you should always be revisiting how you work.
Cornell method (Katherine Firth): get the most out of your note taking.
I started the Linguistics Jobs interview series because I was coming to the end of a post-doctoral research contract and I had no idea how much longer my academic career was viable. I’m glad I decided to do my job thinking out loud, because six years and over 60 interviews later, this series provides a rich collection of personal stories about the wide range of careers for people who studied linguistics. It was only in 2021, 8 years after finishing my PhD, that I was lucky enough to sign an ongoing contract for an academic job (’lucky’ being a deliberate word choice there).
I have never interviewed an academic linguist who works in a linguistics department for this series. This was an intentional choice, and I made it for two reasons. The first is that this is the career that the majority of academic linguists are most familiar with, so your own professors can tell you about it. The second is that the overwhelming majority of people who study linguistics (even at graduate level) won’t end up in academic roles, even if they’re great linguists (cf. ‘lucky’).
Having said all of that, I’m often asked about how I became a linguist. It seems only fair that I subject myself to the same set of questions I ask of everyone else. I’m also participating in the interview series because I’m stepping back from running these interviews. The series will now be managed by the excellent, wonderful (and, may I mention, very employable) Martha Tsutsui Billins. You’ll still hear from a linguist about their study and careers every month. After 6 years of running Superlinguo solo, it’s delightful that it’s once again a team project!
What did you study at university?
I took a Bachelor of Arts and majored in both Art History and Linguistics. I came to university convinced that Art History was what I loved, and I wanted to work in a museum or gallery. By the end of third year I realised that I had enjoyed linguistics more every semester. I changed plans in the last semester of third year, which is amusing to look back on because I’m not usually one to shake things up like that. I did a fourth year honours project in Linguistics with Barb Kelly, and really appreciated the chance to get to do research. That 13k word thesis was the biggest project I had ever done and I learnt a lot about my own capacity as well as the topic (gesture perception). I’ve told a longer version of this story before. The chance to learn about the world and about yourself and make a new path is one of the things I love about a BA.
After honours I left the university, because I wasn’t sure what to do. The office job I ended up with was fine, but I returned to conversations with Barb and applied for a PhD program with her just as the global financial crisis took off. I know there’s a lot of advice that suggests you look around for places to go to grad school, but I returned to my undergrad department. This was because I didn’t have the networks or knowledge about looking for other programs, but also partly because I already knew I had a good working relationship with Barb and that seemed more important in the long run, and I still happily stand by that choice.
My PhD was on the use of evidentiality in the Lamjung variety of Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. I like that the project involved primary documentation, and spending time working with Yolmo speakers in Nepal. I also used my time in grad school to try other things, including writing about internet linguistics, teaching undergrad classes, and I even started this very blog!
What is your job?
I am a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics. It is an ongoing academic position at La Trobe University (Australia), and includes both teaching and research. The teaching part includes undergraduate classes and graduate supervision. I really love teaching and sharing linguistics with students. These days my research is mostly focused on gesture studies, including exploring cross-cultural variation in gesture. I also still work on Yolmo and Syuba grammar, and internet language use.
There was certainly not a straight line between completing my PhD and this role. I did three post-doctoral research projects in three different countries, and in the first 18 months after completing I had about 10 very short teaching, research and admin jobs. How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
I teach linguistics and do linguistic research every day. But there are lots of other ways linguistics helps too! I think the main thing is that you can apply a linguistic analysis to any puzzle you’re working on. In my lingcomm work, for example, I often think about whether a news article or video was satisfying to watch, and what features of language and communication did the creator use to make me feel like that.
What
was the transition from university to work like for you?
It can feel weird in academia, because you never leave the university. PhD candidates exist in a weird space between student and employee. You are still certainly learning, but also teaching and doing some work that appears indistingushable from that of academic staff (like attending conferences and publishing research). You have to shift your own mindset about what the university is and how you operate within it.
It was particularly weird for me because many of the staff knew me as an undergrad, a graduate student and then as a colleague. It was certainly good to leave Australia for a while and return to work at a different university.
Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
You can take your linguistics with you into pretty much any career.
A thing that wasn’t common enough in my BA or even during my PhD was the sense that being a linguistic was something that could help outside of an academic context. I don’t know how much this has changed in general, but it’s certainly changed in the conversations and approach that I now have, and I’m grateful for that.
Any other thoughts or comments?
I have learnt so much from these interviews over the years. I’m really grateful to everyone who has shared their story.
The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.
This journal article describes a variety of methods that I used in my PhD research to elicit evidentiality. It was really nice to have the opportunity to revisit this work for a special issue of Folia Linguistica on Knowing in Interaction, edited by Karolina Grzech, Eva Schultze-Berndt and Henrik Bergqvist.
One of the challenges of working with evidentiality is knowing why someone used a particular evidential in a particular conversation. I used a range of methods that created semi-structured but still naturalistic contexts that made it easier to track people’s knowledge states. Some of these methods I borrowed from other people and I discuss how useful I found them. For others I took inspiration from outside of research, including using games like 20 questions, and optical illusions.
I really enjoy opportunities to talk about research methodology, and I hope this is helpful to other people trying to understand how grammar works in interaction.
Abstract
This article describes the use of eight research tools used in the documentation of evidential and modal use in Lamjung Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. For each tool, the methodology is described, and some examples of the usefulness and limitations are discussed. The methods include use of existing and novel tools and materials. Image tasks included the existing resources Family Problem Picture Task and Jackal and Crow, as well as optical illusions. Object tasks included the hidden objects game and magic tricks. Listening and talking tasks included the game twenty questions, reporting previous speech, and a grammaticality judgement task based on multiple reports. Making research methods more transparent, and the open sharing of data and materials, allows us to move forward with better understanding of the contexts of evidential use, and more nuanced cross-linguistic typological analysis of evidential systems.
Reference
Gawne, Lauren. (2020). Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for
eliciting evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from
Lamjung Yolmo (Tibetic, Nepal). Folia Linguistica, 54(2): 343-369. https://doi.org/10.1515/folia-2020-2042
I was really fortunate to get to hang out with some amazing midwives when I was pregnant in 2018. Not only did they help me through pregnancy, birth and first first couple of hazy weeks with a tiny human, they also gave me a lot to think about when it comes to PhD supervision.
Here are three things I noticed good midwives do that I now try to bring to my PhD supervision process.
Support is person-specific
One of the midwives helped me navigate a pregnancy moment by reading through and explaining the Cochrane report on the topic. She knew that the best way to reassure me was to let me see the research and evidence and talk through a plan. That doesn’t mean she’d do the same for the next person to walk in. Another person might prefer a simple set of options, yet another might not have the space to engage with that issue at that moment.
One person’s ideal birth plan is another person’s idea of a bad time. The best midwives made people aware of the options and then supported them to make the best decisions for themselves and their babies.
The PhD experience is also incredibly varied (as nicely articulated in this Thesis Whisperer post from Ellie Wood). You can’t engage with all of your students in exactly the same way and expect they’ll all perform exactly the same. As a supervisor you have a good idea of the road ahead for a project, its your job to help your student come up with the navigation plan that best fits with their habits and preferences while pointing out the obstacles.
Support the whole person
Sometimes I’d have appointments with a midwife where we’d actually not spend that much time talking about the tiny human I was growing. We’d talk about appetite and if I was sleeping, if I felt like I was mobile enough and how my partner and I were feeling about things.
You have to think about babies and dissertations in holistic terms because they take up so much time and energy. I like to check in with my PhD students’ emotional well-being because it can be tough working on a project as big as a dissertation, even if everything else in your life is running ok (and given that a PhD takes 3+ years the chances that everything else is going to be fine all the time are… slim).
Support your students; remind them to take breaks, remind them of the services your university offers, ask how their kids are. But also, you do not have to be their only emotional support, in fact that’s unhealthy for a good supervisorial relationship. Midwives were very supportive of me finding a good psychologist, a situation that worked best for everyone.
It’s not your baby
The best midwives I know are engaged, compassionate, caring and, (perhaps unsurprisingly) love babies. They also know that regardless of how involved they’ve been in supporting someone through the process, it’s not their baby.
It sounds wildly self-evident when it comes to babies, but it can be harder for some supervisors to come to terms with this when it comes to research, particularly if the student has worked on a project closely tied to a larger research topic.
It’s our job to support our students to write the best PhD that they can. And then we must support them as they take the work they’ve done with us wherever they go next on their journey.
This post also appeared on
The RED Alert,
a blog from La Trobe University about research experiences, strategies, and insight.
I’m not really into the New Years Resolutions thing, but a few conversations over my final few weeks at work made me realise that there are a few things I do to make my work life a bit easier that other people don’t know about. Most of it is about filtering out noise. Whether that means you get more done, or just get through a day with less distract, depends on what you want in life. I thought I’d share some of them here - maybe I’ll need to remind myself when I get back to work in 2020…
1. You’re the boss of your inbox
Be ruthless about unsubscribing from lists and events that are no longer relevant. For everything else, set up filters. I have a filter for blog stuff, one for the podcast, another for mailing lists that aren’t so important I need to see them immediately, but I do like to check them. I have a boss who gets cc’d into so many things that he just needs to see, not necessarily do anything for, that he filters them off to a separate folder so he doesn’t miss important things that he *does* have to actually think about.
My other favourite piece of email management is Boomerang. This app can be used with Gmail and Outlook, and lets you (a) send emails out at a later time and (b) have emails return to your inbox at a scheduled time. It helps me get things out of the way while I’m thinking about them, or keep things out of sight until I need to deal with them. The free version gives you 10 emails a month, but it’s one of the few apps I happily pay for.
Filters and Boomerang mean that I don’t really aim for anything like ‘inbox zero’ (trying to get all the emails out of your inbox) - the moment of satisfaction isn’t worth the inevitable deluge of replies. I would also love to say that I am organised enough to only look at email once/twice a day, but I have it on my phone and find it just as easy to look and delete/do throughout the day.
2. You’re the boss of your writing
Even some of the most talented and productive writers I know have routines and tricks to help them stay motivated (in fact, that’s largely what keeps them so productive). A large portion of the task of writing is unglamourous and functional, just making words appear on a page. Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve set up a Shut Up and Write group, or joined one (La Trobe has a great one, and a blog post explaining the benefits of writing while surrounded by other writers).
What does my ritual involve? Other than commencing with a cup of
something caffeinated, there’s three elements: eliminating temptation,
blocking out distraction and pacing myself.
Although I don’t do all these things all the time, things I’ve found helpful include: locking 3-4 hours into my schedule in the morning to write and trying to make no appointments in that time, using the pomodoro timing method, using internet blockers to stop distraction (also: my favourite cafe near home has no wifi), tracking and rewarding myself for words/sections written/edited, reporting progress to other people, focusing on one writing project at a time.
3. You’re the boss of your collaborations
Ok, sometimes you’re not. Especially if you’re a junior researcher, you may find yourself working with someone else’s preferred tools and routines (they’re the boss of their own writing!). Collaborating with different people people is a great way to learn about different rhythms of collaboration, and different processes. I’ve done everything from sharing paper copies, Dropbox, emails with attached Word Docs, to sitting and dictating draft sections to each other.
By far, the best collaborative tool I’ve focus is Google Docs. The ability to work on the same document at the same time (either in person or over a video chat), track changes and see edit histories makes it very low stress. For LaTeX I’ve found using an online platform like OverLeaf also works quite well (especially for lowskilled LaTeX users like me who guess their way through and hate installing a bunch of stuff on their computer).
4. You’re the boss of your To Do list
Most of my advice generally involves embracing apps and programs that make your life easier, but when it comes to schedules and lists, I’m still a big fan of paper. I use an online calendar, but for planning what I want to do each day I still like a paper notebook. I have an A6 notebook that sits in my bag, and I plan out a week on each opening. I like visualising things, and I like physically ticking them off.
I’ve also used Trello, Google Sheets and Google Keep for collaborative task tracking, but for myself I still prefer paper.
5. You’re the boss of your social media
Social media isn’t work (unless it’s part of your job!), but it’s easy to feel like you’re being productive if you’re tweeting about academia or reading blog posts about linguistics. Some people feel overwhelmed by the number of platforms out there, and the performativity of being online as a professional.
First thing, pick your platform. You don’t need to be everywhere, stick to a couple of places. I never got around to joining Facebook, and I am 100% a lurker on Instagram. I enjoy linguist Twitter, it’s probably where I spend the most time. The two things I recommend people read when they join Twitter are A crash course in “getting” Twitter, for linguists and other people in specific niches, from Gretchen McCulloch and Rachael Tatman’s Guide to Conference Livetweeting. Being on Twitter means that I often know people before I even get to a new job or a new conference, and I get to stay in touch with friends and colleagues from all around the world.
Second thing, it’s your social media experience. Don’t be afraid to unfollow (or mute, if you’re trying to be polite) people you find stressful. Twitter also allows you to turn off retweets from people, so you can see their tweeting about linguistics and their cute cat, but you don’t have to see their retweets about local politics that isn’t relevant to you. You can also mute words and hashtags. Just like with email, you don’t have to put up with noise, your social media profile is your space.
For the last four years one of my main projects has been the documentation of Syuba, and the development of an online Open Access archive of those materials. The corpus has been online for a year. I’ve now published a definitive guide to the collection in Language Documentation and Conservation.
The article includes an overview of the history of the project, the conventions used in the collection, and what the online corpus contains. This is part of my own believe that linguists should care about the data on which their research in based. This article is also part of a growing trend in transparency in language documentation, which in part aims to acknowledge that the development of corpora is an underacknowledged academic activity (see this recent LSA draft resolution on the evaluation of language documentation corpora for hiring, tenure and promotion).
Writing this article was a very useful exercise for me. It made me consider what was in the corpus and add a few more things (like the academic articles written), and make a few more things open access (you can now download the FLEx file including the dictionary). It also meant that I created a definitive summary of what is in the corpus.
The collection contains the following:
video recordings (114 MTS recordings, approx. 14.6
hours)
I can strongly recommend this activity to anyone who has built a language documentation corpus. It helps you have a go-to summary (I will now cite the heck out of this), and makes it easier for others to access your materials and use all the hard work you’ve done (while also saying “hey, I’m working on these topics at the moment” to prevent research scooping).
Abstract
This article provides an overview of the collection “Kagate (Syuba)”,
archived with both the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources
in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and the Endangered Language Archive
(ELAR). It provides an overview of the materials that have been
archived, as well as details of the workflow, conventions used, and
structure of the collection. It also provides context for the content of
the collection, including an overview of the language context, and some
of the motivations behind the documentation project. This article thus
provides an entry point to the collection. The future plans for the
collection – from the perspectives of both the researcher and Syuba
speakers – are also outlined, but with the overwhelming majority of
items in the collection available to others, it is hoped that this
article will encourage use of the materials by other researchers.
Reference
Gawne, Lauren. 2018. A Guide to the Syuba (Kagate) Language Documentation Corpus. Language Documentation & Conservation 12: 204-234. [Open Access PDF]
I’ve known Colleen since we were both PhD students at The University of Melbourne. When I found out that she had also moved to La Trobe, it was lovely to have a friendly face around the place! Colleen has taken a slightly unusual, but increasingly common, lateral step; although she’s no longer working in linguist research she’s still working at a university and running courses. She kindly agreed to be interviewed about her work.
What did you study at university?
For
undergrad I studied a BA (Languages) at Monash University (in Melbourne, Australia). I did a double major
- Chinese and Linguistics. I also did a minor in Spanish to satisfy the
“languages” part. Originally I wanted to work as a translator at the UN!
When I realised that probably wouldn’t work out, I pursued Linguistics
for Honours. My thesis looked at the efficacy
of using the first four formants of certain vowels to distinguish one
speaker from another.
After Honours I got a job as a Research Assistant at The University of Melbourne in Otolaryngology (now Audiology
and Speech Pathology). My PhD topic was a response to what I’d been
hearing and experiencing in working with individuals using cochlear
implants. I looked at the perception and production of some aspects of
prosody in adolescents who had grown up with cochlear
implants as
their only hearing.
What is your job?
I’m
the Deputy Coordinator for the first year of a range of Allied Health
Courses. There’s about 2000 students across six campuses, so it’s huge! I
mainly look after those courses where
the teaching involves external partners. There’s a lot to do around
compliance and reporting for these third party teaching contracts. I
also teach myself – I teach a Work Integrated Learning subject that’s
open to all students from the College of Science,
Health and Engineering. They go out on placement and we look at career
management and how to utilize what’s learnt on placement out in the job
market. I also teach an Industry Innovation subject that brings students
together from all over the uni. They work
in small teams to tackle wicked problems.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
A
lot at The University of Melbourne because I’m still involved in research. At La Trobe it does help,
particularly when you need to advise students
who are struggling. I used to teach in the Master of Speech Pathology at the University of Melbourne and between that and Linguistics I’ve gained a wide perspective on
what could be going on when someone is struggling in first year.
Linguistics also helps in the subjects I teach at La Trobe. It’s great to be able to provide very specific advice for students
as to their writing and how to improve it. I also try to slip in activities on intercultural
communication where I can.
Do you gave any advice do you wish someone had given to you
about linguistics/careers/university?
I
wish they had been more honest about studying languages (not
linguistics) as a career. I realised after awhile that
people born into bi- or multilingual households would be the ones
landing the interpreter/translator jobs, although I don’t regret
studying languages. I think in general I would have appreciated some
advice re jobs that you could go onto with Linguistics. I’m
assuming they’re better at that now but we really received no career
advice at all. For those doing PhDs I think we do well on the research
training side, but not so well on the careers side, both in talking
about potential industries you could go into and
about what a career in academia actually entails.
Any other thoughts or comments?
I’d like to say something about how Linguistics is so undervalued but I’m not sure how to put it. I feel like perceiving,
producing, communicating is something so fundamental that linguistics should be a standard part of everything!
I know Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein from the internet. Specifically from the lovely corner of the internet that is linguist Twitter, but also from Jena’s blog, Everyday Linguistic Anthropology, which has a fabulous weekly post full of great links. One day Jena was talking about their day job, and it sounded really interesting. They were kind enough to share some of their experience of working for a think tank with us. You can follow Jena on Twitter (@neoyorquinanerd).
What did you study at university?
I
have an undergraduate degree in both Linguistics and Anthropology, and a
Ph.D. in (Linguistic) Anthropology. I describe myself variously in
social settings as a linguist, an anthropologist, or a linguistic
anthropologist depending on who I’m talking to. I was lucky enough to
have a descriptive linguist on my dissertation committee, and have taken
quite a few classes in linguistics field methods.
The
way I usually explain the difference between linguistics and linguistic
anthropology to folks who are far from either field is this:
linguistics is mostly the study of language as a formal system, while
linguistic anthropology is mostly the study of language as a social
resource. Of course, that’s a bit of an oversimplification, and there
are plenty of descriptive and functional and social approaches in
linguistics departments too.
What is your job?
I’m a researcher; specifically, I lead the media research at a nonprofit think tank for interdisciplinary social science research. Our media work centers on a few big questions: one is around media and learning,
another explores messaging and social change, and the third is about
representation. As the media lead, I work with my colleagues to figure
out what our strategic priorities are in media research and pursue
relationships and grants to keep our work in line with those priorities.
Day
to day, I work with practitioners at places like PBS NewsHour,
educational software companies, and other media research organizations.
At any given time, I work on a portfolio of about ten projects. I have
slightly different roles in each project, including research design,
actually carrying out research and analysis, supervising other
researchers or analysts, writing reports, and meeting with clients and
partners to talk about the project.
This
is my third post-academic career. I’ve developed content for language
and culture training software, and I worked in strategy consulting. I
also keep a (somewhat irregular) linguistic anthropology blog.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
I use it all the time.
In
designing research, I’m familiar with a set of data collection and
analysis methods that complements the methods my colleagues are trained
in. I’m sensitive to context when writing survey instruments and think a
lot about question wording – and I’ve also brought linguistic methods
into the analysis of that data, especially open-ended survey text. I try
to develop coding schemes that don’t just address content but also
take grammar into account – for example, which pronouns is someone
using in a response? Which verb tenses or modes? What theta roles is a
particular noun appearing in, and what does that say about constructions
of agency? I’ve also got a different body of literature that I draw on,
compared to my colleagues who come from psychology or evaluation
backgrounds.
I love working in a really
interdisciplinary space where my methods and knowledge are valued, and
where we get to cross disciplinary boundaries if that’s what a project
requires.
Do you gave any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
If
you’re leaving an academic track for a non-academic career, take a step
back and think about your expertise more broadly than you usually do.
That will get you looking at the right jobs! For
example, I’m one of the world’s foremost experts on indigenous Mexican
Jehovah’s Witnesses… largely because it’s such a narrow topic that
nobody else cares! But that means I’m an expert on community and mass
communication, too. And those are topics that lots of people care quite a
lot about, and using those keywords was ultimately how I got into my
current role.
If you’re still in school,
either undergrad or grad, try different things: there are a ton of jobs
available for students that will let you learn different skills and get a
sense of what you want to do with your time later on. Don’t be too
married to a single career track.
A lot of my colleagues complain that ‘students these days’ don’t know how to send good emails. Email is a genre of writing, and it’s a genre of writing that some students don’t get much practice at before starting university. I’ve taken to including a three minute summary of how to email at the start of each subject. I got the idea to do so from my colleague, Katharine Firth, who has blogged about how it is important to teach these skills.
Because it’s the start of the academic year in the northern hemisphere I thought I’d share my 3 minute guide to email. Good email skills aren’t just useful at university though - these skills can also be used in any professional context that you have to use email, or send requests.
Learning to send good emails makes your teachers happy, it will make your future colleagues happy. A good email is polite, but doesn’t need to be full of unnecessary “I hope you are well… etc.”. It requires you to think about what the other person needs to know. As a student you may only get a few emails from the university every day, but staff often feel overwhelmed by the number of emails they have to reply to. The more direct and easy to reply to your email is, the better.
Email is a genre. Being a linguist means becoming critically aware of how genres use particular language. Look at what language people use in emails to you. How are people addressed? What sign-offs do people use? Does the lecturer for the always include the class subject code in the email subject line? Using your genre analysis skills can help you be better at email!
Lauren’s 3 minute guide to email
Emails should be:
Relevant
Concise
Polite
Before sending the email, think for a moment:
Have you read the subject handbook?
Would it be easier to talk about
this in person?
Here’s a template. Remember, different places have different conventions for how to address teaching staff at a university. Australia is quite informal, a ‘Dear Lauren’ will suffice. In other places, such as the USA, ‘Dr. Gawne’ might be more appropriate.
Subject: [subject code and a tl;dr summary]
Dear [name],
Straight to the point but polite [e.g. Sorry I missed class last week, I was ill]
Any additional relevant information [e.g. I’ve listened to the lecture and don’t have any questions at this time/I have this question, let me know if it would be easier to meet at discuss it],
Today’s linguistics job interview is with Abby Bajuniemi. Abby has moved from an academic position as a professor of Spanish and Linguistics to a user experience (UX) researcher. Abby is on Twitter, and uses Medium to blog. You might find her post “Applied linguists are the UXers of Linguistics” relevant to this interview! I also learnt that “Lusophone” refers to the Portuguese language (Lusitania being the Classical Latin for Portugal, Portugal being the modern term, basically the Kingdom attached to the city of Oporto around the 15th century).
What did you study at university?
My PhD is officially in Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, but I focused on Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics. My area of study was in Spanish specifically, but I did do a lot of work with literature in the ESL and English linguistics space.
What is your job?
My day-to-day can vary quite a bit, but in general, I perform user research and work with fellow designers on web/app interface design. In user research, I do a lot of things I have done in linguistics research, from card sorts (where you get people to sort things into categories that make sense to them, used in semantics research) to ethnographies. I describe how systems are used to people who want to build software and digital solutions and make recommendations for that solution that will be easy for users to use as well as delightful to look at. If the business wants to do something with the software that won’t resonate with users, I am the users’ voice in advocating for the design that will be most effective for them while still meeting business needs.
My path to my current job is a bit winding. I was a VAP (Visiting Assistant Professor) at a Selective Liberal Arts College on a non-tenure track appointment, and I learned that there may not be possibility for renewal. I did a lot of research to find a non-academic career that would seem to be a good fit for the skills I developed in grad school. I made huge efforts to network and meet people in UX, which eventually paid off in a first job as a CX (customer experience) Insights Analyst, and from there, continuing to network, I made my way into my current role. I’m happy to talk to other linguists about how my career pivot!
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
Gosh, how DOESN’T it help me? I use my research skills all the time, from user interviews, questionnaire and survey design, quantitative/qualitative data analysis, problem solving skills, you name it. I also use my knowledge of language acquisition and sociolinguistics in projects that involve localization, learning new systems, and system design to match the user’s mental representation of what the system should look like and do. I rely heavily on my training in cognitive science every day.
I’ve also used my Spanish skills to conduct user research internationally and do some side work as a translator.
Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
YES! Linguistics is useful in so many non-academic industries. Content Strategy, User Experience Research, Copyediting, Technical Writing, you name it. We have tons of options to do cool things outside of academia. Make connections with professionals in any of these industries and explore what’s out there. If you’re dead set on an academic career, know that if it doesn’t pan out for whatever reason, there is interesting, exciting, and fulfilling work out there for you. If academia isn’t for you, you’re only limited by your imagination!
Also, networking is so, so important. It’s intimidating and can feel icky, but it’s a necessary thing to learn to do.
Any other thoughts or comments?
As for additional thoughts: there are lots of us outside of academia. Look around and find us! :)
Two years ago I started interviewing people who had studied linguistics and then gone on to careers outside of academia. At the start it was mostly friends who I thought had interesting and diverse jobs. Twenty interviews later, and I’m struck by the diversity of work that people who have studied linguistics go on to do.
Different people have found different parts of their linguistics training more or less useful. No one has (yet) said that they regret studying linguistics, although many have been honest about the fact that university education doesn’t always prepare them with the skills they need in their future careers.
The linguistics jobs series will continue on its monthly-ish basis. If you studied linguistics (be it a semester in undergrad to a PhD) and you’d like to be interviewed, get in touch!
The full list of Linguistics Job Interviews (to date!):
Evidentiality is one of my favourite features of language. English
has different grammatical forms of verbs for tense (past, present and
future), but some languages also have different grammatical forms
depending on the source of knowledge about an event. If you saw
something, heard someone talk about it or known it as a common fact,
you’ll use different forms of a verb in some languages. In fact, about a
quarter of the world’s languages do this. the family of Tibetan
languages are one such group of languages. A lot of the details of these
systems is still poorly understood. In 2014 Nathan Hill and I ran a
workshop on the topic, and we’re pleased to announce that there is now
an edited book on the topic.
This book contains chapters that
describe the evidential systems of particular languages, including
Lhasa Tibetan, Emigre Tibetan, Purik Tibetan, Denjongke, Dzongkha, Amdo
Tibetan, Zhollam Tibetan and Pingwu Baima. There are also chapters that
focus on historical development of evidentiality in the area, or on
specific features, I have one on egophoric evidentials, Nathan has one
on the perfect experiential and there’s one on the different uses of the
verb snang in different varieties. There’s also a typological
overview of Tibetan evidentiality from Nicolas Tournadre. The book
should be available from research libraries!
Bonus facts:
It
only took around three years from workshop to publication, which is
pretty speedy in academia. We’re pretty thrilled that we get to share
this work.
I wrote the index for the book. It’s the first index
I’ve ever done, and quite possibly the last. It was a difficult (but
rewarding) task, and gave me some interesting insights into the book.
This edited volume brings together work on the evidential systems of Tibetan languages. This includes diachronic research, synchronic description of systems in individual Tibetan varieties and papers addressing broader theoretical or typological questions. Evidentiality in Tibetan languages interacts with other features of modality, interactional context and speaker knowledge states in ways that provide important perspectives for typologists and our general understanding of evidential systems. This book provides the first sustained attempt to capture this complexity and diversity from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective.
I have the good fortune to be able to spend time with lots of graduate students and early career researchers (and I am an ECR myself). I feel like there are some common themes to some of the conversation I have with people, and I wanted to draw some of those themes into one place.
Going through the PhD and navigating postdoc life is different for everyone, and different bits of what I’ve written below will make sense to different people at different times. This makes some of the things I say a little contradictory. Academia isn’t the easiest to stay in, and I know that at some times there will be systemic reasons that people might have problems with some of this advice, or it won’t be appropriate, but these are things I feel like I say to people a lot.
Attend the seminars
If your department has seminars, go. Even when it’s on topics that aren’t immediately relevant to your interests. It helps broaden your experience, keeps you up to date with what others are working on, and at the very worst, helps to remind you why there are some areas of linguistics that aren’t your jam. It’s a low effort way to be a professional.
Have a question ready
If you go to any seminar, have a question ready - even if you don’t end up asking it. This helps you practice your critical thinking, particularly in areas you aren’t well-versed in, shows your willingness to learn, and means that you have practice for when it’s really important, e.g. attending conferences, job interviews or surviving your own defence/viva/completion talk. Also, giving a talk and having no questions is always an awkward experience, so think of it as paying things forward.
Administrative staff are humans
Universities sometimes feel like they just like generating paperwork to distract you from research. Don’t forget that the people who make the university run are the professional staff - they’re often more qualified than you are, and have a much better grasp on how the system works. Whatever bureaucratic title they get in your institution, treat them with respect - and not just because they might help you at some point - because they’re humans and being nice to other humans you work with is a good thing to do.
Use social media
Even at a moderately-sized conference these days, there’s a second conversation happening on Twitter, and it’s amazing. Since moving to Europe, I’ve gone to conferences in the UK, Europe and the USA where I’ve not met people before, and been able to meet up with linguists who I know from Twitter. It can be a great way to talk directly with academics you may not get to meet in real life, or who are quite senior, if you follow some basic politenesses (related: @allthingslinguistic post with excellent advice about Twitter/live tweeting).
Don’t confuse social media with work
I love the linguist community on Twitter, and I regularly pop up there, but that doesn’t mean it’s part of my job. Don’t let social media distract you from the task at hand, use an internet blocker if you need to get that thesis chapter or journal article done (I use SelfControl or RescueTime). And don’t confuse people being upbeat on social media with them doing better at academia life than you are - remember we all get to curate our best self for the rest of the world to see.
Volunteer for things
I am (no surprise) a participator. Getting involved in whatever is happening in my department or city has led to some great stuff that I didn’t think about at the start. It allows you to sample a range of skills and ideas that you might not otherwise come across. Resume building is a thing too, but that’s more a nice side effect, if you’re only doing something to build your CV then maybe you’re not building the CV for the job you really want?
Don’t work for free
During your PhD, you’ll want to volunteer for things, but as you get a firmer idea of what you’re doing, and what you’re interested in (see below), it’s ok to become more discriminating. It’s taken a while, but unless I can see a clear benefit to me, I don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything that comes along. Sometimes the benefit is not financial - I read the work of colleagues who I know I will benefit from sending work to in the future - but it’s ok to step away from doing things for ‘experience’, and that time can come sooner than later. If you’re an opportunity fiend like me, get yourself a couple of people who you can use to talk you down from signing up for another great project when you’ve already got enough to do.
Know your interests
This one doesn’t necessarily come easily, if you’re like me and interested in all the things. Knowing that you’re specifically interested in 3 or 4 things makes it easier to assess opportunities, jobs and other things. For example, I’m interested in evidentiality, gesture, Tibeto-Burman and data management. A project has to hit at least a couple of those for me to consider it. It took me a while to clearly articulate such a simple list to myself, and I don’t imagine it will stay that way forever, but it’s a good tool for me at the moment.
Other Tumblinguists and TumblrAcademics please share your advice too!
I first met today’s interviewee in India in 2012, when he was about to start his first fieldtrip. We kept in touch for a couple of years, mostly because once you’ve been working on languages of this area for a few years, you tend to know all the other linguists eventually anyway. When I checked in with him again recently, I found out he had been through some serious thinking, and big changes, including a major career shift.
What did you study at university?
I
studied linguistics and philosophy as my majors for my Bachelor of
Arts, as well as minors in Spanish and French. I did an honours year
doing research on a small language of northeastern India. I also studied
for a master’s degree in Linguistics, in the course of which I took an
intensive, two-week summer course in Mongolian. Over the course of my
degrees I covered every major field within linguistics to varying
degrees, although I spent more time studying phonetics and phonology
than anything else (my honours project was a phonetics/phonology project
primarily). What is your job?
I’m
currently an apprentice mechanic, second year. It’s a fairly ‘does what
it says on the tin’ kind of a job. I’m learning how to fix cars. BMWs,
mostly. Although I will be leaving that to start an engineering degree
at UQ this year.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
I
don’t find my linguistics training helps me in my job in any specific
way however there are a number of benefits I’ve noticed which are more
incidental. Having studied linguistics I find myself more mindful of my
own language use and that of those around me, which I feel has helped me
communicate more effectively in the workplace. The abilities to analyse
problems and work through things logically, as well as the ability to
abstract away from the specifics, have helped me with my work as well.
Do you gave any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
I
wish someone within the field had sat me down and had a serious
discussion about career prospects and what it would take to achieve
them. I don’t mean the pep talk every first year gets so they give their
money to the university, I mean a real, unbiased discussion with
someone in the field.
Any other thoughts or comments?
I
guess for me I feel like I should bridge the gaps between seven years
of academic linguistics, doing a mechanic apprenticeship, and then going
off to study engineering. When I left high school I felt it was
expected of me to go to university. I’d been in extended academic
programs through most of my schooling and I’d done fairly well through
it all. I had no idea what I’d do with a gap year and knew that probably
meant I’d waste it so I determined to head straight into uni. I didn’t
have the marks for science so I went with philosophy, which had always
interested me; and linguistics, which I didn’t know much about but which
seemed interesting. I wasn’t thinking about jobs and my parents were
wonderfully supportive and told me that it would all work out.
I
thoroughly enjoyed university life and did very well out of it, being
offered an opportunity to do an honours year including research overseas
which was almost unheard of. I had a fair bit of stress come in from my
family life and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped with my honours
thesis. As a result I decided on a master’s as a way of earning a PhD
position as I was still very passionate about linguistics and wanted to
pursue an academic career in the field. However the research master’s
turned into coursework as I found my enthusiasm drained by a combination
of factors.
By the time I’d finished my coursework for the master’s I
was ready to take a break from study and re-assess my options. So I did.
I took whatever work I could get with the idea that I’d just be having a
year off study but when I was offered a position as an apprentice
mechanic I figured I’d stay open minded and give something different a
shot. Eighteen months later I was looking to change careers again. So I
sat down, finally, and did what I should have done when I left high
school. I asked myself what I really wanted to do, what would make me
happy and what I thought I could go and do day in and day out for the
next twenty years. What I came up with was engineering. While I
definitely benefited from my years studying and working, and I don’t
necessarily regret them, I do regret not having done that sooner. I
particularly regret not having had access to anyone who could help me do
that, and would (the career counsellors at my high school were awful).
Lifespans & Styles highlights outstanding undergraduate work in variationist sociolinguistics, with a focus on studies of intraspeaker variation.
Lauren Hall-Lew mentioned this website in a link on Twitter a few months ago, and it’s taken me until now to get around to looking at it. Lifespans & Styles gives undergraduate students a chance publish their outstanding research on variationist sociolinguists. You don’t have to be taking one of Hall-Lew’s classes, you can submit as long as your an undergraduate and your work fits in the scope of the journal. The journal is blind peer reviewed by fellow undergraduates and the journal editors.
This project reminds me of Stephen Chrisomalis’s Language and Societies website, where students who take is course have the opportunity to share their class projects - the topics of which are diverse and interesting.
I’m glad that there are academics creating spaces for students to share quality work that would have otherwise languished unread. It’s exciting to see some of the cool work that students are doing. If you know of any other linguistics-focuses spaces tell us so that I can link to them in this post.
