Preparing Future Faculty

This article focuses on small tips to adjust one's work-life balance in academia, but it could be generalized to other professions. The recommendations are not surprising, but I can't imagine on only playing with one's children for only 15 minutes per day.

A very interesting, albeit dated, study examining how an institution's culture can be (or attempted to be) changed to facilitate greater work-life balance. The results revealed that questions of work-life balance largely had gendered components that were more difficult to transform through typical culture approaches.

I loved this for the simple truth it reveals: we all find balance in our day through a full and extended network of supports and services - whether IT or a maid, or whatever else - that make it "work." It's just as true for academia as for any other profession.

This is my favorite professional website. It's cool, professional, and very informative. I would like to create something similar for my specialty in national security analysis.

My advisor's ODU directory page. I suppose this a standard template for faculty here. It has many of the same categories as LinkedIn, but not blog or commentary capability.

My undergraduate advisor's professional page at Virginia Tech. It is a nice one page format with just the most important information. Similar to my current advisor's official site, it has no blog or commentary.

The Google Scholar site for a December graduate of my program. I thought this would be a good contrast to the others, with each example being at different points in their career.

This is the professional page for one of my favorite undergraduate professors. Terry Kubichan is a senior lecturer in the accounting department of Old Dominion University.

Douglas Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting, and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. He teaches accounting at The University of Chicago.

These are great tips that are useful in higher education. When I was an undergraduate, I never built downtime into my schedule and wish I did. It gives a person time to relax.

This is alike many other recent, and trending, articles/blogs/etc. on HuffPo and elsewhere that explore the ties between feminism and work-life balance, and the structured inequalities that perpetuate the misnomer of work-life balance, particularly for women. What it helpful about these discussions is that - increasingly - they extend beyond the female-professional-as-mother dialogue and to the professional-as-caregiver dialogue, which so many of the Sandwich Generation, Millennials and Generation Y will face all too well.

This article helps us to understand how the work-life balance conversation emerged and why it is so meaningful, and so different, from traditional conversations about work versus personal life of prior generations and decades. The dialogue is largely driven by the new economic realities of the 21st century and, in turn, the inability and/or attempt by large employers and employees to adjust.

Provides tips on making teaching and writing more efficient, presumably freeing more time for "life." I've seen a version of his "paragraph response sheet" used by one of the full professors in my department. HIs point on tenure evaluation equivalencies reinforces my opinion that it is important to find a mentor or advocate at your institution that has served on the promotion and tenure committee for advice.

This article suggests not using fellow faculty as subject matter experts in work-life balance issues that require interacting with administrators or human resource personnel. The recommendation is to treat each challenge as an opportunity for research and to seek out the appropriate sources, much like a study or investigation.

Provides a index to compare life balance across OECD countries. The US appears in the hardest working third of the profile, which is unsurprising. It would be interesting to find a comparison of productivity.

A world-wide index of countries and work-life study results.

I posted this after looking at OECD's Better Life Index in my previous post. After some quick research, per capita GDP seems to be the most widely accepted measure of national productivity. It would be interesting to crosswalk productivity with life satisfaction.

One of the best tips is letting go of being a perfectionist. Unfortunately you have to give a little in one area to better the other areas.

I learned that you have to sometimes change your definition of success when it comes to balancing work with your personal life.

I learned that pacing yourself can be crucial for balancing work and personal life.

This article resonates with my own definition of work-life balance, or rather my interpretation that it is an artificial bifurcation of one's life. Or, "Again, there is no work-life balance in academia. You need to figure out what works for you and when you work best."

Prioritizing, planning for the short-term and long-term, and setting boundaries.