When I went back to school after working in the “real world” for 4 years, one of the differences that struck me was differences in time in the organization. \u00a0I have not studied time in organizations, which is an important area of research. \u00a0What I want to talk about is differences in the time perspective\/horizons of the different constituencies in academia and how I see it playing out, now that I’ve been a professor for, ahem, a few years.<\/p>\n
One interesting difference in academia versus other organizations as far as time goes is how long constituencies stay in the organization and how that affects their organizational reality. \u00a0As a student, the organization appears, essentially, to be a stable fixture while one is there. \u00a0Through students’ eyes, there are a cohort of students before and after them, there are professors who teach the classes and conduct particular research, and there are stable policies about the degree and the program that follow them through their degree.<\/p>\n
As a professor, though, the organization changes with each cohort. \u00a0And in fact, we (as professors) see a relatively quickly changing organization every year. \u00a0Further, we’ve been able to make radical policy changes in our program knowing that in a few years no students will remember the “way it used to be.”<\/p>\n
I think that’s an interesting way to think of organizational change in academic institutions, and ironic since colleges and universities take forever to change many of their faculty policies (e.g., tenure). \u00a0It is also, I believe, quite different from how corporations operate and I think that makes in “time” as an organizational construct even more interesting.<\/p>\n
As I have become a mid-career academic, I am noticing a new dimension to this time issue that I had not fully anticipated. \u00a0I started graduate school 20 years ago. \u00a0I have a daily reminder of this number because \u00a0I adopted a cat the same month I started graduate school. \u00a0She is still alive. \u00a0Indeed, it is time for her to “go to college” on her own. \u00a0Yet she is healthy and lively though operating with a clear case of kitty dementia. \u00a0So when I think of how old she is (every morning when she howls at the shower), I think of when I started graduate school.<\/p>\n
I have about 13 \u00a0years experience as a professor. \u00a0But my students are all still coming in as novices. \u00a0The disparity between what I know and have experienced and what my students know and want to experience grows every year–as it does with all established professors and new students. \u00a0Things that seem obvious to me are still being figured out by my students. \u00a0And I think this is a good thing: \u00a0for me and I hope my students.<\/p>\n
I still have to go back in my own experience and remember what it was like to be confused and stressed about learning new material and starting projects and writing my first big papers. \u00a0I have to trust that my students can help each other with some of that day to day growth because they are just now figuring out how to do it for themselves. \u00a0But I also hope that I can share some of the lessons I’ve learned in how to get through what feels like these overwhelming, ambiguous projects we have to do.<\/p>\n
Two related maxims I’ve recently given my students are: 1) If you don’t know what the next step is in your project, the steps you’re thinking about are too big and 2) Today, you need to do the next right thing. \u00a0The students all know where they want to go: submit the paper for publication, defend the thesis, get a job. \u00a0But the steps to take to get there can be overwhelming. \u00a0So we’ve been working this semester on having the students get more and more concrete about the steps they are going to take today <\/strong>to get to the ultimate goal \u00a0months from now. \u00a0The next right thing to do should be obvious and doable today<\/strong>. \u00a0If it’s not, the path is still too abstract and unrealistically ambitious. I try to break down the steps to something concrete and easy to do today. \u00a0I think it’s reducing their stress on how to get where they want to be. And it helps me. \u00a0It helps focus me, too, on what I am doing and reminds me to be fresh and excited about research. \u00a0I recognize the growing difference between my level of experience and my students. \u00a0And I hope that by continually traversing that gulf, we all gain and we all find our projects to be rewarding and fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I went back to school after working in the “real world” for 4 years, one of the differences that struck me was differences in time in the organization. \u00a0I have not studied time in organizations, which is an important area of research. \u00a0What I want to talk about is differences in the time perspective\/horizons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67nDP-3v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":188,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/05\/23\/open-cubicles-and-behavior-settings\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":0},"title":"Open Cubicles and Behavior Settings","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"May 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes, I get a little freaked out when the New York Times has stories that seem to be focused all towards issues and interests in my own life. \u00a0(I'm sure that's what all the paranoids say, but I'm way too optimistic to be a paranoid. \u00a0I just think how lucky\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":323,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2018\/03\/12\/spring-break-study-abroad-to-prague-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":1},"title":"Spring Break Study Abroad to Prague: Part 1","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"March 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"We just returned from Prague for a Spring Break Study abroad program focusing on successful international employees, teams, and leaders.\u00a0 I'm dividing this debriefing blog into two parts. Today, I'm talking about what we learned and did.\u00a0 Tomorrow, I'm talking about what it's like to be a professor in close\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2018\/04\/13\/academic-colleagues\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":2},"title":"Academic Colleagues","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"April 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I understand how it can go both ways in academia.\u00a0 You can have colleagues who are really part of your family.\u00a0 And you have colleagues you are, um, not. Whichever way it happens, academic colleagues are completely unlike colleagues in other organizations. Academia is the last career in which you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":239,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2013\/10\/07\/doing-the-right-thing\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":3},"title":"Doing the Right Thing","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"October 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seminar's can have different themes and foci, even if you are ostensibly reading the same material. \u00a0Last year, in our Organization Science overview class, we focused a lot, especially at the beginning, at the problems of duality in research and how the next generation of research and researchers will solve\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":191,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/08\/28\/non-dualistic-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":4},"title":"(Non) Dualistic Thinking","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"August 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, for the first week of the first semester for our first year PhD students, I assigned a reading that made my students cry.\u00a0 Or at least whimper.\u00a0 Or perhaps merely curse my name.\u00a0 The article was Feldman and Orlikowski\u2019s (2011) Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory in the journal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/08\/09\/sociomaterialism-and-emergent-social-media\/","url_meta":{"origin":217,"position":5},"title":"Sociomaterialism and Emergent Social Media","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"August 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past week, danah boyd has written a couple of very interesting posts about Google + and their policy of not allowing people to post using pseudonyms. \u00a0In my research, it's rare to find people who want to be anonymous in their ongoing online interactions. \u00a0But many people do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n