Thursday, September 25, 2008

Scholar for hire...inexpensive but not cheap!














I'm currently unemployed, by choice, in order to hasten the completion of my dissertation but after 8 months I've come to the end of my limited savings and must look for employment. After adjuncting for over six years, I want to avoid that low paid route but after being in higher education for so long, I'm not exactly a hot commodity in the business world.

When I identified myself as an academic at a recent tech conference, I got the pause and half-smile that says, "Isn't that quaint? Do you still read books?"

How to translate writing & research skills to the business world, that is my question to the brave, the few, my blog readers. I've looked at some pay-to-blog jobs which I could do from home but I think the pay is probably minimal. I'm not looking for personal exposure, just a paycheck for a job well done.

The jobs I've loved have all involved teaching & research but I don't have the statistical background to do hard-core website analysis. I'm a qualitative researcher which means I analyze text and interview people. I've worked with delicate issues ranging from sexual abuse to religious experience, to more traditional subject like vocational issues & migration.

This is the ultimate me, me, me column. I'm not really asking for a job, just any suggestions you might have. I think I'm suffering from a lack of imagination on how to translate my job skills to the nonacademic world. Thanks in advance!

2 comments:

PB said...

For what it's worth I'll tell you what happened to my sister-in-law. The last few years of her PhD in sociology she got involved with a few local non-profits that she cared about, using her writing and strategic planning skills to help them organize and get grants. By the time she finished her PhD she had enough relationships that she decided to make that her full-time business.

Liz said...

Thanks for sharing that experience, pb. I'm actually looking outside of academia, just opening myself to other possibilities. Thank you for posting.