#carreer

Then here’s how to become an actual academic 📖🕯️

— by: Someone who’s actually becoming an academic

So, the first step might be the most obvious but yet difficult one: you need to be enrolled in an university. Or college. Never understood the difference.

Then, you find the field of study that you love and adore. Not that you just like. Well, I guess like works just fine, but it’s better if you love it because the more you love something the more you want to learn and research about it. And keep in mind that this is going to be your future, all-life-long job. So yeah, find something that you love doing or studying. It can be your favourite course, module or subject. It can even be a very niche thing. 

Then, find a professor that teaches or is researching that topic and stick to them like a koala on a tree. I don’t know how it works in your university and/or country, but if you have to write your final dissertation/thesis and your uni requires a tutor, choose them [I could write a separate blog post if you need help with your thesis work]. Ask them to give you extra readings, book recs, tips and tricks on how to become just like them, ask them if they are curating any project, such as a seminar, a congress, an exposition or a cool experiment that’s open to the public. Damn it, ask them if they need someone to help them carry the exams folders, or remind them of some event, or just if they want to have a coffee with you. You might think that all of this is prententious or that it make you possibly look annoying, but this is how it works. 

Academic careers are built on connections. The more people you know in your field the more you will be known, the more other academics might want to read your research, your papers, your articles and books. You have to make a name for yourself, and the only way you have is to create relationships in your field of study. 

This is why I also advise you to show up. University is like a society. Find conventions, seminars, conferences and exhibitions that interests you or that belong to your chosen field and just go. If you can, ask questions [remember to always introduce yourself, stating your name and surname!], give input. If you go to a museum exhibit and you see people working there or even the curator, have a chat with them. Ask them if you can have their email addresses so you can contact them if you have any further questions. 

I have done every single thing in this list. Well, maybe I didn’t carry my professor’s exams folders, but I know a friend who did. I prayed for things to go well. And they did.

If you are curious, I am in my final year of my Bachelor’s in Languages, and I am specializing in Germanic Philology. My dream would be to become a scholar in Norse Studies. Ky thesis will be on the influences that Norse Mythology had on a novel by Sir Walter Scott.

And, even if I am still completing my Bachelor’s, my tutor saw something in me. He invited me to participate in an editing project [that is technically reserved for Master's students] of a Middle English manuscript, and this edition will result in a publication that will have my name on it.

This is why I beg you, start building your connectiond. You never know if your tutor will have a shiny, new project you can be a part of if you don’t try. 

Everything else will come naturally at you. Trust the Universe.

I remember asking this is school and found out a lot of my teachers were either Aries or Taurus.

I’m being told not to go, but there’s a road I wish to take.

While being told not to meet, there’s someone I wish to meet.

If you tell me not to, it makes me want to do it even more.

That is life and longing. That is you.