Blog - cathy mazak

How to Handle Stress, Anxiety, and Overwhelm in Academia

by Cathy Mazak | June 24, 2019 | academic project management | 0 Comments

How do you feel when you get to work in the morning? When you look at your to-do list, do you feel completely overwhelmed? Have you ever felt the beginnings of a panic attack when you think about the amount of stuff you have to do? For most of us, the answer is “yes.”...

Are you Making These Three Writing Mistakes?

by Cathy Mazak | April 25, 2019 | academic writing, mindset, publishing, time management | 1 Comment

Are you making these three writing mistakes? Academic women are a diverse and electrifying group. I truly get so much energy from interacting with you all, both in and out of my own field of study. But the more academic women I get to know, the more I realize that...

Five Myths about Getting Writing Done

by Cathy Mazak | April 18, 2019 | academic writing, mindset, publishing, time management | 0 Comments

As you close your laptop on turning in grades, set up your email auto-responder so that students know you are unreachable and dream about all those projects that you’re going to finish over the break, it might be time for a little reality check. Let me guess: you have...

A Professor’s Guide to Getting Professional Development Funding

by Cathy Mazak | April 11, 2019 | academic project management | 0 Comments

There are some things that really get on my nerves about academia. One of them is the assumption that we should all know how to do the job. I mean, we have Ph.D.s, right? How on earth does the process of getting a Ph.D. prepare you for managing #allthethings, getting...

How to Write More (Spoiler Alert: It’s Not About Time)

by Cathy Mazak | April 2, 2019 | academic writing, time management | 0 Comments

I asked academic women joining my I Should Be Writing! Facebook group: “What’s the biggest obstacle between you and writing more?” Here’s what you all said: “Time!” “Time management and my teaching load at a teaching intensive university” “Time and motivation”...

What Should Going Up for Tenure Feel Like?

by Cathy Mazak | March 14, 2019 | mindset | 0 Comments

Going up for tenure brings up all the feelings. Maybe the most salient one is fear. Fear that you won’t get tenured, which would mean going on the (also scary) market, moving to another town, uprooting your family. Fear that your sneaky suspicion that your colleagues...

Five Project Management Skills Every Academic Needs to Know

by Cathy Mazak | February 14, 2019 | academic project management, resources | 0 Comments

The very nature of academic work means that we have to juggle. The three pillars of our work--research, teaching, and service--outline a daily working life where we are pulled in at least as many directions (though in reality, it is many more). Because of this,...

From Sticky Notes to Systems: How I Organized My Academic Life

by Cathy Mazak | February 7, 2019 | academic project management | 0 Comments

I really don’t consider myself super organized. So it might seem strange for me to have created a course called “Organize Your Academic Life.” But of course, I didn’t always have a complete system in place for organizing my academic projects. And maybe you don’t right...

5 Myths About the Organized Professor

by Cathy Mazak | February 1, 2019 | resources | 0 Comments

Do you ever look around and feel like everybody has it together but you? Like everyone seems to keep their agendas up-to-date, hit every deadline, and get their writing done, while teaching all their classes and graduating five students a year? And you think: I’m just...

Five Characteristics of a Good Writing Community

by Cathy Mazak | January 17, 2019 | academic writing | 2 Comments

One way to get more writing done is to gather others around you who share your goal. A supportive writing community can be the difference between sticking with a productive writing plan and going back to letting writing fall to the bottom of your list. A good writing...