288: [Mid-Career Series] What Does "Mid-Career Academic" Mean? (Re-Release EP 63)

I am excited to kick off the brand-new Mid-Career Podcast Series, where I dive into the realities of academic life after tenure.

Mid-career is the longest stretch of the academic journey, often 15 to 20 years, and while it brings stability and experience, it can also feel like uncharted territory. Many academics discover that the freedoms they imagined post-promotion are replaced with heavier workloads, shifting priorities, and the lingering question of what's next.

In this first episode, I lay the groundwork for what mid-career really looks like and why it matters. I'll talk about the gap between expectation and reality, the identity shifts that happen when the tenure track drive fades, and the surprising ways burnout shows up even after achieving major milestones.

Most importantly, I'll introduce how to think about mid-career not as a plateau, but as a phase filled with opportunities to realign, reset, and build skills that sustain your academic life for the long haul.

Tune in to start reframing mid-career on your own terms and hear sneak peeks of the insights and stories I will share throughout this series.

For full show notes visit scholarsvoice.org/podcast.

We're receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!

2. Cathy's book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that's going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!

3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It's a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

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