Becoming a Professor

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I must say that my line of work, as a college professor (sociology of religion in my case), may be close to ideal for many aspies. To be a successful Ph.D. student, one must be willing to sacrifice a lot of social activities, not likely to be missed by many people with AS, and just hit the books.

After one secures a position, eccentricity is tolerated (appreciated in some cases). I even suspect that many of my colleagues have AS.

If there are any draw backs, it is having to deal with university politics (which I rarely understand) and to interact effectively with students. With respect to students, I have largely overcome that problem by regularly breaking up my classes into small discussion groups. I also teach about half of my course load online (distance learning).

Anyway, I have been at it for 27 years and thought I would suggest it for those of you who may be making career plans.

Cheers,

Mark

Last edited by nominalist on 02 Oct 2007, 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My wife ( a most un-aspie like person ) is an associate professor ( rural sociology ) and after researching asperger's ( after my dx ) she's come to the same conclusion.

She now believes that a lot of her colleagues reside somewhere on ( in?) the spectrum.

This comes as no surprise to me...

Interesting. I got my Ph.D. at a so-called cow college (land-grant university) where many of the professors were rural sociologists.

Cheers,

Mark

Which moo-u did you get your degree at?

Rather not say

Mark

Interestingly, I've recently been leaning more and more toward the decision that I simply can't become a professor, because of the AS. (Well, it's not that I would let it stop me, it's just that I would be miserable, so why would I want to?)

Part of it depends on the field that you are going into. In my field, in order to do the specific things that I want to do, it's pretty much required to work at a large research university rather than a small liberal arts college.

The issues with the large research university setting are the following:
-pressure to publish/secure grants/etc.: this is difficult because it puts an external timeline on your research, and also it puts external restrictions on your research. In order to get grants, you've got to be doing research that somebody is going to be interested in funding. Also, you've got to be doing research that your department considers worthwhile and relevant. Plus, you've got to be doing research that the journals consider publishable. All that external pressure, when you just want to research things that are interesting...
-interacting with faculty/politics: from the little I've seen of it, it can get very complicated. Very, very complicated.
-interacting with students: students are also very, very complicated. Plus, lecturing in front of a large class is a lot different than talking about the stuff you like with a small group of people. I'm really good at tutoring and working with a small group, but I tend to lose my train of thought a lot when I'm in front of a class. Plus, students are sensitive and their feelings tend to get hurt when you say things without sugar-coating them.

I guess a smaller liberal arts college wouldn't be so bad, because there would be less (potentially) political issues, smaller classes, and no pressure for research or grants.

That may be it. I do teach at a small liberal arts college. However, I also teach 5 classes per semester (2 or 3 of them online).

Cheers,

Mark

Hi nom,

Any ideas on breaking into academia with a low GPA? My SAT and GRE scores are quite good but my GPA is under 3.0.

A lot of it depends on what you plan to study in grad school. However, generally speaking, my suggestion would be to apply to MA or MS programs and not exclusively to programs which treat the master's degree as part of a process leading to a Ph.D. You can then use the MA/MS as an opportunity to make yourself more academically attractive to a Ph.D. program, i.e., to raise your GPA.

Cheers,

Mark

I am the other way around--high GPA but low GRE scores. I am not sure what's worse.

Hi Lonely,

One hard lesson I've learned since college is that performance, persistence and common sense are vastly more important than "potential."