For a Better Academic Year

With only a few post published on a blog and only a limited academic activity, 2017 was not my best in terms of academic achievements and professional advancement. For reasons completely independent of my will, of very personal reasons - but luckily, not mine - most of my academic readings had to do with issues dealing with mental health and mental instability of persons that did not benefit the proper medical support when they needed to, developing into toxic unstable adults. An interesting investigation after all, but not my area of study and not something I am very keen to further explore.

However, once I settled down - at least on my side - my own version of the story, it is about time to set up my visual board and aim high for a reboost of my academic career. I am fully aware that things will not jump out of nowhere from 0 to 100, but at least, settling down in an academic mood, sounds like what I have to expect for my next 12 months. And work hard towards achieving it. 

In this new arrangement, the blog - and the Twitter account which is slowly slowly growing up (like 1 follower the year...maybe) is playing a very clear role, as a dairy which will help me keep the track of my records, but also encourage me to move forward with my efforts towards a better academic visibility and planning. The plan is to post at least twice the week, with a clear focus on books and various academic challenges specific to people with the highest academic training - as I do, with a PhD in history, a book written and couple of academic articles - but without the clear thought of actually being part of the academic establishment - at least for now. Maybe it is about time to make a change in this respect and hopefully 2018 will be the year when I will sort out my serious plans and maybe some teaching perspectives too. 

Here it is for now! Hopefully, things will get much better and I will be able to keep up with a modest schedule and academic planning!

Wish all my academic readers a happy healthy and successful 2018!

Why do we need Masters, and PhDs and so many academic papers?

Source: www.qcc.cuny.edu

It 2.30 in the morning, and I just finished editing the 4th time the two academic papers on my to-do-list for today. 

Theoretically speaking, this kind of work is one of my favourite freelancer assignment because it gives me inspiration for new articles and researches, and it can also come with some free articles and even books necessary for eventual improvements. But it also brings a lot of frustrations, when I realize how much behind I am in terms of pursuing my own academic researches. 

Tonight, I have another frustration though: Why so many people around the world really want to pursue an academic career when obviously they don't have any calling for that? A couple of years ago, it was almost unacceptable to do not go to college. At least in my family was and my mother could not accept that her children are not going to university. Nowadays, if you don't apply for a master, PhD and at least one post-PhD scholarship, you can be considered an intellectual failure. And so you can encounter the incredible situation only a couple of years ago when people in their 30s - late or early, does not matter too much - without a single day of real time work. 

This time, I will not start talking about my reasons to get my PhD (it is a new blog after all and I have thousand of topics that I would love to talk about soon). My main problem tonight is represented by all those people that for a visa in the West or a better family and social status or some more $$ on the salary or for increasing the marriageability chances or for who knows what non-academic reasons take themselves seriously enough to apply for post-graduate studies.

Did you ever heard about companies specialized in ghost writing master and PhD thesis? I did and I hope to write more about them one day. Did you heard about big freelancer network where fresh delivered master or doctoral thesis are auctioned for 100-150$ or even less? What about when the scholar-in-process decides to write his or her own thesis? Good plan, but be sure that you spent some years learning how to properly use the language you should use for writing the thesis. And that you, as an extraordinary writer you want to be understand what you are writing about. 

Otherwise, you may need to hire someone to translate your incoherent thoughts into an intelligible language. 

Dear student, seriously, why you want so much to have this prestigious piece of paper? Is it so important to add the 'Ph.D' on your business card for a title that cannot be yours because you don't have the mind and the training and the patience for being a scholar. 

Or maybe it is time for more serious academic policies based on a strict selection of the candidates for such high academic titles? Otherwise, if I consider my latest editing experiences, it seems that a composition of the 1 grade can have more academic relevance than 25% of the 'scholarly' papers produced by PhD and master candidates.