This is a book for dedicated academics who consider spending years masochistically overworked and underappreciated as a laudable goal. They lead the lives of the impoverished, grade the exams of whiny undergrads, and spend lonely nights in the library or laboratory pursuing a transcendent truth that only six or seven people will ever care about. These suffering, unshaven sad sacks are grad students, and their salvation has arrived in this witty look at the low points of grad school. Inside, you’ll find: • advice on maintaining a veneer of productivity in front of your advisor • tips for sleeping upright during boring seminars • a description of how to find which departmental events have the best unguarded free food • how you can convincingly fudge data and feign progress This hilarious guide to surviving and thriving as the lowliest of life-forms—the grad student—will elaborate on all of these issues and more.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

So, you have your PhD, the academic world’s your oyster, but teaching jobs, it turns out, are as rare as pearls. Take it from someone who’s been there: your disappointment, approached from a different angle, becomes opportunity. Marshaling hard-earned wisdom tempered with a gentle wit, Rachel Neff brings her own experiences to bear on the problems facing so many frustrated exiles from the groves of academe: how to turn “This wasn’t the plan!” into “Why not?” Fully expecting to be Doctor or Professor Neff someday, Neff instead found herself in the company of the 66 percent of doctoral graduates—more than 35,000 a year—who cannot find a full-time, tenure-track teaching job. In Chasing Chickens, she retraces the steps that took her from her moment of reckoning (aka “failure”) to a new way of seeing and grasping success. Each chapter in her pilgrim’s progress along an unlikely career path—whether revealing how she ended up chasing chickens on New Year’s Eve or explaining what happens when a PhD becomes an executive assistant (The Devil Wears Prada with a dash of Portland plaid? Yes, please!)—comes with the benefit of hindsight, lessons as practical as they are entertaining. How to face a fear of “No”; how to see the bigger picture; how to find your next career, ace an interview, and stick the landing: with every step, Neff takes the uncertainty and stress out of reinventing yourself, suggests fresh approaches along new directions, and provides the tools for finding, and making, your own way. Finally, as if enlightenment, guidance, and the occasional moment of hilarity weren’t enough, her book offers every academic itinerant the chance to one day look back and say: “At least I didn’t have to chase chickens.”

The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.

From Dan Savage, Lindy West, and The Stranger staff comes this hilarious guide to life for college students and beyond. Here is all the information you actually need to know that no one else will tell you including: which majors to avoid, how to not get a STD, everything there is to know about philosophy (in a single paragraph!), what the music you like says about you, how to turn a crush into something more, how to come out (should you happen to be gay), how to binge drink and not die, how do laundry, how to do drugs (and which ones you should never do), good manners, tips on flirting with film nerds, how to write a great sentence, and a state-by-state guide to the U.S. of A. It's all here, along with Dan Savage's very best advice about sex and love. Hi!

I wish I knew then what I know now! Don't get to the end of your law school career muttering these words to yourself! Take the first step toward building a productive, successful, and perhaps even pleasant law school experience...read this book! Written for students about to embark on this three year odyssey, by students who have successfully survived law school. Law School Confidential demystifies the life-altering thrill ride that defines an American legal education by providing a comprehensive, blow-by-blow, chronological account of what to expect. Law School Confidential arms students with a thorough overview of the contemporary law school experience. This isn't the advice of graying professors or battle-scarred practitioners decades removed from the law school. Fresh out of University of Pennsylvania Law School, Robert Miller has assembled a panel of recent law school graduates all of whom are perfectly positioned to shed light on what law school is like today. Law School Confidential invites you to walk in their steps to success and to learn from their mistakes. From taking the LSAT, to securing financial aid, to navigating the notorious first semester, to exam-taking strategies, to applying for summer internships, to getting on the law review, to tackling the bar and beyond...Law School Confidential explains it all.

Pinball's history is America's history, from gambling and war-themed machines to the arcade revolution and, ultimately, the decline of the need to leave your house. The strangest thing about pinball is that it persists, and not just as nostalgia. And pinball didn't just stick around—it grew and continues to evolve with the times, reflecting the zeitgeist of every era it passes through. Somehow, in today's iPhone world, a 300-pound monstrosity of wood and cables has survived to enjoy yet another renaissance.Pinball is more to humor writer Adam Ruben than a fascinating book topic—it's a lifelong obsession. Ruben played competitive pinball for more than a decade, rising as high as the 80th-ranked player in the world. Then he had kids. Now, mired in 9,938th place—darn kids—Ruben tries to stage a comeback, visiting pinball museums, gaming conventions, pinball machine designers, and even pinball factories in his attempt to discover what makes the world's best players, the real wizards, so good.Pinball competitions are on the rise, thanks in part to modern phenomena, like "nostalgia bars," with several hundred International Flipper Pinball Association–sanctioned events occurring annually—yet they're only a small corner of the pinball world. Pinball Wizards examines the bigger story of pinball's invention, ascent, near-defeat, resurgence, near-defeat again, and struggle to find its niche in modern society.