Career Goals--revised

Okay, so a great friend and fellow academic gave me some advice about my personal statement. I revised it and think it is a much stronger statement about why I want what I want and how I am choosing the non-traditional academic path. The revised version is below.

I'm applying for a fellowship that requires me to write a personal statement of career goals post PhD program. Here's what I've come up with (might still do some minor tweaking before handing it in with my application.)

Laura Redford

Personal Statement of Career Goals

When I started the doctoral program in history at UCLA my end goal was to get a tenure-track position teaching history at a small liberal arts college, probably somewhere on the East Coast. While my interest in and commitment to teaching has not changed, my situation certainly has. Since moving to Los Angeles and starting my program in 2006, I met and married my husband. Being older, we chose not to wait a long time to start a family and have had two daughters—one before I took my oral exam and advanced to candidacy, and the other after I completed the draft of my first dissertation chapter. Choices I make about my future career and employment not only require that I consider my family, but my family has transformed the way I think about my field and my professional pursuits. I now intend to teach in an adjunct or continuing lecturer position in the Los Angeles area, likely at a public institution.

Tenure requires publishing, even at small “teaching” schools. Most young professors turn their dissertations into their first published works. I will seek to transform my dissertation into a book, but not in order to meet specific job criteria. Instead, I am convinced that the story I tell about Los Angeles in the first two decades of the twentieth century is essential to students of the city. As a book it will have a much greater impact on those who study Los Angeles and Urban History than if I left it as a dissertation to be footnoted in someone else’s dissertation. My scholarship is important for its own sake, and not just to take a closer step toward tenure.

I have begun to rethink my affinity for private liberal arts colleges. Recently, I was in a lecture when a professor asked a group of freshman how many of them were immigrants or the child of at least one immigrant. More than two-thirds of the hundred students raised their hand. As a 20^th Century U.S. Historian, I am fascinated by the way new Americans have participated in shaping our nation. Students who come from families that have uprooted their lives and connections to be here see our nation’s recent history from an interesting perspective. Other experiences at UCLA have shown me the value of a diverse student body in cultural background, economic situation, ethnic and racial communities, and even hometowns. I have come to appreciate the educational opportunities that derive from the diversity of the public college system.

When I graduate, I will enter a very competitive job market. My husband’s work ties us to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. There are a lot of scholars who want to live and teach here. The unfortunate trend in secondary education to rely on adjuncts and lecturers as the answer to many universities' budget crises may actually work in my favor. Those universities still require well-trained academics and their students deserve nothing less.

I hope to find a position that will allow me to spend the majority of my working time teaching and interacting with students. I really enjoy undergraduates and the fresh eyes, excitement, and wonder they bring with them. Some of my most cherished experiences at UCLA have been working one on one with students, helping them learn a new concept or watching as they started thinking about one of our topics in a new way. I would love to share my enthusiasm for and knowledge of U.S. and Urban History with college students. That desire remains the same, even as I have moved away from my original goal to be tenure track faculty at a small liberal arts college on the East Coast. Instead, I hope to be a continuing lecturer, or adjunct faculty at a school in or around Los Angeles, with a large student body from different socio-economic, geographic, and racial backgrounds.