When do you make your academic webpage?

[IRdreams]

Thanks guys!

[natsteel]

Even so, it's still about 5 full pages, narrow margins, single space, with entries separated with blank lines. Even if I removed all the white space from the document, there is no way it could all fit in two pages. I guess that's another one of those field-specific things.

Fuzzylogician, my brother is in Linguistics and his CV is about the same as yours. Probably like you, a significant portion of that details his teaching experience.

Let me elaborate and amend my former statement (though I have had professors tell me the same). Most grad students think of their CV in terms of quantity over quality. I would guess that many grad students who have 5-page CVs have a lot of stuff on there that most people drop as soon as they are done with the PhD such as graduate student conferences and the like. These kinds of entries as a grad student show that you're involved, but no established or senior scholar would keep graduate student conference presentations on their CV. While it is painful (in a way) to remove items from your CV, I would suggest looking at it again as if you were already an established scholar and ask yourself what you would drop from your CV.

Now to amend... If you're already ABD and getting close to the market, your CV could definitely be more than 2 pages as you should have a few conferences, a publication or two out or pending, and some teaching experience as well. Nevertheless, I can't help think that a 5-page CV in the Humanities for a graduate student is a bit too much. I could, of course, be mistaken and your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length.

[fuzzylogician]

Fuzzylogician, my brother is in Linguistics and his CV is about the same as yours. Probably like you, a significant portion of that details his teaching experience.

Let me elaborate and amend my former statement (though I have had professors tell me the same). Most grad students think of their CV in terms of quantity over quality. I would guess that many grad students who have 5-page CVs have a lot of stuff on there that most people drop as soon as they are done with the PhD such as graduate student conferences and the like. These kinds of entries as a grad student show that you're involved, but no established or senior scholar would keep graduate student conference presentations on their CV. While it is painful (in a way) to remove items from your CV, I would suggest looking at it again as if you were already an established scholar and ask yourself what you would drop from your CV.

Now to amend... If you're already ABD and getting close to the market, your CV could definitely be more than 2 pages as you should have a few conferences, a publication or two out or pending, and some teaching experience as well. Nevertheless, I can't help think that a 5-page CV in the Humanities for a graduate student is a bit too much. I could, of course, be mistaken and your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length.

I replied to your post mostly because sweeping statements of the sort "no grad student should/can/is X" are almost invariably incorrect. So many things are field-dependent. Since this is not really about my own CV I have no intention of explaining how or why it's as long as it is. Maybe it'll help if I clarified that there are many different kinds of research out there that is classified under the label of 'linguistics', ranging from what should be categorized under the humanities, through the social sciences, to what I personally think should be housed under the natural sciences; what I personally do is certainly not under the humanities - it's probably at least in the social sciences. In any event, very little of my CV has to do with teaching, most of it concerns research. Following your standards I should remove three entries for local conferences that I keep mostly because they show the breadth of what I do -- I'll certainly remove them once I'm further along in my career; hopefully by then those presentations will turn into peer-reviewed talks and papers anyway. I don't see the harm in keeping them on my CV at the moment.

The general point, though, is just that saying that no student should ever have a CV that's more than 2 pages is dangerous, unless you've asked around in all different fields and you know for a fact that this holds across academia as a whole.

[natsteel]

Fair enough. I don't always remember to preface every statement with "In my field..." As I indicated originally, that is not my own "standard" but one I have been advised about by professors and mentors. Apologies if anyone was harmed by my "dangerous" statement.

Following your standards I should remove three entries for local conferences that I keep mostly because they show the breadth of what I do -- I'll certainly remove them once I'm further along in my career; hopefully by then those presentations will turn into peer-reviewed talks and papers anyway. I don't see the harm in keeping them on my CV at the moment.

Did you not notice where I said, "your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length?"

Edited August 1, 2011 by natsteel

[fuzzylogician]

Fair enough. I don't always remember to preface every statement with "In my field..." As I indicated originally, that is not my own "standard" but one I have been advised about by professors and mentors. Apologies if anyone was harmed by my "dangerous" statement.

Did you not notice where I said, "your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length?"

No need to get offended, I reply to the content of a post - I don't attack the poster.

Again, standards change from field to field. I'm sure your mentors give you great advice, for your field. Some of it I'm sure generalizes to other fields as well, but not necessarily all of it. That is all I was trying to say. To reply to the specific part of my post that you chose to quote, the point I was trying to make was about content, not length. I don't know what the right choice regarding these low-level entries should be; obviously I'll remove them when I'm further along in my career and either way they are not going to be what gets me hired. I keep them, for now, because they showcase work I have done that is not currently published in any higher profile venue. I don't have this type of entry for things that I've presented/published elsewhere (although I keep a list in case I learn it's also important to show that I've been keeping active in local venues too -- but it's not on my CV right now).