mid. advice

Want to share your mid story or ask/vent through a mid question? And /or do you want to find some folks in the same professional (head)space? Talk to us here or follow us on Instagram.

What is mid.?
Technology, ideology, and austerity have us unmoored and unmoved—stuck in the middle of this moment. Professors, writers, and thinking humans can’t work like we used to. Increasingly, the institutions, organizations, and affiliations seem impossible, or maybe they seem not worth pouring our energy into. Short of quitting and becoming small-batch strawberry gardeners, what can we do?

mid. does not offer trite advice on how to garner other job offers or move up in your industry. We aren’t trying to get you to optimize your life. Instead, it starts from the fundamental recognition that many of us are stuck. Maybe we’re in the middle because we can’t move for family, geographical, financial, or personal reasons. Maybe we’ve done everything we can think of, been on every committee, joined every group, and still can’t seem to find ways forward, whether scholarly, creatively, institutionally, or personally. Maybe we’re middle-aged or mid-career or just, as the Gen Alphas say, mid, for several overlapping reasons, external and internal.

mid. aims to give practical but outside-of-the-box advice for folks who are in the middle place– advice that acknowledges that there are real obstacles to standard professional and creative counsel that can’t be unmoved. Following the long literary history of advice columns in periodical culture from the late 17th century through to today’s Reel advice landscape, we draw on personal experience and expert analysis to provide the kind of empathetic and honest thoughts about the writing and thinking dilemmas we often don’t talk about. We give advice and commiseration on how to move: if not forward, then sideways through the middle.

Who we are:
Jamie is an underslept professor, parent, author, bureaucrat, Little League snack-bringer and endless car-pooler. She writes to-do lists on scraps of paper and leaves cold mugs of half-drunk coffee everywhere.

Sam is a professor, author, journeywoman editor & administrator, parent, partner, peer text friend, & overall tired human. She plans to be more interesting as soon as she gets her inbox count down.

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