How to get the Academia Made Easier content you want in 2024

My second annual Academia Made Easier reader survey!

Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here.

Roughly a year ago, I shared the backstory of how I started this newsletter (spoiler: selfish reasons!) and described how much I enjoy writing and connecting with you. Thank you for your readership. It truly means a lot to me. 

I aspire to be the email you actually look forward to receiving. And to do that, it is helpful to know what ideas you are interested in reading more about. Last year I launched my first-ever reader survey in hopes that a few people would reply and give me feedback. I was honoured to receive responses from over 200 of you. 

I used the survey results to inform this year’s newsletter and many of my 21 (thus far!)  Academia Made Easier newsletters addressed topics that readers mentioned in the survey. If you completed the 2022 survey, thank you. (Curious about the results? Below is a word cloud of responses to the question “What is your biggest work struggle or challenge?”) 

And now, as we head toward 2024 (gulp!), I would like to continue to hear your ideas for how I can make Academia Made Easier more useful to you. And that’s the topic of today’s small thing to try immediately. 

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Complete the Academia Made Easier reader survey

The point of the Academia Made Easier reader survey is to help inform my topic planning for 2024. It is NOT for research purposes. It is anonymous, entirely voluntary, and relatively short. Just so you know what you are getting into if you choose to participate, there are three sections: reader interests (three questions), reader demographics (four questions), and general feedback (three questions). For the five open-answer questions, feel free to respond with a single word, bullets, short phrases, haiku, lengthy essays with thesis statements, or whatever works for you. All questions are optional.

Okay, enough preamble. Here is the link: Academia Made Easier Reader Survey 2023. I will close the survey on Monday, January 1, 2024 (time dependent upon when I remember to do so!), so please complete it by the end of the day in your time zone on Sunday, December 31, 2023. 

I appreciate your assistance in helping me align Academia Made Easier content with reader needs. You are very kind to share your insights. Thank you, my colleagues!

Until next time…

Thus far I have written 22 (including this one) Academia Made Easier newsletters in 2023, which when added to my 24 newsletters in 2021 and 25 in 2022 comes to (let me get my calculator…) 71 Academia Made Easier newsletters since I started. Yowsa! If you have read all 71, you are a rockstar – thank you for your continuing readership. And if you haven’t read them all, please check out the  Academia Made Easier archive! 😏

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. If you are like me, you read to the bottom with the intention of clicking the survey link … later. But that requires effort and my newsletter is about making your life easier, so here is the link again:  Academia Made Easier Reader Survey 2023. I look forward to hearing from you!

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