How to Succeed in Academia (While Failing at Everything Else)

Are you passionate about learning, teaching, and making less than ＄15,000 a year? Do you enjoy tweed blazers, crisp autumn afternoons, and stealing lunch from unattended cafeteria trays? Have you ever longed to drive, sleep, and hold your office hours in a 30-year-old car? If so, then a career in academia might be right for you!

How to Succeed in Academia (While Failing at Everything Else) is a satirical guide to every aspect of life in higher ed, whether it’s finishing your dissertation on time (or at least before the heat death of the universe), applying for an academic job (by summoning the ancient Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu), or overcoming imposter syndrome (even if you’re a family of raccoons living in a Fjällräven Parka).

This humorous guidebook from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency writer and university professor Ross Bullen delivers laugh-out-loud moments whether you’re in the classroom, the library, or working a second job at Subway to supplement your adjunct professor paycheck.

Advance Praise:

＂This clever, surreal, and cathartic book will be a salve to former and current academics, as well as a guide for students who wonder why their teacher is constantly on the verge of tears.＂ - CAITLIN KUNKEL, co-author of Inside Jokes: A Comedy and Creative Guide for All Writers

＂It’s the silliest kind of smart. The wittiest type of absurd. The stupidest sort of brilliant. The wiliest form of goofy.＂ - TAYLOR KAY PHILLIPS, Emmy-winning writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and author of A Guide to Midwestern Conversation

＂Ross Bullen’s wit deftly skewers the many absurdities of working in higher education.＂ - CHRISTOPHER MONKS, Editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency