Here are a few key suggestions:
- Chronicle of Higher Education Forums (now defunct and moved to "thefora") - archive is useful to check specific topics, and remember that as with survey data, you see extremes, with people visiting to post tales of woe. If posting, do so anonymously, carefully, and infrequently, because you're probably more recognizable than you think, and this profession is a small world.
- More current advice on the sociology boards: https://socjobs.proboards.com/
- Start to read books about the profession and about writing.
- Writing favorites
Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks
Zerubavel's The Clockwork Muse - About the process and the profession
Goldsmith's The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career
Peters' Getting What You Came For
Vick & Furlong's The Academic Job Search Handbook
Where can I find additional funding?
Talk to me, search the web, read books about grant writing and have a look at the Melbourne Research Office's website. Regularly applying for additional funding is a good idea, given that this will list on your scholarly CV as evidence of grantsmanship. It is good to start this process early, before you need extra money, because grant writing is a skill, which means that it requires practice. Plus it often takes time to search out good funding targets for your current stage. Hence, making some early grant applications without any expectations gives you a nice chance to practice, not to mention that if you do win anything, that is a nice bonus.
Funding is often categorized into different purposes, so you will want to have a think about your current goals. For example, in Chicago the anthropologists have a nice list of funding for the different stages of the process: coursework, fieldwork and write-up. Small grants for fieldwork, language acquisition and visiting institutions abroad are another set of good targets for an early-stage PhD student, depending upon the project.
