Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T13:52:57.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 21 - The Delicate Art of Balancing Serendipity and Planfulness in an Academic Career

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2022

By
Stephanie A. Shields
Edited by
Jamila Bookwala  and
Nicky J. Newton
Jamila Bookwala
Affiliation:
Lafayette College, Pennsylvania
Nicky J. Newton
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario
Get access

Summary

Planfulness, goal setting, and hard work determine the course of one’s career, as do accident, opportunity, and luck. Career advancement and satisfaction depend on managing these two apparently opposing forces. Serendipity, seizing unexpected opportunities to initiate a new research pathway, and planfulness, thoughtful mapping out of a research program, are intrinsic to determining one’s professional pathway. In this chapter, I offer thoughts about how to use serendipity wisely, and how not to be paralyzed by planfulness through considering when and why planfulness and serendipity paid off or not. Among my conclusions, (1) serendipity takes one in unexpected directions; and serendipity does not always feel like opportunity; (2) there is no way to predict what exactly will work out or not. As in the stock market, past performance is not an indicator of future performance, and (3) timing is not everything, but it plays an oversized role.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reflections from Pioneering Women in Psychology , pp. 268 - 279
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cramer, H., Lauche, R., Daubenmier, J., Mehling, W., Büssing, A., Saha, F. J., Dobos, G., & Shields, S. A. (2018). Being aware of the painful body: Validation of the German Body Awareness Questionnaire and Body Responsiveness Questionnaire in patients with chronic pain. PLoS-One. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0193000Google Scholar
Cundiff, J. L., Warner, L. R., McCormick-Huhn, K., & Shields, S. A. (2021). The Workshop Activity for Gender Equity Simulation (WAGES): An evidence-based experiential learning tool for educating about gender bias across learning and work contexts. In Nordstrom, A. & Goodfriend, W. (Eds.), Innovative stigma and discrimination reduction programs across the world. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Franzoi, S. L., & Shields, S. A. (1984). The body esteem scale: Multidimensional structure and sex differences in a college population. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48(2), 173–178. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa4802_12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, K., Franzoi, S., Oswald, D., & Shields, S. A. (2018). Revising the Body Esteem Scale with a U.S. college student sample: Evaluation, validation, and uses for the BES-R. Sex Roles, 78(1–2), 1–17. doi:10.1007/s11199-017-0776-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowaty, P. A. (2018). On being and becoming female and male. In Dess, N., Marecek, J., & Bell, L. C. (Eds.), Gender, sex, and sexualities: Psychological perspectives (pp. 77–102). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Joel, D. (2016). Captured in terminology: Sex, sex categories, and sex differences. Feminism & Psychology, 26(3), 335–345. doi:10.1177/0959353516645367CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (1975). Functionalism, Darwinism, and the psychology of women: A study in social myth. American Psychologist, 30, 739–754. doi:10.1037/h0076948CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (1984). “To pet, coddle, and ‘do for’”: Caretaking and the concept of maternal instinct. In Lewin, M. (Ed.), In the shadow of the past: Psychology examines the sexes (pp. 256–273). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shields, S. A. (1991). Gender in the psychology of emotion. In Strongman, K. T. (Ed.), International review of studies on emotion (vol. I, pp. 227–245). New York, NY: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Shields, S. A. (1995). The role of emotion beliefs and values in gender development. In Eisenberg, N. (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (vol. 15, pp. 212–232). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2000). Thinking about gender, thinking about theory: Gender and emotional experience. In Fischer, A. (Ed.), Gender and emotion (pp. 3–23). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511628191.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2007). Passionate men, emotional women: Psychology constructs gender difference in the late 19th century. History of Psychology, 10(2), 92–110. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.10.2.92CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shields, S. A. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality perspective. Sex Roles, 59, 301–311. doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9501-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2012). Waking up to privilege: Intersectionality and opportunity. In Flores-Niemann, Y., Harris, A., González, C., & Gutiérrez y Muhs, G. (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia (pp. 29–39). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2013). Gender and emotion: What we think we know, what we need to know, and why it matters. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(4), 423–435. doi:10.1177/0361684313502312CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2016). Functionalism, Darwinism, and intersectionality: How an intersectional perspective reveals issues of power, inequality, and legitimacy in psychological science. Feminism & Psychology, 26(3), 353–365. doi:10.1177/0959353516655371Google Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2021). From “gender difference” to “doing gender” to “gender and structural power” in psychological science. In Fenstermaker, S. & Stewart, A. J. (Eds.), Gender, considered: Feminist reflections across the social sciences. New York, NY: Macmillan/Palgrave.Google Scholar
Shields, S. A., & Bhatia, S. (2009). Darwin and race, gender, and culture. American Psychologist, 64(2),111–119. doi:10.1037/a0013502CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shields, S. A., Garner, D. N., Di Leone, B., & Hadley, A. M. (2006). Gender and emotion. In Stets, J. E. & Turner, J. H. (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of emotion (pp. 63–83). New York: Kluwer. doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-30715-2_4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A., Mallory, M. E., & Simon, A. (1989). The Body Awareness Questionnaire: Reliability and validity. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53(4), 802–815. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa5304_16CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A., McCormick, K. T., Dicicco, E. C., & Zawadzki, M. J. (2018). Demonstrating the cumulative effects of unconscious bias with WAGES-Academic (Workshop Activity for Gender Equity Simulation): Short and long-term impact on faculty and administrators. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, doi:10.1615/JWomen Minor ScienEng.2018014113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tumulty, K. (March 25, 2020). A troublemaker with a gavel. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/25/how-nancy-pelosis-unlikely-rise-turned-her-into-most-powerful-woman-us-history/?arc404=true&utm_campaign=wp_week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_ideasGoogle Scholar
Warner, L. R., Settles, I. H., & Shields, S. A. (2016). Invited reflection: Intersectionality as an epistemological challenge to psychology. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(2), 171–176. doi:10.1177/0361684316641384CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zawadzki, M. J., Shields, S. A., Danube, C. L., & Swim, J. K. (2014). Reducing the endorsement of sexism using experiential learning: The Workshop Activity for Gender Equity Simulation (WAGES). Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(1), 75–92. doi:10.1177/0361684313498573Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×