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So in my financial state of the union of my old blog, I reflected on a bunch of a random money thoughts in my head these days. Midlife is feeling pretty strange money-wise. Midlife after deciding to return to school even more-so, but I suppose I have always trusted what people say about regretting what they don’t do more than what they’ve done at the end of their lives. So I will aim to continue leaning into that mentality. Today’s reflections are more like the academic stat

When I moved to the UK for my PhD, I imagined the usual academic challenges: the late nights with library books, the conference paper nerves, the precarious funding hustle. What I didn’t anticipate was meeting a weird, nerdy guy who makes life a lot better with him than without him - and how much that would complicate my life after graduation. Now, with just under a year left in my program, my attention has shifted a little from footnotes and interviews to immigration law, p

Last week, I shared the first half of a curated list of scholarships and grants available to Americans pursuing a PhD in the UK. If you missed it, check it out here . This week, we’re diving into the second half of the list, which includes some important caveats: Some of these awards are only available once you're already living in the UK . Others are only open to students in specific years of study, such as the final “write-up” year. And if you're on a student visa, keep in

Starting a PhD is daunting. Starting a PhD as an international student in the UK with no funding? Even more so. Today, I’m going to share my experience of self-funding my drama PhD journey as an American living in the UK. Spoiler alert: my first piece of advice is probably to not self-fund. But, as the first college graduate in my family, I didn’t quite understand all the funding options available. And if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure where to begin. That said, here we are. Self

Welcome to my year three recap of being a PhD student. It now feels like I have always been a PhD student. Was there ever a time when I was not? Was all of that life before a fever dream? Is THIS life a fever dream? I do not know. I reviewed the last two year’s posts and can confirm that sometimes it still feels like I have done nothing, though at the same time, it feels like I am strapped into a roller coaster going full speed. Can also confirm that as far as feeling lost

If you’ve ever wished for a tool that captures the essence of your meetings, lectures, or discussions, Jamworks might be your next must-have app. Designed as an AI-powered note-taking and summarization tool, Jamworks listens, records, transcribes, and highlights the key points of conversations, offering a seamless way to retain and organize information. How I Discovered Jamworks I first heard about Jamworks through a classmate in my PhD cohort. She was a staunch advocate of

As a stage manager, you're the unsung hero of the production world—the glue that holds everything together behind the scenes. But when it comes to showcasing your skills, your LinkedIn profile can become the ultimate stage for your professional brand. Here’s how to create a LinkedIn profile that will not only get you noticed but also highlight the unique talents that make you a backstage superstar. 1. Start with a Standout Headline Your headline is the first thing people see

Pursuing a PhD in the arts can be an expensive undertaking. Even if you manage to get you tuition covered, living expenses can be pretty costly, and for those of us studying theatre, you'll likely be shelling out a pretty penny for tickets to performances and exhibits too. For American students, the opportunity to study abroad presents unique academic and cultural advantages, but the path can be costly. With tuition fees, living expenses, and research costs, financing a PhD

I’m sitting at a coffee shop taking a break from inputting some interview data in a spreadsheet for my thesis and I’m a little stuck on what to write for my blog post this week. Money has gotten fairly weird for me. I do not feel remotely where I thought I might be by 40, but also I’m not even sure what that sentence is really supposed to mean. I sort of skipped the whole settle down, buy a house, have a family thing. And I don’t regret it. But it often feels like I’m doin

So when I began my PhD journey, it was very important to me that, along with whatever academic outputs I managed, I wanted to create something that had the potential to impact the industry. It’s one thing to write a PhD thesis that like 10 people total might ever read about how care ethics and care aesthetics should influence the way risk management for participatory audiences is considered (riveting sentence, right?). And another to take the tools I’ve been learning throug

Two years? Ten? What if it was just a few minutes a day? …ok. This is starting to sound a little like those get-rich-quick Instagram digital marketing scams. And that’s not what I’m getting at. I’ve been thinking a little bit about the income from my blog the past week. I’ve been at this for 11 years. And I didn’t start with any delusions of getting rich. I just thought it would be nice if the blog made enough money to cover the expenses of running it – which have alway

Stage managing can be a difficult job to balance with anything else. The hours are long. You don’t always know exactly when you’ll be needed. And you may be nomadic – out on tours, cruise ships, or hopping contracts to where ever the next place is that might hire you. And early career stage management jobs might not be paying quite enough to cover all the bills and all the Starbucks you need to function like a human. Top tips for stage management side hustling: Asynchronous

I’d like to pause in our regular programming and take a minute today to talk with you about one of my favorite annual events that is happening this weekend. The Broadway Stage Management Symposium . This event is an incredible opportunity for stage managers at all stages in their careers. To this day, I am still flabbergasted that the awesome organizer of the event found my silly little blog and has invited me to be a little piece of this event since 2017. The symposium d

You might ask, what does it cost to get a PhD? And to answer this question, you might find a school you like, look up the tuition cost, multiply it by 4 (or 5 or 6 or 7 or…. sometimes the number of years a PhD may take can be unclear) and go, ah, a PhD will cost me $80k in tuition. Tuition is only one of the number to consider. And it’s probably the only one with a really clear calculation. And even that’s not clear. Most people are funded when they get a PhD. Or they ha

So I’m a little behind this year, but I thought we could do our bi-annual dig into the Stage Manager Survey Report . You might be wondering, what is the Stage Manager Survey Report. Run by David J., McGraw, the report has been happening since 2006 in an effort to better share info about the industry with other stage managers. As a recent graduate in 2006, I can confirm, there was not a huge stage management community at the time. There was the absolutely invaluable SMNetwor

On February 2 nd I crossed the two year/half way mark in my PhD program. So it seems like time write a reflection piece on year two of the whole process. Going into the whole thing, someone was telling me about the overall process and they warned me the second year is the worst. It’s like being lost in a forest. Fingers crossed that was accurate, since it was not great but it is now over. February 2023 I finished up last year’s post here, but to recap: I applied for some

I’ll admit that I don’t think LinkedIn is the main way to find jobs in the arts, but as someone who does some hiring, I would find it a little weird if someone didn’t have a LinkedIn. I also do some solid stalking of other stage managers career paths. I find folks doing the jobs I want to be doing and look at what they were doing a few steps before. So what to focus on when creating a LinkedIn profile. Let’s start simple. The first thing anyone sees is your profile photo a

So I’ve written a few times over the last year and a half about a side hustle I’ve been working on with two friends from college. We have written and published a spicy RPG game for couples very similar to fantasy RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. The Tavern of Conquests . The three of us were chatting and spitballing it was weird that such a thing didn’t exist because there did seem to be a market for it and then we thought, famous last words, how hard could it be to make this

It’s been a while since I wrote much stage management content, so today I thought we’d take a break from personal finance and I’d ramble a little bit about the absolutely insane dreams that sometimes accompany some shows. I recently worked a fairly high stress festival on minimal sleep for the week and I have found that this week, as I recover from that exhaustion, I can’t stop dreaming about work. I literally fall asleep and it feels like I’m back there in the booth, doing

**This is a sponsored post.** I am an early holiday shopper. I bought my first Christmas gift of the season in July and as I type this, I’m about half done with my 2023 Christmas shopping. So it doesn’t seem super crazy to me to think about holiday shopping in October. I like spreading the expense out over several months rather than one big hit in December. I also just really enjoy keeping an eye out for the right things for the main people I buy Christmas gifts for. And