People have been asking whether AWS offers a summer program. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what that should be—something that offers real, concrete support, for not too much money, in ways that mesh well with scholars’ particular needs in the summer. We didn’t want to create a new program if it didn’t feel just right, and we almost didn’t do it.
But now we think we’ve found it:
6 weeks for $600. You pick the weeks.
How it works:
- You fill out the application form, which will be available here starting Friday, May 31.
- Not sure about the fit? Contact us for a consult.
- On the application form, you choose your 6 weeks. They can be consecutive or not!
- At the start of your first week, we set you up on our Slack Academic Writers Studio workspace. This gives you access to an online group of scholars with similar projects, deadlines, and challenges.
- You’ll also have access to writing and coaching pros. We’re available in several ways:
- You’re guaranteed 3 hours of 1:1 time, or 30 minutes/week. You can use that for editing, coaching, or whatever you’d like. (If you need to secure more dedicated 1:1 time, you get a discounted Studio Scholar hourly rate.)
- We’re also available during daily or near-daily office hours on a first-come, first-served basis.
- We’re also always only a Slack message away.
- We can do things like check in with you every day, or if we haven’t heard from you in a few days; or create customized micro-assignments to increase accountability and keep your project from fizzling out if you can’t get to it for a couple of weeks.
- This setup is basically a shorter-term version of our year-long program (described here). The differences—other than it being shorter-term, which is a huge difference in obvious and non-obvious ways—are that (1) you won’t have access to as many different channels/writing groups in the Slack workspace (this is an issue of infrastructure and maintaining the integrity of our existing group) and (2) we compensate for that by giving you extra 1:1 time.
- Like our full-year program, our summer program is all about customized support. We are expecting to bring on perhaps 5 or even 10 Summer Scholars, and we will not accept more than 20. This is a program for feeling like there are people who really have your back and will help you with Plans A, B, and however many more you might need.
Why we’re especially excited about this structure:
- Most academics have a big backlog of work to get done during the summer. You start off thinking you have a lot of time and then summer plans start happening and suddenly one day you realize you have a week here and there, plus maybe a longer stretch or two, and not much else.
- Six weeks is actually about how much time many folks have. And if you don’t have six weeks, you might need to find some time during a couple additional weeks.
- You can in fact get a lot done during short pockets of time during the summer, but it’s extra hard and it’s easy to get discouraged. Other things have a way of leaking into scholarship time. We can help you push back against that.
- With this setup, you’re paying for time you’re using—and not paying for time you’re not using. That way, you can chill out and recharge guilt-free during off weeks, but feel like you need to be getting your money’s worth and making it happen during the on weeks.
Summer’s here. You’ve probably got some get-up-and-go about your research goals … and a nagging fear that you won’t get to it … or that you’ll get to it, but only by sacrificing all of your leisure time. Let’s get that taken care of.
