Category Archives: academic life/work

academic life/work, failure, grieving, life skills

Embracing Mediocrity

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I usually aim to do the best I can but that does not mean I aim to be the best. Often the best I can do is mediocre, perhaps a C or C+, if anyone is grading. I am a good enough employee, a good enough researcher, a good enough neighbor, a good enough mother. I have a few moments or days here and there where I’m a really great mother or a fantastic professor, but that is not the norm for me.

I don’t say this to denigrate myself or fish for compliments. I’m not looking for anyone to argue with me and tell me no, I’m a fantastic mother and a kickass professor! I’m totally comfortable with my level of performance in these areas. I’m a good enough mother that my children trust me with matters I want to be trusted with. I’m a good enough professor that I don’t worry about students not learning what they need to learn.

One of the lessons grief has taught me is that being good enough is good enough. That sounds simple, but I spent a large chunk of my life aiming to be the best and feeling inadequate. As a recovering perfectionist, when I first started being serious about mediocrity, I wanted to be the best at mediocrity, to hit it hard. I’ve chilled out a lot over the years and learned that the real power of embracing mediocrity is in letting go of standards.

Once I shifted my goal to being good enough, I started feeling much better about myself. The really interesting thing is that my performance didn’t actually change. What changed was where I put my effort. When I stopped worrying about being the best professor, I had more energy left for my family, which made me a better mother and wife. When I stopped worrying about being the best wife ever, I had more energy left for myself, which made me a better wife.

About ten years ago, I started selecting at the beginning of each semester one category of my job to prioritize and allowing myself to be mediocre in the other categories. Some semesters I prioritized teaching, the writing center, service, or scholarship, and then the next semester I would prioritize a different category. Not once did anyone seem to notice that I was performing in a mediocre fashion. The semester I won a service award was a semester that I was not prioritizing service. Several times I’ve been nominated for a mentoring award, and frankly, I have never aimed to be anything but mediocre as a mentor.

When my husband had his stroke, I allowed myself to be mediocre at everything except taking care of him. Again, nobody seemed to notice. People did notice that I was doing less than I used to—serving on fewer committees, for example. But the quality of my work was good enough that nobody commented. My student evaluations remained consistent.

After my husband died, I stopped even aiming for mediocrity. People gave me grace. I gave myself grace. There was a year or so of teaching I don’t remember, but again, my student evaluations remained consistent. I recently heard from a student I had during that time who mentioned, unprompted by me, how he had applied some of what he’d learned in my class since then, and holy moly, he learned exactly what I wanted him to. Despite my exceedingly mediocre performance. Despite the fact that I don’t remember teaching him what he learned.

I have fully embraced mediocrity in most areas of my life now. I still get nominated for awards and occasionally win them. I don’t get nominated as often as I used to, but I don’t do anything I do for the recognition.

What I’ve learned is that allowing myself to be mediocre doesn’t mean I am mediocre. It just means I take the pressure off myself. Many writers know Anne Lamott’s advice to start with a shitty first draft. Removing the pressure to write something wonderful helps many writers get past writer’s block and actually produce something decent.

One of my favorite writing teachers, Diana Goetsch, says that writers should allow themselves to write something that might suck—but it also might smack of genius (she’s quoting someone with the “smack of genius” phrase but I can’t remember who).

By embracing mediocrity, I’ve taken a “shitty first draft” approach to nearly everything I do. I’m astonished at how often what I do ends up sort of smacking of genius. And often it doesn’t smack of genius, and that’s ok because my job in life isn’t to be a genius—it’s to be a good enough human. By just aiming to do the best I can and not to be The Best, I have more time and energy left for what matters.

academic life/work, anxiety, Buddhist life, failure, mental illness

Befriending Overwhelm

I spend a good part of my time at the intersection of Depression, Anxiety, and Grief. When overwhelm hits, which it often does, and a wave of panic rises up in my chest, I take a deep breath.

I find my Buddhist practice very helpful when I feel that panic. Panic makes me feel like I should be hurrying—doing something, anything, and fast! But Buddhists aren’t known for hurrying. When my impulse is to move fast, I consciously slow down. With each deep breath, my panic subsides a bit until it is manageable. Sometimes I have to go through the process of taking a deep breath and letting my panic subside multiple times in a day or even an hour. It’s ok, I tell myself, take your time.

I was at a conference last week that put me into overwhelm. I was surrounded by brilliant, energetic, competent people and I felt dull, slow, and outdated in their company. Each session I attended left me feeling more overwhelmed by the feeling that I could never perform my job the way they perform theirs.

For me, overwhelm is often quite sneaky and I don’t always recognize it for what it is. I often notice that I feel a heaviness I can’t quite identify for hours or even days before I realize, “Oh, I’m feeling overwhelmed!” Once I label the feeling, I say hello to it. Really—I say out loud, “Hello, Overwhelm, my old friend.” That may seem ridiculous, but greeting it as a friend helps me not react to it with fear.

Then I sit down with it as I would with a friend having a tough time. If possible, I do this over coffee or tea, just as I would with a friend. “What’s going on?” I ask it. Here’s how my conversation with Overwhelm went last week at the conference:

Me: What’s going on?

Overwhelm: Everyone here is doing such amazing things! I’m so far behind—how can I do cool things with antiracism and undergraduate research and STEM support and all the other things I need to do?????? And I’m behind on publishing and . . . It’s a hopeless situation.

Me, speaking to Overwhelm as I would to any friend: Hmmm. I wonder if being at an academic conference is kind of like scrolling through Facebook. Presenters are showing their best work, just as most people on Facebook are showing their best moments. Just as the happy family photos don’t tell the whole story of a person’s daily life, a brilliant conference presentation doesn’t tell the whole story of an academic’s work.

Overwhelm: Huh . . .

By that point, Overwhelm started to lose its energy.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. The next day I went to a session where I heard about an amazing and elaborate program that I would love to replicate. Afterwards, I was overwhelmed with thoughts that quickly led me to a downward spiral: I will never be able to replicate the program, but I should try, but I can’t ever do it like she did, I will fail, I suck . . . and I’m behind on email and . . .  So I took a deep breath. And another one. I’ve learned I must regulate my breathing before I can regulate my thoughts. Another deep breath.

“Hello again, Overwhelm,” I said in between deep breaths.

Once I was breathing in a non-panicked way, my thoughts were already a little more manageable. I wrote them all down in a list. All the thoughts went on the list: I’m behind on email, I have a report due in November, if I don’t stain the back fence before it gets cold it will rot away this winter, I will never be able to replicate the program I heard about, I suck . . .  Giving each thought its own line on the list gives it some space. It can exist. It is an ok thought. When all the thoughts were on the list, I gave one breath to each thought, taking the length of one complete breath, an inhale and an exhale, to acknowledge the thought and linger on it. Sometimes that lead to more thoughts, which went on the list.

Sometimes all the thoughts want is a little space to be acknowledged and then I can let them go. The thought that whatever I come up with will never be as great as what this other woman came up with was one I could easily let go of once I gave it a breath. No, what I do won’t be as great as what she did. I’m not in competition with this other person, who is at a different institution in a different state. OK. Good bye, thought.

Other thoughts are useful and become items on my to do list or bucket list. The report due in November and staining the back fence went on my to do list.

Thoughts like “I suck” just want space. I give that thought a breath and then cross it off my list. I know it’s not true in any meaningful way. I used to have to fact check those thoughts—do I suck? I’d ask. And then I’d write down the evidence for and against that verdict. There was always more evidence against the verdict. Now I don’t have to do the actual fact-checking, I just have to remind myself that I’ve held this trial many times before and always the verdict has been, no, you don’t really suck.

Buddhism tells me that any time I want to hang on to a thought, hold it in a tight grip, I should instead open my hand and give it space, let it float away if it wants to. It usually wants to float away. Thoughts that float away sometimes come back, but if I again loosen my grip on them, they float away again. Sometimes they float back and I let them float away several times a day for years and years. It’s ok. I can keep letting them float away. Once I learned how to let them float away, I began to trust that they will float away if/when they return.

Letting the thoughts float away doesn’t “cure” me of my grief, depression, or anxiety. All it does is make the overwhelm go away. And I’ll take that.

academic life/work, caregiving, grieving

Specific Actions to Change the Way Caregiving is Understood in (Academic) Workplaces

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I was both heartened and saddened by the responses I received to my last post on being a caregiver in academia. Many fellow academics and plenty of folks in other fields reached out to me to say that they, too, are caregivers and they wish that part of themselves didn’t have to be so compartmentalized. With that in mind, this post focuses on specific actions we can take to change the way caregiving is understood in academic (and other) workplaces.

Before I get to those recommendations, however, I want to mention a piece on caregiving that the New York Times published just a few days after my post: “The Costly, Painful, Lonely Burden of Care” by Mara Altman. Altman reports that the economic value of caregiving by family members is upward of $470 billion a year, and the bulk of this work is performed by women. This means that women are more likely to suffer the consequences I mentioned last week—stigmatization and professional isolation—as well as burnout, social isolation, financial consequences, and “negative health impacts.” Altman interviews Kate Washington, author of a new book on burnout, Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America, about these costs. I was particularly struck by a statement Washington made on how the economic value of all the free caregiving provided by mostly women is minimized:

There is a narrative that the caregiving work we do is invaluable and the gift of caring is its own reward, but the flip side of something being priceless is that you paradoxically strip it of all its value. It’s so valuable that we can’t put a monetary price on it, which then takes away the economic worth.

Mara Altman, “The Costly, Painful, Lonely Burden of Care”

Because we live in a neoliberal society, we are conditioned to devalue anything without economic worth. You would think that academics, of all people, because so much of the work we do we do for “free” (all that service!), would be sensitive to this, but no, neoliberalism is in the air we breathe and so we are conditioned to not notice these discrepancies.

Which brings me to those specific actions I want to focus on:

  1. Talk about caregiving in your normal voice. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter highlighted how normal caregiving is when she said, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” It is very likely that every one of us will be or need a caregiver in our lifetime. In other words, caregiving is normal, not strange or embarrassing or the result of poor choices. Acknowledge caregiving as a valuable activity. If you are not a caregiver, talk about it in your normal indoor voice rather than a hushed one. Every time you talk about caregiving in a hushed voice, you imply that it’s something that should be kept quiet. If you are a caregiver, and if it feels safe to you to do so, talk about caregiving the same way you talk about your other non-work activities. If the only time we mention that we are caregivers is when we need support, the idea that caregivers are needy drains on productivity is reinforced.
  2. Notice and label ableist tendencies that stigmatize caregiving. These tendencies include bragging about not taking leave, shaming folks who do take leave, and assuming that all time that is not accounted for by time-bounded work activities is “available.” When I catch myself doing these things, I find it helpful to identify the assumptions I’m working from and fact check them, so I might say to myself, “Seeing that colleague as lazy for taking so much leave assumes they don’t work hard when they are not on leave. Is that true?”
  3. Connect with others who are caregivers in academia. This is tough because, as I said last week, we don’t talk about caregiving in academia and folks without tenure and others in vulnerable positions may feel the risk involved in making the caregiver part of their identity visible is too much. When those of us who do have job security and other privilege make the caregiver part of our identity visible, we make it easier for others with less privilege to do it. I’ve added the word caregiver to my twitter profile and website tagline to make that part of my identity more visible and make it easier for other caregivers to find me.
  4. Create workplaces that support caregivers. One of the simplest yet most powerful ways to support caregivers is to talk about caregiving. As I said last week, when we don’t talk about caregiving, it becomes harder to talk about caregiving. The opposite of that is also true: when we talk about caregiving, it becomes easier to talk about caregiving. When it’s easier to talk about caregiving, it’s also easier to identify caregivers in the workplace, and it’s easier for them to ask for the support they need. For faculty, one of the most challenging forms of support we need is teaching coverage; when I became a caregiver, a colleague who is herself a caregiver told me she was available to cover my classes if I needed it. When such a program doesn’t exist, the free labor of caregiving leads to the free labor of kind colleagues who are willing to cover classes. All that free labor tends to be women’s free labor. A formal program to make teaching coverage available to those who need it would go a long way toward supporting caregivers and closing an equity gap in academia.
academic life/work, grieving

Being a Caregiver in Academia: Stigma, Loneliness, & Silence

The Caregiver Action Network estimates that 29% of the U.S. population fulfil caregiver roles, spending about 20 hours/week taking care of a chronically ill, disabled, or aging person. That care can include bathing and grooming, dressing, toileting, preparing meals, feeding, housekeeping, managing medications, transporting, accompanying to appointments, functioning as a de facto physical/occupational/speech therapist, advocating, and more. The person may be a child, parent, spouse, or friend. The work can be exhausting and never ending, and/but it is absolutely crucial for the wellbeing of the person being cared for.

Given that 29% of the U.S. population is involved in caregiving, I very likely have many colleagues in academia who are caregivers. I know of only two. We don’t talk about this. We talk about our kids’ accomplishments, our travels, what we’ve read lately . . . but we don’t talk about caregiving. When I look for academics writing about caregiving, I find scholarly research about caregiving and caregivers, but when I try to find blogs and other personal, informal writing about being both an academic and a caregiver, I come up empty. The closest thing I have found is this story about Harvard professor Dr. Arthur Kleinman’s experience being his wife’s caregiver.

As with many things, when we don’t talk about being a caregiver, we have a hard time talking about being a caregiver. In other words, the very fact that caregiving isn’t spoken of much in academia beyond it being the subject of scholarly research is itself a barrier to talking about caregiving. Because, as Jay Dolmage has so eloquently explained, “disability has always been constructed as the inverse or opposite of higher education,” talking about being a caregiver means identifying oneself as being engaged in activities that are stigmatized in academia. Dolmage charges that “the ethic of higher education still encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual (or physical) weakness.”  

I shared a story last week about a colleague who took pride in the fact that she hadn’t taken any leave when her mother was in hospice. That colleague was her mother’s caregiver, but didn’t talk about being her mother’s caregiver except to brag that she hadn’t missed work while caregiving. When we brag that we didn’t take leave days to be a caregiver, we perpetuate the idea that caregiving is not a legitimate reason to take leave, which makes it harder (for ourselves and others) to take leave days to be a caregiver.  When we do take leave days for caregiving, we may be reluctant to talk about it, perpetuating the silence around caregiving in academia and further isolating academics who are caregivers.

There are aspects of academia that would seem to lend themselves well to being a caregiver. For example, I have always noted the flexibility of my schedule as an aspect of being an academic that I appreciate. Theoretically, I should be able to easily fit in the hours spent taking care of my husband around the few responsibilities I have as a professor that are time-sensitive. More and more, however, I’ve been noticing how that flexibility is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I often have some say over when I teach and can schedule research, service, and “life,” including caregiving, around classes and office hours as I see fit; on the other hand, I can be seen as on-call during all the times I don’t teach. As a particularly egregious example of this “being on call” mentality, earlier this semester, my entire department was told by the dean and provost that we needed to be available for 60 hours of Friday meetings during the semester and that because none of us taught on Fridays, they knew we were “available.” This assumes that all time not spent teaching is “available” to the University.

Like many caregivers, I find my husband’s needs highly unpredictable. Many of his needs can be scheduled, such as dressing and bathing him. But there are many random things that come up—his left arm, which is paralyzed, may get caught in between the rungs of a chair; he may need something that is out of reach even with his grabber tool; one of our dogs may snag his lunch from his left side, which he is unaware of because of his left neglect, and he suddenly discovers that his food is gone—that I cannot predict. On the other hand, there are times he can go four or five hours without needing me. The unpredictability of his needs can mean that my calendar appears to be open for meetings and other work, but I will not, in actuality, be able to attend a meeting from beginning to end.

The stigmatizing of caregiving and the on-call mentality are both markers of ableism in academia. Ableism assumes that everyone is able-bodied, that disability is a sign of inferiority, and that illness is a result of poor choices. When my calendar appears open but I am in and out of a remote meeting, the assumptions of ableism encourage my colleagues to see my sporadic attendance as a sign of poor planning or unprofessionalism. When I talk about being a caregiver, the lack of familiarity with how to navigate a conversation about caregiving can lead to colleagues being hesitant to even ask me how I’m doing. I recently learned that several colleagues had asked another colleague how I was doing; when she suggested they ask me directly, they indicated that that was too awkward. Ironically, given that nearly 1/3 of the U.S. population is involved in caregiving, it’s likely that one of those colleagues is themselves a caregiver.

I wish I knew who they were, but we don’t talk about these things.

academic life/work, grieving

Taking (or Not Taking) Leave in Academia

I want to start with a few stories about taking leave in academia:

Story #1: When I was an adjunct instructor, teaching 6-8 composition courses a semester at two different community colleges to make a living, I had a stroke. My doctors told me to take six weeks off and that I would probably recover slowly over the next year. Luckily I had health insurance, which covered the bulk of my medical expenses, but I was in a panic about how I would earn a living.

When I called the department chair at one of the colleges to let her know about my situation, and before I had mentioned how long my doctor said I would be unable to work, she mused out loud, “I suppose we’ll need to replace you if you’ll be gone more than a couple of weeks.” I immediately assured her I’d be back in two weeks. I needed that job and couldn’t take a chance that they’d replace me for that semester and beyond. My first day back at work, my then-husband accompanied me, holding me up when I couldn’t stand on my own, helping me keep track of time and conversations, which was still challenging for me, and carrying my teaching materials.

Story #2: A few years ago, a colleague on my campus proudly told me that she hadn’t taken a single day of leave when she had cancer or when her own other was dying in hospice. When she told me this, she was chair of her department and expressed frustration that the faculty in her department took leave for every cold and minor illness.

Story #3: When my husband had his stroke in June 2020, I became his caregiver. As a full professor, I have health insurance, access to FMLA job protection, and enough sick and annual leave saved up that I can comfortably take time off from work to care for him without my pay being reduced. Avoiding a pay reduction is important because since his stroke, he’s been unable to work and while disability might be approved for him sometime soon, it hasn’t been yet (we applied in September!), and even if/when it is approved, it will only make up a portion of his lost salary. Since August, I have taken about 6-10 hours/week off from work, with complete support and understanding from my supervisors (as a faculty member with administrative duties outside my department, I have two supervisors: a department chair supervises me in my faculty role and an AVP supervises me in my administrative role). The only sticky point came when my department chair expressed concern that there was no department policy allowing me to reduce my service commitments in the department without it being potentially held against me at my next review. Because I’m already a full professor and have overdone service historically, I’m comfortable taking my chances on having a semester with a lighter service load.

These three stories show how deeply embedded ableism is in policies and practices around faculty leave. When I had a stroke as an adjunct instructor, financial insecurity made me feel the need to place my chair’s concern about having to find another instructor to teach my classes ahead of my own doctors’ advice for my recovery. Going back to work two weeks after my own stroke was dangerous and stressful, but it felt less dangerous and stressful than potentially losing my job. It’s impossible to say what impact going back to work so quickly had on my recovery; I do know that once the idea was put in my head that I would be replaced if I missed too many classes, I never cancelled a class, regardless of how ill or contagious I was.

I’m sure that when my chair mused out loud about having to replace me, she was thinking about students needing to be taught. However, the assumption that an adjunct instructor will not get sick or need time off relies on the idea that being sick or needing time off is not normal. In fact, in this particular situation, it was viewed as cause for being dismissed.

I have a colleague in a non-tenure track full-time teaching position who is a caregiver for a loved one; she does not have the same access to paid leave that I have. She and I are both full-time faculty and we are both caregivers; I can take 6-10 hours/week of leave to care for my husband without taking a pay decrease but she cannot. Why should we have different access to leave when we essentially do the same job? Why does my institution view it as more normal for me to need time off than for her?

Now that I do have access to leave, I’m able to make decisions about taking sick days for myself or to care for my husband without the added stress of worrying about how our finances will be impacted. Without leave, I would quite possibly become resentful about the high level of care my husband needs, or I would be regularly stretched too thin to be a good caregiver or a good professor. As it is, even with leave, I have had moments of burnout. Even with leave, I am judicious about taking it, and I typically bring work with me to my husband’s appointments so I can respond to student papers or plan a class in the few minutes between arriving at an appointment and being called in to see the doctor. I’m still aware that even with leave, there’s a perception at my institution that “good” employees don’t take leave.

This is exactly the attitude that was expressed by my colleague when she bragged that she hadn’t taken leave during her own or her mother’s health crises. She shared that story to highlight her devotion to her job and her professionalism, which she contrasted with the “less professional” attitudes of the faculty in her department who did take days off when they were ill. She did not express compassion for people who got ill, but rather, found fault with them. This is a class ableist thought: people who do not have ideal health are not as worthy as people who do or people who can pass as if they do. My colleague, remember, did not have ideal health and neither did her mother, but she worked hard to pass as if she and her mother did.

In an ableist model, getting ill or taking leave are framed as shameful, unprofessional, indicative of a lack of commitment to a job.

Even in the third story, which is a much happier story than the other two, there is the sticky point about whether a reduced service load while on leave can be negotiated. I am able to take leave, but the expectations for my service are not changed by me working less. In other words, I am still expected to do 100% of my service work, but in less time. Because of the privilege afforded me by being a full professor, I am not particularly worried about repercussions in my next review, but someone without tenure or someone hoping for a promotion would rightly worry.

In this situation, the ableist assumption seems to be something along the lines of, “We’re already giving you time off, now don’t put an unfair burden on your able-bodied colleagues by slacking on service.”

How do we change the culture around faculty leave? Here are my ideas:

  1. Fight for all employees to have access to paid leave. Yes, even adjunct instructors. Start from the assumption that people will get sick rather than from the assumption that they won’t.
  2. If you have access to leave, take it when you need it. The more normalized it becomes for people to take leave, the more normalized it becomes for people to take leave.
  3. When colleagues take leave, be supportive. Don’t question whether they “really” need the leave; assume that they do.
  4. Work to change retention, promotion, tenure, and other review policies to account for employees taking leave. Don’t treat the situation in which a colleague takes leave as an anomaly; plan for it.
academic life/work

Privilege and Saying No

I want to continue my series on saying no in academia by addressing the role that privilege plays in saying no and supporting others who say no.

I have a ton of privilege in academia:

  • I’m white, which means I am never asked, by virtue of my skin color, to represent an entire race of people. I look like the prototypical female academic.
  • I’m a native White English speaker, which means the English I grew up speaking and writing is the English of academia. How lucky for me!
  • I’m tenured, which means my job is safe even if I am perceived as difficult or not a team player.
  • I’m a Full Professor, which means I never have to go through the promotion process again at my institution, so as with being tenured, there are very few material consequences for me if I am perceived as difficult.

All of this means that I don’t have much to lose when I say no to a service request. The decisions I make about how much time and energy to put toward service requests are relatively low stakes for me, and I can make those decisions largely without worrying about how senior colleagues, the chair, the dean, and the provost will judge me. If they judge me negatively because of the decisions I make, I may have to deal with the emotional labor of navigating workplace conflict, and I don’t want to minimize that because it is exhausting, but there is very unlikely to be any significant material impact on my career.

Before I had tenure, I felt pressured to take on every service “opportunity” that was offered to me. A number of factors contributed to that pressure:

  • I was typically invited to participate in service by someone who would ultimately have a say in my tenure bid: a senior colleague, the chair, the dean, or the provost. I was afraid that if I said no, they would vote against me when I went up for tenure.
  • Service was generally presented by these people as a “great opportunity” for me, and I had yet to understand what a load of bullshit that usually is. I trusted that these people had my best career interests in mind. Yes, I was naïve enough to believe that others genuinely wanted me to succeed and would only bring me opportunities they truly thought would help my tenure bid. Just writing that sentence feels absurd, but it is what I thought was true.
  • Because the standard for service work in place when I went up for tenure was very vague, I always felt it was possible for someone to look at my service record and find it lacking. What exactly is “significant service” or “leadership”? If what counts as enough isn’t defined clearly, someone who doesn’t like you can always interpret your record as lacking.

Once I had tenure, I immediately felt the weight of these factors lift. I knew I would still have to go up for promotion and be judged, but I figured that if the service I had done pre-tenure was deemed “enough,” then I could just maintain my current service load and not go beyond it. I’ve talked to many others who had the same experience, and I see regularly that once faculty get tenure, their service work becomes much more focused on what they are actually invested in.

That lifting of pressure to say yes that I felt when I got tenure will NEVER be felt by faculty who aren’t in tenure lines. This means adjunct faculty and folks in non-tenure lines will ALWAYS feel those very real pressures to say yes. For folks whose jobs are up for renewal every semester or every year or every few years, the worry that being perceived as uncooperative or not a team-player could cost them their livelihood NEVER goes away.

I am still asked to do more service than I suspect my male colleagues are—for more on this, see my post, “On Having to Say No Over and Over”—but because of my privilege, I am able to say no without ever worrying that my job is in jeopardy. This is why I feel strongly that those of us with privilege must actively create conditions that protect our colleagues with less privilege from being exploited through service requests.

Unfortunately, I witness many senior faculty taking the attitude that because they were terribly exploited as junior faculty or adjuncts, everyone should have to go through that. I actually was in a meeting one time, before I had tenure, in which a senior colleague said, “Adjunct faculty are used to getting the shaft. Why should we change that?,” as if “giving a colleague the shaft” is a normal, reasonable thing to do in a professional setting. Others in the room laughed at the comment, and when I told the chair about it, they, too, laughed.

I have another colleague who calls this attitude part of the “academic cycle of abuse.” We replicate for others below us the conditions we experienced ourselves. If we had to do ridiculous amounts of service with little or no reward, then damn it, others should, too. It becomes normalized.

I believe those of us with privilege must break this cycle of abuse. I talked in my last post about supporting folks when they say no, but to really break the cycle of abuse, we need to understand that faculty in precarious positions may not ever say no because of the pressures I mentioned above. To break the cycle of abuse then we need to go beyond supporting folks who say no by actually creating fewer “opportunities” for service. There is so much busy work in academia—it doesn’t really all need to get done, and of the work that does need to get done, it doesn’t all need to get done now. With the U.S. facing both a pandemic and a rebellion, perhaps Fall 2020 is the perfect time to re-evaluate priorities and suspend all service that doesn’t actually have to be done during the fall. At my institution, tenure clocks are being paused and sabbaticals are being delayed—it seems perfectly reasonable to me that non-essential service could also be suspended. That would give us an opportunity to think more deliberately about what actually needs to be done and by whom.

We need to think carefully about how our actions shape academic workplaces for others. Exploiting junior faculty will not lessen any exploitation we experienced. Do we want to work in an abusive environment? If not, then if our privilege allows it, we must not engage in abusive practices, be accountable when we do engage in abusive practices, and actively work to end abusive practices for all of our colleagues.

academic life/work

Support Others in Protecting Their Time

At the end of my last post, “The Lie of the Great Service Opportunity,” I listed a few things folks with tenure (or in other positions of relative privilege) can do to push back on the culture of defaulting to yes when it comes to service work. In this post, I want to expand on what we can do to support our colleagues who say no (or would say no if they felt that there was support for such a thing).

If we want a culture in which we feel supported in protecting our own time and energy, then we need to help build that culture by supporting others in protecting their time and energy. There are many subtle ways we undermine people who say no. Sometimes we undermine through what we say to the person saying no:

  • “Are you sure?” This implies that the no-er is making an error in judgment to pass up this opportunity, and implies that the speaker’s judgment (that the no-er should do the thing) is superior to the no-er’s judgment. This is an attempt to make the no-er second-guess their decision.
  • “It won’t take long.” This oversimplifies service to being only about time. In fact, even a service task that can be done quickly increases cognitive load and requires both emotional and intellectual labor. The time involved is only part of the equation.
  • “I trust you to do a good job.” This approach strokes the ego of the no-er, making them feel valuable, appreciated, and special. But there are ways to feel valuable, appreciated, and special through activities that are more recognized as capital in academia, such as scholarship.
  • “If you don’t do it, it might fall to so-and-so.” This is the more sinister cousin of the previous approach. It combines the ego-boosting of the previous approach with a dose of paranoia and tries to put responsibility on the no-er for the potential damage so-and-so might do. But corralling so-and-so is not the no-er’s responsibility.
  • “Why can’t you do this?” This approach challenges the no-er’s notion that they have a right to control how they spend their time and energy. No-ers don’t need to answer this question but often feel compelled to because of its open-endedness.
  • “We could really benefit from your perspective.” This is usually said to a no-er of color who is being pressured to join a committee of all white folks, or it could be said to a no-er with a disability being pressured to join a committee on accessibility that is currently populated by all able-bodied folks. This approach implies that people of color or people with disabilities have a special responsibility—and therefore, extra workload—to diversify campuses.

And sometimes we undermine through what we say about the person saying no:

  • “She’s not a team player.”
  • “She’s selfish.”
  • “She only does things that benefit her.”

The no-er cannot control what others say behind her back. The only people who can control that are the people saying those things, so I will now turn my attention to what we can say in support of people saying no—and supporting people saying no is one key way to create a culture in which it is safe to say no, which benefits all of us:

What to say to someone who said no:

  • “I admire you for setting healthy boundaries.”
  • “Thank you for modeling good self care.”
  • “I appreciate that you considered my request. Thank you.”
  • “This sounds like a good decision for you.”

What to say about someone who said no:

  • “It takes a lot of strength to say no in academia. I admire that she did that.”
  • “I wish more people set clear boundaries like that.”
  • “I want to be more like her!”

Finally, focus any anger you feel about someone saying no away from the no-er and toward the institutionalized patriarchy, racism, and ableism that encourage faculty to undervalue their own time and energy. With COVID-19’s catastrophic impacts on already strained higher education funding, I fear we will be asked to do more service than ever at the same time we are facing salary cuts and furloughs. Our faculty colleagues who say no are not the problem. The expectation that faculty should take on inhumane workloads is a problem; continued underfunding of education is a problem; institutionalized patriarchy, racism, and ableism are problems.

academic life/work, life skills

On Having to Say No Over and Over

I talk to students, colleagues, employees in the Writing Center, and others in academia constantly about the importance of saying no. Just like in other realms, women in academia are regularly asked to take on more service work than men and more work that isn’t even recognized as work, like organizing a potluck or cleaning out the break room fridge. And doing that work is actually held against women, who are then seen as being unable to prioritize and set boundaries or making poor choices about how to spend their time.

As aspect of saying no that many people overlook is that you often have to say it over and over, even to the same request. This makes really saying no tough, because you have to first work up the nerve to say no, and then you have to keep saying no as the request is made repeatedly and you are given “opportunities” to reconsider your answer.

This is exactly what happened to me this year. I had to say no adamantly FOUR times around one service request:

First No: Last summer, as I was trying to decide if I should run for treasurer of a national organization, I had a conversation with my chair about the time and energy it would take and asked her if it would be possible for me to take on no new service commitments in the department if I became treasurer. I already serve on several department and university-level committees and am co-editor of my institution’s UR journal, so I want to be clear that I wasn’t getting a pass on service—just a commitment to not have anything new added. She gave me her assurance that my request was reasonable and that it would be honored.

I did ultimately become treasurer of the organization.

Second No: Fast forward to November. A high workload departmental committee I am on had a leadership vacuum and without any conversation with me, my department chair emailed the entire committee announcing that I would be co-chairing it. I immediately emailed her, reminding her of our summer conversation and plainly stating that I could not co-chair the committee. To her credit, she admitted she had forgotten about our summer conversation and appointed someone else.

Third No: January. That same high workload committee experienced another leadership vacuum and a faculty member who works closely with the chair came to me and asked why I couldn’t chair the committee. When I said that I simply couldn’t, she said, “Well, if you don’t do it, I’ll have to ask [male colleague], and he’s already so busy.”

Fourth No: Later January. Said male colleague asked me if I was certain I couldn’t chair the committee. I assured him I was.

So that’s four NOs, all around the same request. I want to highlight a few details:

  • With the second no, I wasn’t even asked if I would take on the role and so saying no meant having to deal with the emotional labor of knowing I was putting the chair in the awkward position of having to rescind a decision and inviting questions from others about why I was announced as a co-chair and then announced as not being a co-chair. Saying no often means feeling like you’re putting others in a bad position. The reality is that the chair put herself in a bad position by not talking to me first.
  • With the third no, note that my colleague was concerned about overworking a male colleague but expressed no such concern about overworking me. This plainly shows how gendered expectations are about service. Saying no often means pushing against gendered expectations.
  • Also with the third no, note that my colleague asked me why I couldn’t do it, which is actually none of her business, but it’s a trick people use to chisel away at boundaries. Questioning why you can’t do something challenges your notion that you have a right to control how you spend your time and energy.

Saying no is exhausting, but it must be done. Every time I say no, I am normalizing women saying no.

academic life/work

The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies is here!

I got my copy of The Naylor Report on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies last week. A group of 43 UR mentors authored the text in less than a year and the resulting book is, I think, simultaneously visionary and pragmatic. I hope WPAs, writing center directors, English and writing department chairs, UR directors, and others in academia will read it, debate it, and use it to further their engagement with UR in writing studies.

My work as a mentor of students engaged in UR has been some of the most rewarding of my career. In this work, I usually begin by working side-by-side with an undergraduate, working collaboratively with them to formulate research questions, decide on research methods and methodologies, and go through the IRB process. I step back as they collect data, and then I teach them how to code and interpret the data. I act mostly as a sounding board as they work to make sense of their data. I then typically find myself in the audience as they present their work at a conference, joining along with others to recognize their achievement as scholars and knowledge contributors. Work done by undergraduates I have mentored has, in turn, influenced my own work as a scholar, teacher, and writing center director. For example, research conducted by Aubrey Baucum, Rachel Livingston, Harrison Murray, and Sierra Rakes about microaggressions in the MSU Denver Writing Center pushed me toward understanding the Writing Center I direct as a brave space rather than a safe one. Research conducted by Mateo Candelaria on power hierarchies in writing centers continues to inform my pedagogy and raise my awareness of my own performances of power at work.

My contribution to the book, “Undergraduate Research and Labor Practices in Writing Studies,” focuses on how many current models for UR in writing studies depend upon exploited labor, which limits both the experiences available to students engaging in UR and knowledge production in writing studies.

 

academic life/work

“storing my grain in the belly of my neighbor” as citizen, tenured faculty, & writing center director

I watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk, “It’s OK to Feel Overwhelmed. Here’s What to Do Next” this past weekend and found many useful reframings of the current situation and inspiring thoughts and advice. At the same time, I was troubled by how white it was, by virtue of it being the thoughts of a wealthy white woman, sitting in her beautiful home without having to worry about paying rent or entertaining/homeschooling children. Gilbert explicitly acknowledges her privilege, pointing out that she’s in a lucky position. I am not taking issue with her at all, or even with any of her advice; I’m just acknowledging that yeah, she is a privileged white woman giving advice that resonated with me, in part because, I, too, am a privileged white woman, and that I’m very uncomfortable with that.

And I think that acknowledging my privilege must also mean living with that discomfort, taking it on actively, inviting it to live in the foreground of my thinking rather than allowing it to recede into the background. This is different from feeling bad about it. Feeling bad about it doesn’t help anyone. Inviting it in lets me use it to guide my decision-making in a deliberate way. Here’s what that looked like today.

I begin each morning by reading that day’s entry in the Dalai Lama’s The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom. The entry for today is

All the problems that every individual meets with in everyday life—famine, unemployment, delinquency, insecurity, psychological deviancy, various epidemics, drugs, madness, despair, terrorism—all that is bound up with the widening gap between people, which, needless to say, can also be found inside the rich countries.

Our ancient experience confirms it at every instant: everything is linked together, everything is inseparable. Consequently the gap has to be reduced.

With Gilbert’s talk on my mind, this entry reminded me of an Indian saying she highlights: “I store my grain in the belly of my neighbor.” Gilbert explains

Western, capitalistic society has taught and trained us to hoard long before this, long before this happened and people were hoarding toilet paper and canned goods. Advertising and the whole capitalist model has taught us scarcity, it’s taught us that you have to be surrounded by abundance in order to safe. The disconnect between those who have and those who have not has never been bigger, and never in my lifetime, and probably in any of our lifetimes, has there been an invitation, again, to release the stranglehold on your hoarding. This is not the time for hoarding. This is the time to store your grain in the belly of your neighbor, in a way that is emotionally sober and accurate to what you can give, and to look at that in a really honest way, to not put your own family in danger, to not put yourself in crisis, but to be able to say, “What can I offer in the immediacy?” And then, in the longer term, a conversation about redistribution of resources, and why do so few have so much and why do so many have so little?

As a financially secure citizen, “storing my grain in the belly of my neighbor” at this moment means making a donation to MSU Denver’s Student Emergency Fund, which is available to undocumented students, something very important to me given that Betsy DeVos has specified that undocumented students cannot get federal emergency aid.

As a tenured full professor with white privilege, it means advocating for colleagues in contingent positions. Today specifically it meant emailing one adjunct instructor to ask how they are doing and how I can support them. In the longer term it means continuing to speak out against inequitable labor conditions and exploring funding a professional development program for first year writing instructors on my campus.

As a writing center director, it means forming collaborations with other offices on campus to pool funding rather than compete for funding. Gilbert mentions “unleash[ing] the white-knuckled grip that I have on what’s mine and make sure that I’m going into the world with an open hand.” The next fiscal year is predicted to be quite grim, and I suspect I will want to cling to whatever bit of funding the writing center gets. I want to resist that urge and look for ways to share our funding with other campus offices.