Is Academia Beyond Repair and How Do I Find Grace for Myself in this System?
A small note from me:
This is a new format for this newsletter this week!
As I was nearing the middle of the week, the inbox for this newsletter was empty (full of all the other Substacks I love to read, but missing a letter to respond to). Rather than skipping a week, I thought I would give my Instagram community an opportunity to put a question on a story box rather than needing to write an entire letter. I chose two this week to answer below.
The DM feature on Substack is another place where you can submit a letter if you prefer that over email.
Thank you for participating so that this page can continue!
Question One: How to find grace for yourself during the PhD?
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I think an important shift of language to start with in this question is: “how to develop grace for yourself..”.
Self-compassion, grace, and patience, are not things found, but practices that are developed, refined, and integrated over time. When we are used to being hard on ourselves, or unkind in our own brains, the experience in our body of being graceful and self-compassionate with ourselves can feel unfamiliar and even scary or dangerous. This is why I think the question reframe is important because it’s not like discovering a TED Talk or seeing a productivity book on display at your favorite bookstore that hands over a key to suddenly being graceful; it’s not a finding in that way.
Building self-compassion and grace toward yourself is like building a muscle, it’s small repetitions over time. These reps shift it towards something you once had to think about and work on, to a state of being with yourself.
Start with one intentional change to incorporate over a week and at the end of the week, see if that improved or shifted anything for you. If you aren’t sure what one thing to do, below I share a few things I did during the PhD that you can try or you can explore self-compassion exercises online.
A few things that I did during the PhD that contributed to being self-compassionate and graceful:
I set an email signature that stated the following: I will take 2-3 days to reflect on an email before responding so I have time to consider and respond outside the culture of immediacy. Additionally, I added a line about understanding we are in a global world and therefore if my email finds them during a non-working hour to not prioritize a response over rest, joy, and play. These lines were and are important for my PhD journey (and beyond) because I let people know what expectations that they could have for me, and I also communicated my values. This made it easier for me to gracefully decline opportunities that manufactured urgency (a terrible habit of academia) and allowed me to be self-compassionate toward myself if emails piled up as I was working on the thesis or I was still deciding on the choice I would make.
I set timelines / deadlines for myself that accounted for the season (I typically noticed my productivity was nonexistent in the winter once the sun was down so I gave myself two days for what I would give myself one day for in spring). This meant I could cut off the negative self talk because I gave myself accurate timelines that reflected an honest evaluation on my productivity in that season. The grace came in realizing when I am responsible for my own timelines, I can adjust them in a way that works with myself rather than against myself. This in contrast to giving myself grace in asking for an extension (which is necessary sometimes, and that is its own practice).
I lived by ‘when I feel better, I do better’. This meant writing in bed on no-good-very-bad days. And switching from writing to reading new articles when the words were not coming. And working from cafes where I could have delicious flat whites to fuel my brainstorming sessions that need hustle & bustle. And taking two days off every week. And asking for help when I needed it. There isn’t a recipe, unfortunately, for being compassionate to yourself during the PhD journey, but I frequently asked myself a question in the morning: what is the most gentle and beautiful way I can get through my work today. And I did whatever that was - editing by hand in the botanical garden, taking a writing retreat in Cornwall, cooking an intricate meal while listening to research articles being read to me, writing in the Fitzwilliam museum cafe, etc. I would say more than anything, this question allowed me to center my humanity during my work days and that allowed me to stay graceful with myself during the ever changing needs and demands of the PhD.
Give those a try, or spend some time journaling or talking out loud to yourself about what small practice you can add to this upcoming week to build that muscle of graceful and self-compassionate behaviors.
Question Two: Is academia broken beyond repair? Do you see any hope for the future of the industry?
I am very hopeful. Not necessarily that academia will exist in the form it is in, but I am hopeful for the future of education.
It is not an ungrounded hope, it is a hope I have because I have seen the way people share their PhD journeys online and it is a hope I have because of the conversations I had in our faculty student research association and it is a hope because of the focus on accessibility and impact when it comes to sharing research. It is a hope I have because of the teenage clients’ I worked with as a therapist who were thoughtful and attentive and emotionally invested in crafting a better world for creating knowledge and sharing information.
I recently read Ruha Benjamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto and she lays out a really important truth to contend with: the world exists in the form it does because of the imagination of a select few people. And academia is no different.
The broken education systems, from primary to higher education, are the dreams and power grabs and imagination of only a select few.
I have hope that more people’s imaginations and dreams (informed by the beautiful and powerful science of learning, mental health, and the ever changing technological landscape) will make meaningful and powerful changes in academia.
Something that keeps me hopeful is that systems are made up of people. And people are paying attention to the way academia is broken, confusing, inaccessible, reinforcing hurtful structures, and stifling creativity.
I don’t think there will be any full system overhauls in the near future, but I do hope that the actions of many individuals who can influence and impact their immediate environment will have a reverberating impact. One classroom of people at a time, one seminar at a time, one conference at a time, etc. will introduce people to new ways of being in academia.
I am hopeful about that impact.
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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