Letter Thirty-Eight: Dear Academics in Suspended Adolescence

The life of an academic, whether you are in a liberal arts subject, medicine, or beyond, is rife with rejections, being underpaid, cruel comments disguised as feedback, a manufactured sense of urgency, and an instability for funding, for courses, for tenure, for location.

I can’t say those conditions bring out the best in anyone.

In fact, one could say, those are conditions that activate people’s fight/flight/freeze systems and color the world as less safe and the people around them as more dangerous. And what happens when people don’t feel safe and the world feels dangerous? The answer is certainly not know how to navigate relationships, power, and repair with a sense of maturity, kindness, and accountabilit

Letter Thirty-Six: Dear What if My Mental Illness is What Makes Me a Great Academic?

I think both you and these artists were resourceful and creative, finding ways to get connection and encouragement from the world around you through your external accomplishments. You through a publication record and them through the showing or purchasing of their art.

Letter Thirty-Two: Dear To Share or Not to Share a Mental Breakdown

Thank you for taking care of yourself and getting the support you need; it matters that you’re alive and here to write this down.

I think what’s most important about the decision to share or not to share is about what would be helpful to you and what your boundaries are.

Because it isn’t the case of you ‘have’ to tell everyone everything or you tell them nothing at all.

There’s lots of choices in between those two things.

Letter Thirty-One: Dear Please Help with Embarrassment

Embarrassment is considered a complex emotion, meaning its root emotion is one of the major five: happy, sad, anger, disgust, and fear (otherwise known as the characters from the first Inside Out).

Which I think allows us to consider something important here: what feelings were also present while you practiced your symposium work.

Letter Thirty: Dear Is Academia for Extroverts?

Which leads me to say, maybe academia was never set up for extroverts. That it wasn’t designed with folks in mind who feel energized with collaboration, processing aloud, connecting over information and exchange of ideas, or otherwise “peopleing” in their day-to-day activities.

Letter Sixteen: Dear Dissatisfied and Tired

Particularly in the space of academia where there’s always another degree or position or grant or one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share your work to strive towards, I think celebrating is one of the most crucial things to do. It forces you to stop and take a clearer look at all the work that you have done and recognize it as worth honoring. To acknowledge all the energy and effort that brought you to completing a masters.

Which brings me to, of course you’re tired! How very human of you to be exhausted at the end of years of learning, researching, and writing a comprehensive piece of original work!!! (Emphasis for normalizing, not for yelling or judgement). It makes all the sense in the world to me.

Letter Fifteen: Dear (an Instagram Questions Installment)

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.