Month: February 2016

28 February 2016 by Lisa Meloncon

A week or so back I posted a link on Facebook to an short Chronicle piece my friend Scott Warnock wrote. It’s a quick read, but the gist of it is exactly what the headline tag line says, “no one, it seemed, wanted to talk publicly about work-life balance.”

Then there was this piece from an academic in the UK who walked away because of the combination of work and life. And then there were these suggestions that I posted  on how to feel less busy (thanks to my great friend, Agata,  for the heads up).

It was interesting too that this image has also made the rounds. Simply replace change “grad school” to “grad school and faculty life” and swap out “clinical skills” for “service,” and you probably have a visual depiction of how many of us feel at different times.

That’s something we want to change. One of the goals of #womeninTC is to talk about things out loud and publicly and to make aspects of our jobs visible. (Public here can take on a number guises because we understand some things shouldn’t ever be “public.”) This publicness and visibility is meant to shift how we do our work and to help one another do it.

And most importantly, the ultimate goal is to achieve a good balance. We’ve had discussions on the steering committee that calling it a work-life balance isn’t an accurate depiction of it. Work and life are often intertwined in such a way that there is no way to differentiate it. By trying to make them too separate it seems to make them at odds with one another even more, as if you have to choose one or the other. The key is simply to balance the different aspects of our lives better.

It’s not easy juggling everything and figuring out when and where to put your time. One of the challenges of this job is that it can dramatically shift from week to week (or even day to day) what one needs to focus on or put her energy toward. That’s a challenge with no easy solutions. Here are three that seem to be the most important.

A recent Mentor Monday discussion was around different ways to organize our lives. (This is the link to the storify of those suggestions.) Organizing is the first, and best, step to achieving balance.

I would suggest that the second step is to be consciously reflective. Take the time each morning and make an accurate assessment of what needs to be done. Included in this conscious reflection is reminding ourselves of something that is positive. This job is often about the negative so it’s equally important to reaffirm the positive things going on in your life.

It’s important to keep the parts of your job that you find to be the most unbalanced (the parts the seem to consistently ooze over into everything else and bring you down) in perspective. By that I mean, recognize that a particularly busy time will pass or that it is possible some of the things that may be really bothering you aren’t as big or as important as you may think. Reaching out to folks you trust to talk through these things that really seem to be overwhelming you is always a good idea!

Finally, we have to stop the culture of overproduction (and too busy syndrome). That’s where we get ourselves into the most trouble because we feel have to say yes to everything. You don’t. We don’t. Say, yes, to you instead.

There are no easy solutions to finding balance. It starts with talking out loud and bringing to the forefront the idea it’s ok—it really is—to have a life outside of our academic jobs. Talking about balance shouldn’t be a lonely table and behind closed doors. So this me talking about it out loud. If you want to talk more go on over to Slack or Twitter or anywhere and let’s talk about it.

Now, go on out there and enjoy the day. Do something fun!

 

 

 

1 February 2016 by Lisa Meloncon

There have been a number of converging factors that have led me to this blog topic. The particular stories that are behind this post aren’t necessarily important, but what I found interesting by them is the question that appeared in each and every one of them.

Why is that we have so much difficulty asking for help?

I don’t know why that is, and since I’m not trained in psychology, all my answers would be bound up in my own reading, observing, and experiencing. Instead, I want to just talk about why it’s ok to ask for help and encourage you to do so.

So what do I mean when I say asking for help? Well, I mean that when you have a question or a concern or something that you can’t do alone that you take a breath and ask for someone to help you.

Let me just highlight some of the ways that I’ve asked for help this week, and I didn’t feel bad about it.

• Sent someone read a really, really shitty first draft that had things like [insert example here that works as transition] and [trying to say this but I don’t know if I can say it based on the evidence I have]
• Took a chance and had a conversation with someone I had never met and asked for help with a big data/computational project. Kind of like a cold call, but it was a warm call. But it was still sort of weird and scary, and it’s not something that I can do by myself.
• Talked through some local issues about what I wanted to do about a particularly thorny issue
• Spoke candidly with my dean about the ways I needed to be supported (and I realize not everyone has this sort of access, but for me and my situation, he’s an important resource and supporter. Just insert your chair or program director or trusted senior person)
• Shared teaching materials in hopes of getting feedback on a new method I’m trying
• Asked folks I owed things to be patient a little while longer cause I had to wrap something else up (that ran over in the schedule)

I could go on. Really, I could. Yes, all of these are regular aspects of my job, but every one of them was made easier because I was not afraid to ask for help

Asking for help doesn’t show weaknesses. In fact, it is a measure of strength. Now, I get how hard it is and that sometimes you’re not certain who to ask or when to ask. I get that some local situations aren’t really conducive to asking for help, but heck, that’s why we started #womeninTC to help with that.

Asking for help is also not as scary as you think, particularly after you do it a time or two, and it works out ok. . If you’re not asking folks for help on these sorts of small stakes things then it makes asking for help on the bigger things that much harder.

Asking for help also ensures that you can different views to be able to better position your own response and what you need/want in any given situation.

My point is to show you that it’s ok to ask for help. You have to ask people for things you need and you need to ask for help in understanding local and field wide issues. Lots of things are made easier when you ask for help and larger, field wide things are often cannot be navigated by yourself. You can’t wait until the year before you go up for tenure to start asking for help. That’s almost too late.

And here’s a news flash. The need for help doesn’t go away. In some ways, it increases because you have to figure out what to do next once you get tenure.

This leads me here. I can’t read your mind—using I here to stand in for all those faculty who’ve been around awhile that often get blamed for not telling people things. I don’t know what your concerns or questions are. So if you find out a hard lesson and then look at me and wonder why I didn’t tell you, I will kindly suggest that you look at your own behaviors first. Does that sound a little harsh? Maybe. But, I repeat, I can’t read your mind. Even if you don’t know the full question you want to ask, you have to actually have to contact someone and say, “I don’t really know what my question is but can we talk about something going on?”

And you know what, I would say, “yes.” I would also not give you suggestions based on just my own view. Believe it or not, I talk to lots of people and collect their wisdom to synthesize and try to pass on to help you.

The one thing that I know—I know—holds people back from asking for help is that they don’t want to be a bother. I also know that some folks say, in an almost rote fashion, to just send things along (to read) or call anytime. I’m sorry for both of these. Really, I am sorry for that.

Because there’s a number of us where that is simply not the case. If the words come out of my mouth, I mean them, and you are not a bother. And I can point you to a number of people (many of which you may know through #womeninTC) who would be happy to talk with you so don’t think you’re stuck with me 🙂

Here’s the time that our schedules start to feel a little stress and we just got done with annual reviews or may be doing (re)appointment paperwork or starting to compile dossiers for tenure or we get a full view that we have over-committed or admin and committee work starts to ramp up and all that is on top of thinking about the spring conference season.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed or if something comes up and your have questions or concerns, just know that there are people you can talk to. It’s really ok to ask for help, but you have to make the first move.

And I’ll be waiting to take your call.