​​​By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

If you’re looking for a post to help you get your new school year off to a smooth, positive start, this isn't it.

I dread the beginning of a new school year, and this year is especially difficult (more on this later). I am known to go into depressive states until around October, when the realization hits that I have to let my beloved summer go and move forward—even if painfully—with the rest of the academic year.

Summer is my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E time of year. Unlike other seasons, I’m not bound by the schedule of my son’s school or limited by heavier traffic patterns on my usual routes or overwhelmed by an exhausting list of tasks for home and school. Though I teach a lot in summer out of necessity, I am privileged to be able to work mostly on my own terms. I actually have time to rest, exercise, write, and think.

I consider myself a better mother in summer, but a more accurate way to characterize how I feel is that I struggle less with mothering. I make fewer mothering mistakes in summer. I am more patient, more forgiving, and more kind toward my child. I am less likely to say something I have to apologize for, and I am less likely to act in unkind ways.

My number one reason for loving summer so much is that I have been able to more carefully take note of Nicholas’s growing up because of our long stretches of uninterrupted time together. He’s starting to imagine himself in college because he’s visited my campus so many times; with a little “encouragement”—really incentivizing—from me, he has broadened his summer reading choices to include actual literature and not just junk book series; he has had time to do some deep diving into learning about things he loves like roller coasters, cruise ships, and airplanes; and though still a work in progress, he is becoming more practiced working through his fears and trying new things.

Not all changes over our summers together have been easy to negotiate, however. He is talking to me a lot less; he will no longer allow me to hold his hand in public; he says he has a constitutional right to his own opinion, which is not always an opinion I share; and his dad is now his go-to parent for advice. Times are changing, and I am writing this post to celebrate my son’s continued childhood and to lament what is most likely in front of him.

The beginning of this school year marks a very important shift; Nicholas has begun middle school, which is simultaneously frightening and exciting. I am excited because he is excited about this next chapter. He is beginning to think about what being his own person means—our repeated message to him about being confident in his own skin and making his own decisions. Heading into next school year, Nicholas is deciding on a different path, and while this decision is literally about what being his own person looks like, it has come to mean something much more to me.

Nicholas has asked to loosen the rules around his hair. Last year he asked to cut his hair into a Mohawk style and to dye it blue. I gave in on the former, but blue dye was and forever will be a hell no while he lives in our house. Our previous understanding was that he could do what he wanted in summer with his hair, but when school started we always went back to his regular hairstyle, which we call the “Even Steven” (also known as a “Caesar” or a “Regular”). For those unfamiliar with Black barbershop lingo, this is basically an almost bald shaved cut over the entire head. This summer he asked to grow out his hair into an afro. He also asked to renegotiate our agreement because he did not want to shave off his summer fro when school started this year.

An afro on a Black child marks him/her—positively or negatively, depending on who’s doing the marking, and the bigger the fro, the more complicated meanings the fro engenders. To some (his dad and I are in this group), the fro is a visible marker of Black pride that connects the wearer to a political and cultural past and present. For others, it prompts fear, shame, disparagement, among other negative responses.

We decided that Nicholas could keep his summer style. It is a visible reminder to me every day that my child is growing up, a sign of his growing independence, a marker of the (Black) pride he feels when he looks in the mirror. [By the way, the fro had a short life and has morphed into a high top fade. For those of you who know Nicholas, be sure to tell him how much you like his new hairstyle.]

As this new school year begins, I must face that my child is heading into a new stage of his (educational) life and that the choices he makes as he grows older may have different meanings than before. Because racism too often causes the adultification of Black children, Nicholas will become more and more vulnerable to misperceptions related to how he presents himself and how he chooses to present his growing racial consciousness in what he wears, what he says (he's adept at code-switching), how he walks, what music he listens to, how loud he plays his music in public, and…a whole host of other choices. Imagine my fear that at such a critical time in his life—the beginning of adolescence—he has to figure out who he is within/against our current national context.

I’m working hard to make sure that my fears don’t get in the way of us having fun as we navigate this exciting new journey together. He deserves to not feel pressured to protect me as I try mightily (and oftentimes in vain) to protect him.

​Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

Welcome to August! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and academics everywhere are freaking out. 

In April, the three-month summer break seems like an endless expanse of time. You forget (again) how this break never ends up being as long or as leisurely as you expect. In this state of unfettered optimism, you plan an impossibly long summer to-do list.

Of course I can finish four articles, collect data from 1000 participants, and redo six classes. No probs.

In the stark light of August, those uncompleted (or even untouched) plans fill you with self-loathing and dread. Your stress level begins to rise higher and higher as the clock ticks louder and louder.

The thing about stress is it hijacks the ability to plan and make sound decisions. This hijacking might explain why, when faced with too little time and too much to do, many of us double down.

You know you’ve doubled down when you start convincing yourself you can still get everything done…in a quarter of the time. Like Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible, you figure there is some secret combination of moves that will save the day. And it usually goes something like this: I just need to work more, write faster, sleep less.

Sound familiar?

Doubling down is a horrible strategy. It never works...evah!

Okay, it might work for a bit. But, and this is important, it is NOT a sustainable strategy. Working at a frenetic pace without rest and recuperation reduces alertness, productivity, and performance. The exact opposite of what you want.

Breaking the end-of-summer stress cycle requires admitting you are human. You have limits. And to work healthily, not everything you planned to do will get done. Yes, you must let some things go.

This is hard...very, very hard.

BUT it's much better on your stress level and self-esteem to admit your humanness now and develop a realistic plan. Waiting will only make things worse.

I know what you're thinking: if I could plan realistically, I wouldn't be in this mess. No worries. I’m here to help. We can do this plan-making together. All you need to do is AIM.

AIM is a simple triage process I use with stressed clients who can’t figure out where to focus their time. It requires placing each item on your to-do list in one of three categories– Acute, Important, or Minor.

Acute
All the items that have to get done this summer go in this category. Be careful not to confuse have to get done with want to get done or should get done. Have-to items are required for your job security/success and have non-negotiable due dates. Examples are an R&R with a hard summer deadline, a tenure portfolio due the first day of fall semester, a fall course prep.    

Important
This category is for items that don’t have an immediate deadline but are important to your future goals. Examples are a major overhaul of a course you're not teaching in the fall, a grant proposal that you can submit in another cycle, almost-completed articles you can choose to work on now or later.  

Minor
All leftover items go here – like those things you thought would be great to do this summer but can be done in the distant future, if at all (e.g., reading all the articles in your discipline’s main journal, organizing your file cabinets, starting a new research project when you already have several in various stages of completion).

​Your mission - if you choose to accept it* - is to prioritize your time so you complete all the acute items (at least) while still taking breaks, sleeping at least 7 hours per night, and spending time with family and friends.

The trick here is focus. This means not working on anything in the important or minor categories until you've completed everything in the acute category. No matter how tempting. Stay strong. 

If you’re lucky enough to have time left over after completing your acute items, move to the important category items. And so on.

If you aren’t so lucky, you will need to let the important and minor items go…at least for this summer. Again, this is not easy. It helps to have some self-compassion. Keep reminding yourself that you are only human, you are doing the best you can, and you are choosing to work in ways that maximize your productivity AND your health.

Good luck! This tape will self-destruct in five seconds*.

*For you millennials out there, these references are from the Mission Impossible TV show that aired a long, long, long time ago when tapes were still in existence.

​[A previous version of this post was published on this cite in 2017.]

​Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

I have parents again. Don’t misunderstand: I’m exceptionally fortunate that all seven members of my immediate, formative family are still alive. Still, because my intersectional identity includes queer, I didn’t have parents in my 50s—not a father anyway. I’ve always had a sorta mom. I lost my only sister, 13 years my junior, in my 30s. I have two brothers still, having lost the eldest about 10 years ago. But all of a sudden, I have parents again. I think other lesbians, especially Black lesbians, especially middle-aged daughters of respectable, southern-born African American Protestant parents, probably know exactly what I mean.
 
When folks ask me in one way or another about my family connections, I generally reply, “My people don’t do lesbians.” Since most of the population where I live identifies as hetero, my answer often brings quiet, and then a change of the subject.
 
My immediate family simply can’t accept queer identity and queer (self-)love. From 1994 until I stopped a few years ago, I pleaded with each of my four siblings for any one of them to denounce the incomplete “family” gatherings from which my partner-since-1997 and I have been barred. But they insisted either I was welcome if I’d “stop choosing” my queer lifestyle, or I “just should ignore Daddy.” 
 
Instead, I stopped fighting for a place at tables where my wife and I weren’t welcome. (My wise, beloved son had years before shown me how crucial this act of self-compassion is.) I dutifully continued calling my mother monthly, when my heart felt up to it. I sent her holiday gifts. I was there for her cancer surgery. Where my father had been, an abyss opened.
 
Then, two days after my father’s eighty-fifth birthday, I suffered a health crisis. (He didn’t come or call.) Then, as part of my rehabilitation, I made a significant choice: I chose to study Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a scientific meditation practice focused on compassion, forgiveness, and awareness. I’m aware of righteous shortcomings critics of MBSR have made. But in seminar with me were a married couple: Latinx lesbians and, like me, critical race feminists who believe that syncretic meditation practices have a fierce role in collective healing.
 
Recently, I went for a visit without My Dearest and stayed five days with my parents in the lovely suburban home where my partner and I are not welcome together. This time, parents and I were on our best behavior, for which I’m grateful—even knowing how different things would have been had Sweetness been with me.
 
I’m thankful, too, my parents look good. Physically, they are not frail. My father gardens daily and plays golf several mornings a week. My mother’s graduated from her walker to a cane she half uses and on the wrong leg. Their daily energy shone remarkably. And yet, of course, in their mid-80s, their health is compromised, and they are each needful in their own way.
 
I know some persons reading this post will feel me on the issues overt and implicit here. Issues like the weight of African American respectability politics and Black Protestantism. On the shock of seeing time pass on our parents’ faces in ways we can’t trace on our own. I know the choices I face(d)—to keep coming out as queer, to try to live authentically, to lose or loose the dearest of family—are choices some (Black) queer readers will have faced and will face again. Trust me, knowing we are legion keeps me standing.
 
Despite my parents’ expressed feelings of anger, disappointment, rejection, betrayal, and sadness by my “choice of lifestyle” since the 1990s, and the fissures between us that keep deepening, to my astonishment, I now have parents again. Their lives slowing, they remain as vigilant as ever of their Presbyterian, respectability values. I, too, remain steadfast in my struggle for only relationships based on mutual respect and honesty.
 
Honesty is what my coaching clients, graduate students, sister friends, lover, and son reveal they most desire. These people trust me most perhaps, and they mirror back to me what is most important in human relationships and within the individual person: fidelity, kindness, empathy, evidence of self-compassion.
 
In my journey as a student of MBSR, I strive to offer lovingkindness to all. I strive to free myself from the burden, the weight of my own despair. I acknowledge the privileges undergirding the quality of health my parents and I enjoy, and I honor the family members who paved our way. I honor this day, the present, this moment, which is all we have. 

​Until next time,

Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

​My December column about planning physical and mental rest included this sentence: “Folks, I am finally what not saying ‘No’ often enough, what being one soldier in a tiny army waging war against anti-Blackness, looks like.”
 
This month, I want to reflect on some of the ideas I crammed into that packed sentence. I’ve felt vulnerable since publishing it. The sentence has stayed with me; it’s crept into my driving quiet, and eased into my meditation. I feel like the image of “not saying no often enough” has me looking rough. My partner says I still look all right. But since Thanksgiving, I’ve had one respiratory illness after another, so I look and feel tired.
 
Treating my chronic fatigue ironically adds three 2-hour training appointments to my week: I’m working out like a dynamo to increase my energy level. If I want to be a soldier in anybody’s army, I need more strength. Anyone who plans to fight against xenophobia and inequality needs a hella lot of strength. And a lotta big sticks.
 
Thankfully, I’m not alone in this army, outnumbered though we ultimately are. Other minoritized faculty women—and our shrewd allies—are also fighting against race-based hatred. Sistah-soldiers share their stories of struggle and grief with me all the time. Most are overcommitted in the ways that led to my own need for deliberate rest. which is to say, they need rest, too.
 
An insight I’ve had recently—and I realize I’m late recognizing this point—is that I keep forgetting that our army is tiny. I probably forget it because we are so mighty. We are powerful. But for all my own literal and figurative strength-training—physical therapy, home, meditation, massage, sister-friendships, and so on—I wore myself out trying to multiply myself on the job, trying to do the work of five faculty sistahs when I am only one person.
 
There aren’t enough of us minoritized feminist academics. There are not enough faculty women of color to represent us in all the classrooms and boardrooms, on all the committees and platforms where we want our collective perspectives and issues to be raised.
 
A friend reached out to me the other day. I’ll call her Sheila, though that’s not her real name. Sheila is a Black woman professor who desperately wanted to assist another mutual sistah-colleague of ours.
 
Aside: Our numbers are so small that it’s actually hard to narrate this experience without worrying that I’ll inadvertently include some details that will reveal the identity of one or the other of these dear friends. In fact, that’s a worry Roxanne and I experience each time we publish a WellAcademic™ newsletter: will our anecdotes unwittingly disclose the identities of the professionals who trust us, given that our focused readerships are so small?
 
I first became aware of progressive feminist research into this area circa 1995, and I’m discouraged that the demographics of educational institutions remain pretty much the same. It’s a shame that the minoritized women in the academy I know are separated by maybe four, hardly six, degrees. Many of us know each other by name and lineage. We are each other’s teachers, students, mentors, coaches, coauthors, and kin. Systemic poverty and racialized evil keep our numbers low. (One way of generating more of us would be the development of more pipeline programs like the African American Literature & Culture Institute. Call that self-promotion if you want, but I call it begging you to do what you can to replicate yourself, too.)
 
Back to Sheila. She is a proud person who rarely speaks her stress levels, but in a recent phone call, her voice was strained and tight. Even more oddly, she actually ticked off out loud some of the faculty tasks almost overwhelming her. The year is young—it’s still January as I write this post—so I’m worried about Sheila, concerned she could be following me down the road to chronic fatigue.
 
And now Sheila was calling on me to bless the fact that she’d agreed to support another sistah-colleague. Been there, bloody heart in both hands extended and determined to help.
 
I both wanted to encourage Sheila for her willingness to help our sister and to throw up the STOP sign. How to move forward in moments like this is always complicated. Do we take care of ourselves? Do we care for our sistahs? No easy answers--only hard questions and harder answers.
 
So, I offered Sheila a few suggestions for ways she might assist our other friend, a sister who—needless to say—genuinely deserves the support she was seeking. Sheila responded with gratitude but also with dismay. It was her groan that prompted me to reassure her she could relieve herself of the commitment; she could, in fact, she should, say no to our girlfriend this time because there aren’t enough of us.
 
“You don’t have to do that for her now.”
 
Saying no would be more than all right; it would be best. It would save Sheila to fight in our stalwart army another day. And saying no would help keep our numbers rested and ready.
 
There simply aren’t enough of us yet, no matter how much we want to support each other’s projects, to assist each other in the work we do for the ultimate goal of exposing injustice and righting the immoralities of the institutions where we work. We educate our hearts out to produce an intelligent, informed, and righteous citizenry, but our numbers remain low anyway. We are not to blame for our small populations.
 
A surge of relief surprised me head-to-toe when Sheila readily embraced this last suggestion. She’d already intuited we minoritized women faculty owe it to ourselves to say no even to each other from time to time.
 
Such a choice is rarely simple in the injurious academy. Our socialization teaches it’s “selfish,” maybe “unsisterly.” Yet I don’t want another woman faculty of color ever to feel herself a doleful image of “not saying ‘No’ often enough.” Careful self-preservation will remain essential as long as there simply aren’t enough of us.
 
Until next time,

​​By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

We are in the middle of annual reviews, which means we have been busy documenting what we have “accomplished” in the areas of research, teaching, and service in the last year and describing the quality and significance of that work. We rate ourselves in each of the three areas, and our department chairs also rate our work as exceeding, meeting, or below expectations.  

I know what you’re thinking: annual reviews are a function of neoliberal audit culture in higher education settings, where increasingly across the U.S., professors have to “prove effectiveness,” some might say prove our worth.

For faculty women of color, annual review time can be especially stressful. Student evaluations do not always reflect the effectiveness of our teaching and instead reflect how racism and sexism intersect to influence students’ perceptions. Faculty women of color whose research is situated in marginalized disciplines (like critical race feminism) also may have a harder time demonstrating quality and significance of our publications using traditional measures (like impact factor of journals). Sometimes the service faculty women of color do that supports our institutions’ diversity missions, like mentoring of students of color and supporting other women of color colleagues, is invisible labor which does not get counted fully.

For a long time (before and after earning tenure, by the way), I put pressure on myself (and way too much time) into annual reviews. With my research, teaching, and service situated in marginalized education fields, my focus was often on “convincing” my superiors that my work was as good as the work of my colleagues in traditional disciplinary fields. Because the academy has historically recognized as legitimate only a few indicators of quality and significance, a higher bar exists for demonstrating how my work “measures up.” This higher bar, and all the extra work it requires for a successful annual review, takes a lot of time and emotional energy.

Explaining my teaching evaluations in a larger context of research on Black women faculty teaching diversity courses, providing additional documentation to demonstrate how big of an impact my scholarship is having in my field, justifying how mentoring of students and colleagues from historically marginalized groups is more time-consuming and energy-depleting than regular service yet still so essential to the health of the university, and proving that my public scholarship (the blogpost you’re reading now, for instance) is indeed scholarship and deserves to be “counted”—all of this extra labor for annual reviews is not uncommon for faculty members who do “diversity” work. We understand the costs when we make these commitments, but even with this knowledge, having to count and measure and justify and prove our “value” to the university can still be dehumanizing.

To counter this effect, I made some changes over the last five years in how I approach annual reviews. I view my annual review for what it should be: an opportunity to stop and take stock of all that I have done over the past year; to think about how my work is aligned with my pedagogical commitments, especially related to social justice; and determine what adjustments I need to make in the upcoming year so that my work is more integrated and purposeful.

The most difficult change was developing a different framework for and attitude toward annual reviews—and I’m still a work in progress. I resist seeing the review as my one shot at proving that my work and I matter in the space.
I know that I matter, I know that the work I do matters, and I know that my mattering is never going to be measurable using the means that institutions privilege. I am no longer looking for ratings on an annual review to tell me how effective I am as a teacher, researcher, and colleague; what to do more of, what to do less of; or how close I am to what sometimes seems like a moving bar. The bar I set for myself is always going to be higher than one set for me, and sometimes this has meant that I don’t earn the highest scores.

I’ve made some practical adjustments as well that I invite readers to consider.

First, I set a timer to the work I do completing annual reviews. A very firm timer. I give the task no more time than this. No exceptions.

Second, I use my own template which has sections with reusable content and sections that I fill in with new stats each year, and so far, this template works with the university template I am required to use.

Third, I set goals for research, teaching, and service in 2-3 year increments, so I don’t write new ones until I have achieved these or until they change after this window of time has passed.

Lastly, I know what my university’s handbook says is required of department chairs and me in this process, which can be helpful especially when department chairs change frequently.

I also learned from Roxanne to schedule a session to work on annual reviews with a couple of colleagues who do similar work so that you can create statements of quality and significance together.

Even though I’ve made changes over a number of years prior to my recent promotion to full professor, I understand that being able to work around some institutional norms is a function of my privileged position in the academy. I also understand that my individual approach to changing my mindset around annual reviews is not going to solve a more systemic problem nationally, where evaluation of professors has become increasingly more high stakes. But I have effected change for myself, which is sometimes all we can do for ourselves.

I also invite administrators to use the approach of my current department chair—shout out to Dr. Anete Vasquez. She added a humanizing frame to the annual review process by sending an email to faculty members acknowledging that review meetings often trigger the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and stating her intent to trigger our parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). To do this, she gave us a brief set of questions to answer in advance of our meeting which asked us to reflect on what was working—a strengths-based model—in our teaching, research, and service, and to offer solutions if we noted any problems.

She also stated that we would work collaboratively in our meeting to draft the letter together—with ratings in each area—that accompanied my annual review to the next level. In my meeting with her, she asked me to help her make a case for positive ratings, which sparked a conversation about my accomplishments the previous year. I never felt like I was defending my work. Instead, my work was understood, and I felt acknowledged.

I hope you’ve found a way—big or small—to use what agency you have to make annual reviews more formative and less high stakes, generative and not destructive, and collegial not adversarial. That’s what we deserve after all the work we’ve done throughout the year.  

Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

Feeling especially overwhelmed? More exhausted than normal by unfinished grading and writing? Wondering why spring break wasn't refreshing? You’re not alone.

Spring semester is a major slog. Even worse than fall. No, really. Here’s why: 

Spring comes after the holiday season, which for some means depletion from travel, forced cheer, and overspending worries. For those who don’t celebrate Christmas, there’s the extra stress of dealing with even more Christian privilege than usual. How many times could you hear Merry Christmas as a non-Christian without wanting to scream?

Some parts of the U.S. experience little sunlight and lots of cold during most of spring semester, particularly the start. This can have emotional consequences that range from malaise to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Even if shorter, darker, chillier days don’t get you down, they may negatively affect your friends, family, students, and colleagues. And their down mood can impact yours, a phenomenon called emotional contagion.

Taxes are due! Need I say more?

Then there are faculty annual reviews that typically occur in the spring. Ideally, professional reviews are a time for thoughtful reflection with chairs who: value all that we do; make space for the ways positionality influences how we are perceived, treated, and evaluated*; acknowledge that we operate within an education system that increasingly gives too little and takes too much; recognize their power in the process even if they feel powerless in their roles otherwise; and understand that those reading their reviews are people with feelings and vulnerabilities and hopes, even if some of us protect those parts of our humanity behind heavy armor. 

But as many of you already know, annual reviews regularly fall short of this ideal. So far short, in fact, that I’ve had a steady stream of painful phone calls and meetings with faculty from all kinds of institutions demoralized by their review process. These are exceptional faculty who work tirelessly for their students, colleagues, and colleges. Yet shifting standards, the application of previously unmentioned expectations, and the minimization, or even outright dismissal, of considerable intellectual, physical, and, oftentimes, invisible emotional labor marked their interactions.

There is no clear win among the fallacious choices available to those faced with this situation. They can:

1. Use their  last scraps of energy to argue further for possible greater recognition of their labor, which risks both retaliation and relationship fractures; or
2. Keep the peace and accept what they know is unjust, opening them to the pain that silence in the face of attack brings, as well as possible negative financial and promotion and tenure repercussions.

And these costs are not equally distributed. Those who are junior, belong to historically marginalized groups, challenge injustice on or off campus, have chronic health challenges, are without strong supportive networks, occupy vulnerable emotional spaces, or sit at the intersection of these factors are poised to suffer more regardless of “choice.” All from one process that has the potential to be affirming, healing, and motivating.  

My intention is not to depress. It’s to shed light on the ways environmental, systemic, and institutional agents can influence our spring semesters, and lives in general, sometimes outside of our awareness. And I mean to challenge flawed cultural narratives that link success (and failure) solely to individual, personal efforts. If only life were so simple and magical that we really did have full control over our destiny.

It isn’t. We don’t. And buying into this belief can seriously hamper well-being.  

A healthier alternative is to acknowledge the agents at play. Accept that they have the strength to impact our lives…that they can show up like hurricane force winds pushing us off course or like an almost imperceptible but relentless headwind that slows us down or makes keeping pace exhausting.

Surrounding yourself with those who truly see you, hear you, and value you for all that you are is necessary shelter when winds are raging and can shield a headwind’s full impact. Finding those communities in systems that instill distrust among and within us is not easy. But know that it’s possible. [For more strategies, see Nichole Guillory's Surviving The Annual Review Process post.]

Awkward plug: Adding to these rare compassionate spaces is why Joycelyn and I created our wellness retreat for women of color faculty. The need for replenishment at spring’s end prompted us to offer a retreat in May as well as November.

Let me close by saying that acknowledging the external forces that might be making your spring semester hellish is not an invitation to give up on the semester or lose sight of your own power. It is an invitation for radical self-care. And seeing what society is adept at invisiblizing is pretty damn radical.

In peace and solidarity,

*If you need evidence to support that positionality matters in teaching evaluations, see here and here.

​For more reflections, follow me on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

January is the start of a new calendar year, a new semester, and, for me, a new year of life (my birthday is January 20th). Those are a lot of rebirths packed into just 31 days. That's  probably why reflection comes naturally this month. I start with all the things I'm grateful for. The list is long. Along with the big things, I include everyday things that can easily be missed, such as seeing the sunrise when I drive my kids to school way too early in the morning.
 
Yet, even with this long list, I know more can be done to slow down and appreciate life as it comes. The need to do so is becoming more and more urgent as I get older and realize the fragility of time. Each day is a gift with no guarantee of another. A sobering thought to be sure, but also one that frees me to think more about how I want to live the days I'm lucky enough to have.
 
The answer this January was clear: less busyness, more nothing. 
 
Let me explain. I'm a bit of an efficiency hack. I manage to squeeze as much out of my work hours as humanly possible so I can spend my personal time off-the-grid with family. That means I am on when working, moving from task to task with laser focus. You can even find me responding to emails as I wait in the kids' school carpool line or on a conference call as I drive home from work (using a hands-free device, of course).
 
The drawback is I'm never off during work hours, never doing nothing, which is horrible for creativity and health. As a psychologist, I know this, but I'm also a member of a culture that prizes busyness and that cultural pull is strong. Moreover, I'm a woman of color in unjust systems which creates a complicated individual and institutional/systemic interplay around perfectionism and overwork.
 
This year, though, I'm going to try hard to swim against this cultural tide. I have to. Time won't slow down for me, so I must slow down for it. To do that, I'm choosing to create space in my day and my life where I do absolutely nothing.
 
What does this nothingness look like?

• No more working in airports or on planes
• Doing nothing on the drive home
• Doing nothing in the carpool line
• No more work (or anything else) over lunch
• Doing nothing for at least 10 minutes when transitioning between work tasks 
• When writing, stopping every hour or so for 5 to 10 minutes to do absolutely nothing

 
As I boarded my flight to Denver for a psych conference in January, I was kicking myself for starting this do-nothing journey then. I'd be in the air for almost four hours with a pile of work on a plane that actually had functioning WiFi. It took all my willpower not to take my laptop out of the bag.
 
Then I sat down...next to the most amazing person. We talked the entire flight. I provided some advice to help with a painful family issue and received thoughtful guidance about a professional problem I was tackling. I even got a follow-up email about how my suggestions had worked to initiate the very beginnings of healing for the family. This deeply memorable encounter would have been impossible had my head been buried in a laptop. Thank you universe. I receive your gift. 
 
Whatever your belief system, this is your one shot in this body on this planet in this moment. None of us will live forever. However, all of us can work in whatever ways we're able to cultivate lives of meaning. One small step toward that goal is to slow down and do a bit of nothing each day. I invite you to give it a try.

In peace and solidarity,

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