Here’s to another academic year
Wooden blocks spelling “The End” on a neutral background.
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A colleague once told me that one of their favorite things about being an academic is that there are distinct time points when things just stop. The end of a semester, the end of an academic year, and graduation. For faculty and researchers each of these moments can represent a time to rest, recalibrate, and decide what it is you will work on next.
While I understand the sentiment of this perspective, I admit that I still struggle feeling it at each of those time points. I think it’s easier for students since they get to go home or at least stop needing to be in classes. But for faculty these “stops” are more like down shifts. We’re not going 100mph rather maybe just 65mph.
That’s the tricky thing about academic life, the work expands to eat up whatever time, energy, and resources you are able or willing to give. As a junior faculty member this expansion feeling exciting and necessary to get tenured or promoted, but for the long haul it isn’t sustainable.
I’ve recently been seeing posts in my Instagram feed talking about being “addicted” to problem solving. At first, I thought this was weird turn of phrase. But as I listened to the videos and did a little digging I found the proper name: “achievement addiction”. According to a recent Forbes article achievement addition looks like:
• Perfectionism and feeling like nothing is ever enough. This can manifest as never celebrating your wins.
• Constantly moving the goalpost. You are future-focused and always working toward some idealized vision of your life that you can never reach.
• Struggling to slow down and rest and needing to feel productive at all times, even during attempted downtime.
• Obsessing over external accolades or that next dopamine hit. Always looking for that next achievement, promotion or goal to tick off your list.
• Loss of boundaries, even at the expense of your physical and mental health or your relationships.
• Everything revolves around bettering yourself: You go all in on wellness and bio hacks. You may devour personal development books.
Do you feel “attacked” reading this, as the kids say? I know I do. Particularly that bit about trying to rest and suddenly feeling the need to get up to tidy up the house while watching a show.
Of course this is not a new phenomenon, as evidenced by these pieces from 2018 and 2019. More importantly it is an approach to work that is often idolized in the academic world and is a demonstration to some of just how successful you have become. But it can also be a direct route to burnout and dissatisfaction with work that once brought you joy, or at least contentment.
So, to mark the end of this academic year I am going to SLOW DOWN (I still need to keep my job after all) and spend some time checking in and doing some fun things. These things will certainly involve being outside more, perhaps puttering in the garden with the dogs, but it might also involve just sitting quietly trying not to do anything at all.
How are you marking the occasion of the end of this academic year?
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