The grind and the guilt

If you don't know Lego Grad Student, I highly recommend checking it out. The more I go through the PhD process, the more I appreciate  the metaphors this image carries. 

I had a conversation earlier today about feeling bad because as grad students, we could always be doing more. We have an endless supply of books to read, articles to annotate, papers to write, thoughts to ideate, and more. As we're running and running and running, it feels not only endless but as we look to the right and left, it feels like everyone else is running faster, putting more miles/kilometer in, and doing it with greater ease and finesse. 

Yesterday, AERA 2020 conference proposal were due (the American Education Research Association). We finished the quarter-system a month ago, two months before that, another round of conference proposals were due, and in two months, another round of conference proposals will be due again. Manuscript deadlines are often rolling, and pretty soon, we will be starting the academic job market season and post-doc applications, dissertation fellowships, and grant proposal deadlines will be just around the corner. 

Did you feel anxious after reading that paragraph? 

I do. And it has felt easy, for each run to exhaust myself, hop down. grab a drag of water, and then say: on to the next run, next project, next deadline, and not stop. Not stop to let my muscles (both physical and mental) rest. Not stop to catch my breath. Not stop to be still and enjoy the world outside. It feels easy, not in the actual work, but easy because my mentality is already in that mode. I'll admit I'm tired, while still punching in the speed and incline level for the run I'm about to do. 

I think academia slowly socializes us to be non-stop marathon runners, with the finish line always moving just out of our reach, with a landscape of guilt for wanting to take breaks along the way. The sense of urgency for our research, especially research on critical issues, oppression, racism, violence to communities of color—these are real, and I am not advocating for us to ignore pressing issues or ignore our communities through coded language of "self-care". But what I am advocating for is the detox of guilt and a reimagination of the grind. Small things I've been trying for the past couple of months include: 

• Having my to-do list also have tasks like cooking, journaling, and eating regularly,
• Re-starting the habit of writing down small victories and what I'm grateful for each day, and
• Being intentional about conversations, both with my friends in and out of academia, to not just be about the work

I'm still running (literally and metaphorically within academia), but I'm being better about deadlines, being okay with saying no, reminding myself that refusing an opportunity is actually leaving space for better ones that will be coming in, and detoxing myself from guilt.