In this season of institutional annual reports, let’s focus instead on our lived experiences of academic life this year. In your Shadow Annual Report, we’ll use the framework of empathy, embodiment, and empowerment to dig into the realities of how you showed self-compassion, what it was like to live in your body, and how you expressed your needs and wants this academic year.

Find the Transcript for Episode 11, “Your Shadow Annual Report” here.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Ashley Barnwell, “Aunting as Family Shadow Work,” Journal of Family History 47.3 (2022) 317-331.

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An honest and hopeful conversation with Brooke Hofsess, artist, scholar, and leadership coach. We talk, laugh, and dream about re-making academia, the deep power of choice, the fun of chairing (really!), and finding our brilliance amid the scarcity and burnout of higher education. And I get a mini-coaching session from Brooke on my own leadership challenges! Bonus: count how many times we say “beautiful”—spoiler, it’s 12.

Find the Transcript for Episode 10, “Expansive Leadership with Brooke Hofsess” here.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Join Brooke’s gorgeous newsletter list here. You can also follow her on Instagram and visit her website.
• Lots of good stuff in the “The Good Enough Professor Manifesto”
• The concept of tinkering also came up in the episode “Piecing Ourselves Together: Creativity, Process & Integration with Mariglynn Edlins”

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What would it be like to approach overwhelming times of the semester with self-compassion? How might we experience overwhelm differently if we supported our basic needs and gently questioned expectations? Today we explore what to do when you’re overwhelmed: how to set aside self-blame, expand our capacity, reduce our obligations, and pause to reflect. Plus, I discuss what I did when I got overwhelmed working on this episode!

Find the Transcript for Episode 09, “What To Do When You’re Overwhelmed” here.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie
• I’ll be sharing my assessment of my own period of overwhelm in this month’s newsletter. Sign up here to get on my email list!

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Today I’m taking on academic grind culture through the lens of anti-dieting. I explore how we can mobilize the anti-diet critique of diet culture to better understand how the values, promises, and practices of academic grind culture keep us stuck in cycles of overwork. Based on anti-diet principles, I offer three alternatives for creating new ways of being in academia.

Find the Transcript for Episode 08, “Let’s Un-Diet Academia!” here. 

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Sonia Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not An Apology
• Christy Harrison, Anti-Diet:  Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
• Health at Every Size® Principles

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In this episode, I answer your questions about the challenges of the new semester and share my take on how to put your wellbeing and what matters to you first when you are prepping a new course, coping with dysfunctional gate-keepers, feeling like your best-laid plans get derailed by mid-semester, and staying tuned in with yourself.

Find the Transcript for Episode 07, “Support for the New Semester” here. 

Mentioned in this episode:  Plan Your Semester Pop-Up!

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The end of the fall semester is a brutal time for academics.  In this episode, I share a process for re-claiming our full selves as we transition to fall break.  We’ll reflect on and practice releasing urgency, slowing down, restoring connection, imagining the break, receiving joy, and finally, greeting yourself.  Also expect some talk about fluffy dog bellies.

Find the Transcript for Episode 06, “Coming Back to Ourselves at the End of the Semester."

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Wallace Stevens Walk in West Hartford, CT
• Tema Okun on urgency in white supremacy culture.
• NPR LifeKit interview with Devon Price on Laziness Does Not Exist
• Sign up for my email list⁠ to get the workbook that accompanies this episode! 

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Join me for a thoughtful conversation with Mariglynn Edlins, academic, artist, social scientist, mother, and amazing human being.  Mariglynn reflects on curiosity and creative exploration, the challenges of integrating different parts of ourselves, and what can happen when we focus on process rather than outcomes.  We talk about open access as a teaching philosophy and a parenting strategy, how creativity and “thinkering” can support us in times of despair, and ways to bring more creative expression, more making, and more play into our everyday lives.

Find the Transcript for Episode 05, “Piecing Ourselves Together:  Creativity, Process & Integration with Mariglynn Edlins” here.

Explore Mariglynn’s website www.mariglynn.com and follow her @mariglynn on Instagram and Threads.

Links from our conversation: 

•  James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
• Monty Python actor John Cleese, “Creativity is not a talent.  It is a way of operating.”

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When you encounter tough times in your writing, how do you respond?  In this episode, I discuss three writing challenges that you can expect to pop up:  when you feel disconnected from writing, when you are lost in the fire swamp of anxiety and despair, and when writing feels like a slog.  I share a LOT of strategies for connecting with your emotions, your body, and with others during these moments, and I double down on my commitment to experimentation, low-stakes play, and the shameless use of treats in the writing lifestyle.  This episode is Part 2 of “The Good Enough Professor’s Guide to the Writing Lifestyle.”   

Find the transcript for Episode 04: “Three Annoying Challenges and How to Be Kind to Yourself When you Encounter Them.”  

Here’s Part 1 of the “The Good Enough Professor’s Guide to the Writing Lifestyle.”

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