Ali Black is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia. Ali tells stories of courage and care and connection, stories that grew out of painful interactions with ‘the academic machine’ and feeling like failure. She talks about creating a different way of engaging in academia, one that is based on intentionality and meaning, on connecting to what is important, on being and becoming, and on creating a more caring and collaborative culture. An important step in this was reaching out to colleagues and forming a women’s writing group to write together and to explore their versions of slow scholarship.

“How we might cultivate ethics of care and caring where we acknowledge our human dimensions and actually care for one another as part of our work.”

“Failure is actually…an invitation and a gift to go’ well what do I want to do differently, what isn’t sustainable, what am I not prepared to do anymore’.”

"… it is finding the ‘and’ in the ‘yes’"

She talks about (times approximate) …

2:11 Long career, working in three unis, career interruptions for children, family bereavement

5:40 Writing about the blurring between the personal and professional; pressure to put on a professional face despite whatever is going on in the rest of life; the academy needing to recognize we are human beings and these personal things happen; cultivating ethics of care and caring for one another as part of our work

8:18 Inviting women friends/academics to share stories about what is it like to be in the ‘afternoon of our lives’, meeting for writing workshops, giving feedback, connecting

13:00 Stumbling across slow scholarship, trying other ways of being an academic, being more deliberate and intentional

14:55 Common themes from the stories – understanding the complexity of lives that we’re all living and how amazing to negotiate all these things

16:48 Importance of sharing and particularly responding to say ‘I hear you’ or ‘you’re amazing’

18:15 “We’re in the arena and need to be valuing each other for having the courage to stay in the arena and to do our best and to care”

19:00 Caught up in the managerialism, constantly feeling like we’re not enough, important to try to change the local culture so we can change the wider culture, and care for one another, doing those things that don’t count but count in terms of the quality of our lives and our values

21:37 Being part of the academic machine and the tension of perpetuating the functioning of that machine, but being more alive when you follow what matters to you

22: 37 Story of moving to a new university, accepting a lower position ‘to get a foot in the door’, meaning a salary reduction and being on probation for 3 years, and feeling like a failure, not being valued and wounded as a person and academic

26:37 The ‘wise women’ writing became a saving space, finding her own ways of working on what mattered to her, creating a promotion application that was “like me” and getting promoted – getting there without playing the game perfectly; “In the end I can only be myself and I’m very good at being myself”

30:05 Encouraging that might not have to do things the ‘system way’, but doing it our way within some of their frameworks; but not all happy story, having depression, but recognizing that“Failure is actually a gift because there’s no-where to go, you’re at the bottom of the heap, so you can only decide well what will I do now so it became an invitation and a gift to go well what do I want to do differently, what isn’t sustainable, what am I not prepared to do anymore.”

31:20 Office surrounded by inspirational messages, planning, decorating diary

On her desk: “Is this task vital? Does it really matter to me or someone l love and care about? Give my energy to what matters to me and to what inspires me” – as a result, not going to faculty meetings any more, anything that is deadening to the soul or joy or sense of hope

33:54 Say yes to the spaces and places to contribute that you’re going to like a lot more, find meaningful or fit your values; if we said yes to everything we’d be overwhelmed overworked and wouldn’t be able to focus on what matters to you, changing your framing for service, meetings

35:56 Importance of knowing ourselves, strengths, values

38:25 Making time for human interactions, inspired by slow strategies suggestion from slow scholarship article, valuing quality over quantity, valuing thinking, that we need time to think

41:10 Counting in some different ways, valuing time and thinking, and organizing spaces differently to engender intentional conversations taking to meet and discuss ideas – connecting caring listening important

42:58 Taking care of ourselves before we take care of others; planning weekend spots with cups of tea, cats, sleeping in, family, leaving no space for work – weekends as sacred self care, family care times

44:23 Still working long hours but on things that matter

46:02 Importance of down time for creative thoughts to gel, need to stop thinking activity is productivity, making time to think and to write; importance of writing as research, and turning it into a collective process – “supporting the productivity of the academic machine while also being fulfilled for the personal the human being … it is finding the ‘and’ in the ‘yes’”

49:25 Self care practices, reading widely, getting inspired, being content to be me but the best version of me, becoming intentional, creating a vision board

53:11 Being, belonging, becoming … and ‘becoming’ takes the pressure off, always becoming

56:40 Encouraging us to find our own groups and making local connections, and pointers to related links

1:00:31 End

Related links

If you are a woman in academia, please contribute your voice to this survey on women in academia for research by Ali and Susie Garvis: http://www.thewomenwhowrite.com/survey.html

Ali's Research Whisperer post "Saved by slow scholarship" https://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/saved-by-slow-scholarship/

Websites Ali has created to support women and their listening/storying/connecting

http://www.wisewomen.world/

http://www.thewomenwhowrite.com/

Blogs Ali finds inspiring

On Being http://www.onbeing.org/

Brain Pickings https://www.brainpickings.org/

The Slow Academic (Agnes Bosanquet) https://theslowacademic.wordpress.com/

Research Whisperer https://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/

Slow Scholarship reading

Berg, M., and Seeber., B. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. Canada: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division.

Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., Basu, R., Whitson, R., Hawkins, R., Hamilton, T., & Curran, W. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14, 4, 1235-1259. Retrieved from   http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/acme/article/view/1058

Link to ‘Wise Women’ memoirs and the ‘invitation’ I sent out https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z5q83mqkohac295/AACt8R6yox8AYaWYNdZiBG14a?dl=0

Manuscripts we have written about our collective writing or the blurring of personal/professional

Black, A.L, Crimmins, G., Jones, J.K. (in press). Reducing the drag: Creating V formations through slow scholarship and story.  In S. Riddle, M., Harmes, and P.A. Danaher (Eds) Producing pleasure within the contemporary university. Sense Publishing.

Loch, S., Black, A., Crimmins, G., Jones, J., Impiccini, J. (in press). Writing stories and lives: Documenting women connecting, communing and coming together. Book series Transformative Pedagogies in the Visual Domain, Common Ground Publishing. Eighth title Embodied and walking pedagogies engaging the visual domain: Research co-creation and practice. Kim Snepvangers and Sue Davis (Eds).

Loch, S., and Black, A.L. (2016). We cannot do this work without being who we are: Researching and experiencing academic selves.  In B. Harreveld, M. Danaher, B. Knight, C. Lawson and G. Busch (Eds). Constructing Methodology for Qualitative Research: Researching Education and Social Practices. Palgrave MacMillan: UK and US

Black A.L. (2015). Authoring a life: Writing ourselves in/out of our work in education. In M. Baguley, Y. Findlay., M. C. Kirby. (Eds). Meanings and Motivation in Education Research. UK: Routledge, Research in Education Series

Black, A.L, and O’Dea, S. (2015). Building a tapestry of knowledge in the spaces in between: Weaving personal and collective meaning through arts-based research. In K. Trimmer, A. Black, and S. Riddle. (Eds). Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-Between: New possibilities for Education Research. UK: Routledge, Research in Education Series

Black, A. (2017). I am Keith Wright’s daughter: Writing things I ‘almost’ cannot say. Life Writing, Reflections section, Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2016.1191980

Black, A.L, and Loch, S (2014). Called to respond: The potential of unveiling hiddens. Reconceptualizing Educatonal Research Methodology, Vol 5, No 2, Special Issue.  

Manifesto of care:

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine

Fitzpatrick. And this is a podcast series where academics

and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke

discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to

change academic life for the better.

My guest today is Dr. Ali Black from the School of Education at

the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Ali tells stories of courage and care and connection. Stories

that grew out of painful interactions with what she calls

'the academic machine' and feeling like a failure. She

talks about creating a different way of engaging in academia, one

that is based on authenticity and meaning, and connecting to

what is important on being and becoming, and on creating a more

caring and collaborative culture. An important step in

this for her was reaching out to colleagues and forming a women's

writing group to write together and to explore their versions of

what slow scholarship might mean. Just advance notice too

though, that there was a bit of a delay on the line when we were

talking and that made it interesting trying to have a

fluent conversation. But still, I know I found this conversation

really deeply thought provoking and trust it will speak to you, too.

So, Ellie, thank you for talking with me. I'm really delighted to

speak with you and especially to speak with someone who comes

from a different disciplinary area to the people that I've

normally spoken to.

Thanks, Geraldine. I'm really looking forward to

talking with you today.

And the way we got in touch, it's quite interesting.

You just emailed me after listening to one of the

podcasts. And it seemed like you have a really interesting story

to tell. And it happens that you come from my home state, but

we've never met each other. Just to give a bit of background, can

you just say very briefly where you're coming from? Career-wise.

Yeah, well, I guess. I've been in academia for a long

time. I added it up and it's my 22nd year. And so that feels a

really long time. But I feel like despite that, I've had a

very slow career with lots of what academia would call career

interruptions, having children and taking leave of various

kinds, and taking unpaid leave and relocating and teaching in

schools in between, times between universities. And that

sort of thing. I've worked at three universities now. And I

started off [Geri: What's your disciplinary area?], well,

education is my area and specifically early childhood

education is my specialization. But I've also become very

interested, since my PhD, which was way back in 2000, become

very interested in narrative inquiry. And I guess that's

become more focused in arts based research, and more

recently, that's turned itself into life writing and creative

writing and researchers writing. So I play in two spaces really,

I play in my discipline space, and I play in my narrative, arts

based researcher space, and I guess I'm enjoying having those

two spaces to become the academic that I'm becoming.

Mm hmm. So I like the becoming. Can you say a little

bit more about the leaves and the disruptions and the breaks

that you said you had over those past 22 years?

Yeah, well, it's hard to you know, having children

whether that's been planned or not, but so I guess they weren't

planned as such, but they were, they are what happens when

you're a female academic. And so I took maternity leave for my

first child and then took six months, had six months off and

then came back to work. And then with my second child, I ended up

taking two years off, so I took maternity leave and I took long

service leave and I took a year of unpaid leave. And later my

mother passed away and I took a couple of months bereavement

leave and following, I guess that grieving time we ended up

in a place called Agnes Water. My mother was buried, not far

from there. So we went there for her funeral. And my husband is a

surfer and so we stayed at Agnes Water and he bounded out of the

surf one day and said, let's live here. And so we ended up

then working towards the sea change. And that meant time

changing universities and little break times like that. So I

guess there've been planned, yet unplanned things. And I guess

that's probably began my writing about the blurring between the

personal and the professional, because I felt like some of

those things were named by the Academy as interruptions and as

things that shouldn't be talked about, or that shouldn't affear

with your track record, or your early career research or status

and things like that. So I guess in my writing and my research

I've been troubling those sorts of things.

So you're, this is sort of saying that the professional

face we put on always deletes those aspects of our lives,

which are part of being an academic.

I think we feel a pressure that we have to put on a

professional face, and that we certainly don't talk about.

Being up all night with our child who had colic or feeling

in a terrible emotional state, because we're grieving the loss

of a loved one. Those sorts of things are meant to be set

aside. And, you know, I recall coming back to work after some

space after burying my mother, and a well known and well

respected professor came up and said, you know, how's your

research going? And I said, I hadn't written for a little

while. And he started saying, 'Well, you Ali, you've just got

to do it, you can't'. You know, he started giving me a little

mini lecture, and I just had to stop him and say, you know, I

get where you're coming from, but this is what's just happened

in my life. And I think it might have been a wake up call for

him. But it was also a reminder for me that the Academy needed

to recognize that we're human beings, and these things happen.

And so I guess what I'm doing now is writing about these

personal, professional blurrings. And yeah, I mean, I'm

intrigued about how we might cultivate ethics of care and

caring where we acknowledge our human dimensions and actually

care for one another as part of our work.

Have you had any experiences of where that has

been done well, and you felt that sort of support and care?

Well, something that, I guess happened serendipitously,

and which I initiated inadvertently, I was just

visiting some students being their prac supervisor, and I

was, it was the anniversary of my mother's death, [Geri: 'It

had been a practical?'] yeah, practical. And it just happened

to be the anniversary of my mom's death. And so I was in the

car after visiting some students and I was reflecting on how it

would be really great to have mum to talk to and to share my

stories with and then I kind of had an epiphany and it was like,

she was giving me this idea. And I had an epiphany that I'm

surrounded actually by wonderful women friends, who have amazing

lives and wisdom to share. And so I thought, well, I think we

need to share that, I think we need to share our stories. So I

thought about it for a while and let my ideas simmer. And then I

asked a handful of my closest friends and I guess because I'm

in academia and education, they did all happen to be educators,

either in schools or in universities. And that just

seemed to be an aside really, I was thinking of them as friends

who had given input into my life and I asked them, would they be

willing to write a story about their lives and it could be

anything that they wanted to share. Really, I asked them to

think about what it was like, I guess, to be in the afternoon of

our lives, because we're all middle aged women. And I shared

a little bit about where I felt I was in this stage of my life.

And so I just asked them to think about a story that would

be unique to them and was really open ended. I said, it might be

about struggle, or it might be about joy, might be about

blessing, might be about learning, can be about your

hopes and dreams, it might be what you'd like to tell your

younger self or your older self or anything at all. And everyone

I asked was really touched and felt honored to be asked, and

they embraced that invitation.

And so for a year, we just engaged in this process. So we

spent a couple of months where we just listened to ourselves

really, and tried to understand the story that we might share or

tell, or the learning that we had engaged with that we might

want to share or tell. So we spent a couple of months just

letting that percolate. And then we set aside a time where we

would come together and share our first 1000 words. And so we

did that and had a little workshop. And we all just shared

what we thought our story was going to be about. And that was

so incredibly moving. And it was moving because I was the only

one they knew. So I knew all of them. But they trusted me to

create a space where they could share with women that they

didn't know. And so after the end of that workshop, and that

was through Zoom technology, so it wasn't face to face, we were

all scattered across Australia. We, oh we shed tears, and we

laughed, and we just found a connection that was incredible.

And so a few months later, we kept writing. And we responded

to each other's story giving gentle feedback about what we

thought the stories were about, and what we thought the

strengths were and what we'd like to hear more about. And so

we worked on those stories for a couple of more months, and then

met together for you know, another draft. And again, the

experience was so rich and connecting. And I think out of

that we just discovered how amazing women are, and

particularly women in that middle phase that afternoon

phase of their lives, what we all deal with, and grapple with,

and manage.

And strangely, that writing began to spill over into our

academic writing and work. And we stumbled across this notion

of slow scholarship that Alison Mountz and a stack of her

colleagues have written about and we read books. There's a

book called 'The Slow Professor'. And more and more

people are writing about slow scholarship in academia and the

importance of ethics of caring, and the importance of research

as friendship and being human and leaving behind all this

measurement and competition and individualization and these

unproductive ways of being and actually trying other ways of

being an academic. And so we've been writing together

collectively in academic spaces and presenting at conferences.

And, I guess the energy and the momentum for us, as individuals,

but also as academics has been enormous and unexpected. And so

therefore, a wonderful gift and surprising. And so it's kind of

helped us all be a bit more deliberate and intentional in

terms of how we work in academia and what we let it do to us.

Yeah. Can I just go back? Because I want to pick up on the

ways in which you're being more deliberate and intentional. But

just to go back to, you know, I think it's brilliant that rather

than just sit there and go, 'Oh, I wish I had someone to talk. I

wish my mother was here.', you did go and just do something and

acted on a gut feeling that this is something you needed to do

and it just seems like so much has come out of it. I'm also

interested just to hear what were some of the common themes

and experiences that you had, as your stories emerged that you

were sharing together.

I think, I guess what we came to understand is just the

complexity of lives that we're living. So if I just talk you

through some of the personal nature of the stories, one of

the writers has a child with Down syndrome. One of the

writers was trying for IVF, for many, many years unsuccessfully.

And she wrote about feeling of failure. One of the writers was

So what we came to understand is just how full our lives are, and

what amazing women we are really, because we're

negotiating all these things. And you know, that's without

talking about her grieving for her husband. When she began her

looking into workplaces and workloads. And, you know, just

our life histories were huge. And so I think, another theme

that came out of it was just the importance of listening to

ourselves, but also sharing and responding. So responding became

story, her husband was actually alive, but he died in the

a very important theme, that it's one thing to share your

story and to be vulnerable, and, you know, engage in that kind of

process where you're willing to disclose and expose aspects of

process of writing her story. And so her story tracked living

your life. But it's very, very important that someone is there

to respond and say, 'I hear you', or 'This is important', or

'You're amazing'. And I guess that's why I emailed you, as

with an alcoholic. And then we had stories, just I guess, of

part of that lesson is that I stumbled across your website, I

gained inspiration and support from listening to the podcast,

and from the encouragement that you have there. And I wanted to

say to you, Geraldine, thank you so much for creating this site,

the regular things that we negotiate being well, not

it's really meaningful, and it's really helpful. So I think

responding is really important. And I think, I guess another

thing that I really value is that often we receive a lot of

overworking, remembering our families, and giving time to our

criticism, and I love that quote by Theodore Roosevelt that says,

'It's not the critic who counts, but it's the man or we say, the

woman in the arena, with the blood, sweat, and tears.', and I

families, and wellness, mental health, depression, those sorts

think that's what we've got to remember is, you know, it's,

we're in the arena, and we need to be valuing each other for

actually having the courage to stay in the arena, and to do our

of things.

best and to care.

So these are really and I thank you for contacting me, I

did really appreciate it as well. And the fact that it's led

to us being able to just chat is brilliant. And to share this

with so many people as well. And the values that you're talking

about there are so different to the values that are embodied in

the way academia is being run at the moment, isn't it?

Yeah, it's so confronting, because at the same time as

we've have engaged in this empowerment, it's two years on

really since we've been writing together and there are spaces

and phases, I guess, where we all can fall back into the pit,

if you like, or into the mire where we do get caught up in the

managerialism and the accountability and it is

paralyzing and it is like a steady poisoning. I don't wanna

say, if you want to go for a promotion, or if you're on

probation, or if you're told that at your particular level,

you need to bring in X amount of research funding and things like

that. So we're constantly feeling like we're not enough

and so it is really very important I think that we try

to, at whatever level we are, change the culture, change the

local culture, so that we can change the wider culture,

because it is, in the end political, and the personal

becomes political. So I think we do have to make decisions to

care for one another and to support one another, to read

each other's drafts, to respond with the support of email, to do

those caring everyday things that probably don't count, in

terms of, you know, an application for something or an

award for something, but they count in terms of the quality of

our lives and our values.

Yeah. So it's an interesting tension, though,

isn't it, that many of us, you know, and many of people that

I've spoken to, we recognize that this accounting,

accountability culture and what gets counted, isn't helping,

isn't supporting and is creating all sorts of pressures with

impacts in all sorts of ways. And yet, we're still within the

system. And you talked about progressing or being recognized

and valued and this change process of changing, making

changes locally and trying to affect wider changes. There's a

time lag. So how do you negotiate the fact that you're

trying to do a different way of being an academic and doing

academia, but you're still within the system where numbers

count, and there are different values being held up.

Are certainly difficult. And I've got some wonderful

colleagues who are part of the women who write group who have

written a book, or written a chapter in a book called 'The

Academic Machine'. And, you know, we're up we are part of

that academic machine, whether we like it or not, and we, in

some ways, perpetuate the functioning of that academic

machine. So it is attention. But I think, it's worth having a go,

I think we can be afraid and say, Well, I can't, I have to do

it this way. I have to get so many publications, I have to be

competitive, I have to whatever, you know, we think the uni

rhetoric is telling us we have to be like, but I think what

I've discovered is that you're more alive when you follow what

matters to you. And so I guess I've been trialing this for

myself for the last year or so. So perhaps I need to put it in context.

When in my career interruptions, when I'm shifting from

universities to universities, my previous university before this

one, I was a senior lecturer there for six years. And when we

decided we needed to relocate again, because where we were

didn't have a school, a high school for my children close,

and they were traveling two to four hours each day, and that

just became unsustainable, we decided we needed to move. So I

let the university that I'm at now know that I was looking for

a space and you know, would they let me know that, if any places

are coming up? And I got communication straight back

saying 'Oh, yes, there'd definitely be some positions.',

they'd be probably a D and a C and a B, you know. So when I

talk about Ds and Bs whatever, so a D would be an associate

professor position, or C would be a senior lecturer position,

or B would be a lecturer position. So I'd been a lecturer

for many years at my first university and senior lecturer

for six years at the second University. And so I was hoping,

at least to maintain that position, or to upgrade to be an

associate professor and my publications and my outputs and

all those things that count were pretty good. And I believe that

I should have been a sure in for that sort of position. But of

course, as luck would have it, they didn't advertise for any

other positions than a level B, which was lecturer position,

which I'd been way back, you know, six years ago, and I'd

held that position for eight years or something previous to

that. So in order to get employment, I figured well,

better to get a foot in the door. And so I applied for the

position, and I was told I was the successful applicant for

that position. Now, they wouldn't allow me to negotiate

because they said the position that advertised was a B, and so

that was what they were offering. So that meant of a

reduction of at least $30,000 a year, it meant a return to a

lower level and I had to be on probation at that lower level

for three years. And they initially told me that I'd be

able to go for promotion straightaway. But of course,

when I got to the university and looked at the fine print, you

had to be employed for two years before you could apply for

promotion.

So, out of that experience, even though I got employment, and I

don't want to sound ungrateful, I really felt like a failure. I

felt like walking into a new position I wasn't valued. What I

brought with me wasn't valued or recognized. And to add salt into

the wound, six months later, they appointed someone from the

unsuccessful applicant pool, they made an unadvertised senior

lecturer position for that person. And so that just opened

But then, at the same time, in that timeframe, was when I began

this, what I call the wise women writing with my friends, where

we were writing stories of our lives, and somehow, that became

a saving space. And it created this space for slow scholarship

and actually listening to myself and what mattered to me, and

recognizing that there were caring people around me. And so

then when I spilled into my academic life, and we can't be,

up the wound [Geri: What?] Yes, so that just opened up the wound

we became rather prolific in our writing, and what, you know,

that track record building type notion of publication and

conference presentation, I found my energy for my work picking up

and I just found myself separating from the despair of

the academic machine and found my own ways of working on what

all over again. And so for the first two years there, I felt

mattered to me. So I ended up putting together a promotion

application, which I think was quite unusual, where I actually

quite wounded, as a person, and as an academic. And of course,

did say, I've done some things that are those intangible things

they weren't backward in coming forward in loading me up with

that aren't recognized in these boxes, and I list them. And I

put in community engagement type things that had rippled out of

this story writing. And so you know, I've run some workshops on

women writing, and we've presented in regional areas. And

senior lecturer type responsibilities and things. So

I felt pretty annoyed about that.

there's been a great interest in momentum about just regular

women writing their stories and valuing life writing as a

strategy for listening and sharing our lives. And so I

guess what I did was, I figured it's a bit like a CV, I can't

wish to be somebody else. My CV is my CV. And that's the beauty

of my CV is that it's mine. And it reflects my life and my work.

So I kind of created this promotion application that was

very much like me. And I inserted images and visual

examples of contributions that I'd made and Twitter feeds and

things like that. And thankfully, I got promoted. So

I'm back to where I began. But I guess what that showed me is,

hey, I got that without playing the game perfectly, without

playing the game that I thought they wanted me to play. And so

that's given me confidence as well. That in the end, I can

only be myself, and I'm very good at being myself.

Yeah. Oh, there's so much to think about there just in

turning around an experience that was initially experienced

as so demoralizing, and disempowering, and frustrating.

I was sitting here feeling all sorts of emotions on your

behalf, or around the injustice of that situation. But just the

ways in which you turned it around, and it seemed to be the

importance of connecting to who you were, the values that were

important to you and somehow finding a way to express that.

But you still were able to relate to the system enough that

could enable the promotion to be accepted.

So I guess that's why I find it encouraging that I think

we tell ourselves that we have to do it their way. And perhaps

we don't, perhaps we can do some of it their way, but perhaps way

more productive and more, I don't know, more engaged, more

alive and professional when we're doing it our way within

some of their frameworks. And I guess the other thing I'd like

to say is, you know, it wasn't all this lovely, happy story.

Failure is pretty devastating. And, you know, I had, you know,

I had depression, I felt pretty low during this phase, and, but

what I came to realize is that failure is actually a gift,

because there's nowhere to go, you're at the bottom of the

heap. So you can only decide, what will I do now? And so it

became an invitation in a way and a gift to go. What do I want

to do differently? And what isn't sustainable? What am I not

prepared to do any more. And I've, I mean, I still have to

remind myself. My office is surrounded by inspirational

things and messages. And I've taken up planning, if anybody's

into planning where I decorate my diary with washi tape and

inspirational quotes and happy little things. But I've just

written something in the last couple of days that I read where

I've got it on my desk, and it says, 'Is this task vital?',

does it really matter to me, or someone I love and care about,

give my energy to what matters to me and to what inspires me.

So I probably I will, I may as well say it on tape. What I do

as a result of that sort of thinking is that I don't go to

any faculty meetings anymore. My diary used to be filled up with

so many meetings that I didn't want to go to, but I thought I

should be seen at, or should go to, so I rarely go to any of

those things. I don't go to anything that I find deadening

to my soul, or my joy, or my sense of hope, if I can help it.

Sometimes you have to go to some things that I take along my

happy planner, and I look, you know, I distract myself with,

you know, things that I want to take in this space. Ideas that I

want to be pondering on [Geri: 'This round yourself.'] Yeah,

well, watch my breathing or something, you know, I distract

myself from the day of the terrible meeting and

But I'm always a bit torn by this as well, because I think

what you've said is just so important about just checking in

with ourselves all the time about why we're doing things,

and what are our motivations and where is our center and core

what gives us joy with where we think we can contribute. But I'm

also conscious that we're part of a bigger system, and that to

make the bigger system work, sometimes there are jobs that

need to be done, and that we all need to contribute and that if I

don't play my part, then it puts extra burden on other people, my

colleagues and I sometimes I find it hard, I think it can be

hard to navigate that balance. What are the things that we,

that are to be contributed to even if they're not really part

of our little jolts of joy that we love doing?

Yes, I'm certainly not saying don't contribute. I guess

what I'm saying is find say 'yes' to the spaces and places

to contribute that you're going to like a lot more or that you

find meaningful or that fit into your values. So get out the

university strategic plan. And if it's talking about

sustainability, and that's something that matters to you,

then say 'yes' to the projects that are facilitating that

vision and that strategy, and you know those values. If you're

concerned about the welfare of students and their success, then

certainly in your teaching, you're going to be wanting to

promote that you're going to be wanting to be engaging in the

wider university committees that support students' success, so

I'm certainly not saying don't contribute, but there are

aspects in our everyday life that if we said 'yes' to

everything, we would be overwhelmed, overworked and we

wouldn't be able to focus on what matters to us. So I guess

when I say that question about, you know, does it really matter

to me or someone I love and care about or love or care about?

I've got a wonderful head of school, who's my immediate

supervisor, and she asks us could we ensure that there's

good staff representation at this deadening meeting? Well, I

will go because I care about her and I care about our school and

how our school's represented. But I guess that changes my

framing. So instead of thinking, I've got to go to this meeting,

and if I don't go, I'll look bad, or, you know, it's kind of

a different frame. And so it doesn't have that drain of, I

don't know, no energy or the shoots. Yeah.

Yeah. This it's, you're also reminding me a lot of the

work around strengths that Martin Seligman and his people

have done in the positive psychology area, which is very

much talking about recognizing what your key strengths are, and

bringing them into what you do. And I think that's also sort of

a complimentary viewed to values. It's unseen what your

values are, but also what you're good at and what you can

contribute. And when you're working from your strengths,

you'll also find a place of energy and joy and happiness,

actually.

Yeah, it is being reflective. And joy isn't a word

that we typically associate with academia. And you're absolutely

right. I mean, I think that work by Martin Seligman is important,

that positive education and where we are focusing on our

character strengths, and, you know, I love those character

strength tests where you can actually get some insight into

who you are. I think self understanding is really critical

and because my field is education, I think it's even

more critical, because Parker Palmer, who I love, he says, 'We

teach who we are.'. So you can be, you know, have the best

behavior management strategies in Australia, and like many

countries in the world are a full on about the quality

teaching and assessing the standard of quality of our

teachers and our pre-service teachers. But ultimately,

they're going to teach who they are. And so these kinds of ways

of knowing ourself and values and an emotional intelligence is

all very, very important.

But not reflected in any of our metrics at the moment.

No, but perhaps we can bring it into impact somehow.

So, you said before about being very deliberate and

intentional. And you also talked about working at making changes

locally and making wider changes. You've mentioned a

couple of things about just responding to people and

acknowledging and recognizing. You've talked about some of the

things you're doing now about how you make choices, and reckon

more importantly, why you're making choices. What might be

some other ways that you would talk about being deliberate,

intentional, or effecting local change?

I think it's making time for those human interactions,

whether it's in your research, or whether it's in your

engagement with community or your collegial relationships. So

I was inspired by the slow scholarship work. And, you know,

they have a whole lot of suggestions in their article.

The title of it if people want to search for it is called 'For

slow scholarship, a feminist politics of resistance through

collective action in the neoliberal University'. And

Alison Mountz, M-O-U-N-T-Z is the first author in that.

I'll put links to all of these on the bottom of the

webpage as well, for people to access.

Yes, so some of the strategies that they talk about,

which I guess I've been doing inadvertently, but also, I

guess, since I've been engaging with this kind of writing and

reading, to be more deliberate about is actually talking about

these slow strategies and making time with peers and colleagues

And so I think we need to recognize we need time to think,

to have conversations and to respond to them to listen to

so when you're busy filling in spreadsheets, documenting all

the work that you're doing and your workload, documents and

what they're finding overwhelming. And I guess to

things, it doesn't capture time well, and generally, they try

and limit the time. So I know that at our university, they'll

say, 'Okay, we'll give you a maximum of 25 hours a year for

urge them to say 'no' to those wild expectations of

research supervision, if you're supervising with another

supervisor.', now 25 hours a year, I would use up in three

productivity, and to just do what they can do and be well at

meetings, you know, in terms of reading your students' work and

responding and having conversations. So, you know,

though, that view of time isn't realistic, and it doesn't value

the same time. Also, I think it's things like valuing quality

what we do. So I guess it's having courage and engendering

courage into our, with each other to say, well, let's count

in some different ways. And we do need to value time and we do

over quantity and valuing thinking. And for universities,

need to value thinking. And so some of the things we need to do

is organize spaces and what we do differently. So I think

I feel like thinking is becoming a quality that's actually

things like encouraging writing groups, and encouraging a common

time where you tend to meet in the staff room and just have

conversations like actually having some intentional

getting lost in our effort to please the bean counters.

conversations that you arrange. I think that's important, as

well. And to, I guess one of the biggest things is caring for one

another.

Yeah, we do have the delay here. It's quite interesting. I

was just going to say that Kia Höök talked about having their

fika in Sweden, where they make everyone come and have coffee,

which is an example of that.

Yes, I think taking time to meet to discuss ideas. And often

I mean, I know the pressure myself, I'll go, I'll be in my

office and then people will be calling in and I'll be, you

know, there's a little voice in the back of my head going, I'm

not getting what I was trying to get done, done. I'm having this

conversation and I really need to get my work done and I've got

to actually stop that little voice and go, 'no, this is

important.'. This connection and caring and listening is

important. I need to give time to this, because it matters and

it affects our collegial culture. And I might be the only

person in this person's day, who's going to listen, so I want

to be that person. So you know, it is taking care of others. But

also, I guess the other thing is that we have to take care of

ourselves before we can take care of other people.

So I guess, the thing about my planning that I was talking

about before, I've got a planner where and my little girl

introduced me to it. So we're mad planner addicts. So that

involves stickers and decoration and things like that. So what I

did, I've had a crazy couple of weeks where I just went through

got ahead of myself and I planned way into the future. I'm

up to about September. But all my weekend spots, I've decorated

with pictures of cups of tea and cats and sleeping in and family

pictures and whatever. And so there is no space in my diary

for work tasks. So I used to work on weekends often. And I

used to think I have to work on weekends, because that'll make

it easier for the upcoming week. And it'll take the pressure off.

And it just never did. All it meant was I never got a break.

So just in my planner now that there's absolutely no space to

write in any jobs. I've got reading books, and I've got all

these sort of guilt offerings to say you'll read a book you

won't, you know, and it'll be a chiclet book, it won't be a

theory book. And so I'm making different choices where my

weekends, my sacred self care, family care times and do that's

made a huge difference just doing that. So I still tend to

work long hours, but also they're on things that matter to

me. So they might be on community projects related to

sustainability, or they might be on funding that I want to get to

support an initiative that I think matters for wellbeing. So

I'm still putting in hours, but I guess I'm changing the hours

that I put. You know what I'm focusing that work on. The other

thing I'm trying to do is not

You also talked about a very different energy when

you're doing those things that you care about before. Where you

can still work long hours, but it's a different type of work.

There's a different energy and engagement with that, because

that's work that you do care for.

That's right. It is, it's very different. And I think

that's a signal. It's a signal for us as human beings, because

that tells us, our body tells us and our energy levels tell us

and our creativity levels tell us when something is helpful for

us, and when something is not helpful for us. So I think,

yeah, I think we need to listen to ourselves and take care of

Absolutely. And there's research evidence to support

ourselves. And I was just reading, there's a blog that I

read by Agnes, not sure of his how to say her surname, it's

like "Bossgunner", or something like that. [remark: her surname

is 'Bosanquet'] And she talks about, it's a slow, slow

scholarship blog. And I'll send you the link so that you can put

it there. But she was saying today about not forgetting about

that.

the importance of downtime, that that's a time when often your

Yeah. So I think making time to think and making time to

creative thoughts gel on something that you haven't been

able to solve or work through comes together when you're

having some downtime. So I think we need to stop thinking that

activity means productivity, sometimes slowing right down is

where the productivity happens. So making time to think.

write is really important. And I guess for me, writing has been a

savior. So I don't know whether I'm, you know, some of what I'm

writing about is saying that there is a therapeutic aspect to

it. But I think we all need to be creative, and whether that's

planning or drawing or whatever, but if it can be writing, and

you're writing research papers about something that really

turns you on, and that is part of your values and inspirations,

then I guess you can say you're ticking two boxes there, you're

ticking your work box, but you're also ticking your

personal box. So I think writing is a really wonderful process

and product, if people can lean into writing as research. So

that's definitely been a savior for me as well, because that's a

slowing down process and a thinking process, as well. And

the other thing that I guess I've turned in my writing into

is a collective process. So for a long time, I was sole author

on lots of things. And that wasn't how I wanted it to be, it

was due to my supervisor retired, right at the minute

that my PhD was conferred. And I took those career breaks having

children and when you shift universities, you lose

collaboration links, and things like that. And you have to start

new networks. So there's lots of things like that, that can can

challenge collaboration. But this is why I think finding

like-minded people and caring for one another and writing

groups and writing collectively, they're all wonderful things for

also supporting the productivity of the academic machine while

also being fulfilling for the personal, for the human being.

So I like the way that it doesn't have to be an either or.

No, it's an 'and'.

We can find a way. Yes. And it's finding what that 'and'

is for us as individuals.

Yes. And so you don't always have to say 'no', you

certainly can say 'yes', but it's finding the 'and' in the

'yes'.

Yeah. Are there other things, you talked about the

importance of taking care of ourselves and being well, and

you talked about the way you plan and protect your weekends,

which I love, I'd love to see the planner, maybe you could

send us a picture as well that I put on on the webpage

It's a bit crazy, but yes, I'm happy to do that.

That would be fun. What else do you do to look after

yourself to care for yourself?

I've still got a long way to go. So I've got a to-do list

in a way like so I know I need to fit exercise in much more

firmly into my timetable. And so I'm making decisions like

instead of taking the lift, I will take the stairs and I'm

making decisions to choose healthy meals and to take a

break and not just work right through things to actually get

out of my office and ideally come back and eat with a friend,

so that there is that connection making. So it's those sorts of

things. And I think the other thing, I mean, I read widely and

so I think that's helpful, too. And I follow lots of different

blogs. So I'm interested in preserving my own well being. So

I am also interested in my mental health and my spiritual

health. So I follow blogs like Krista Tippett's on being and am

inspired by that. I read people like Brené Brown and Richard

Rohr, you know, different thinkers. And so I'm giving away

this idea that I have to strive for perfection, that I have to

be somebody that I'm not, that I've got to aspire to be like

that professor or this person, I'm going to be content to be

me, but I want to be the best version of me. So yeah, I think

exposing ourselves to other viewpoints, so we're not just

hearing the university rhetoric, and also to give time to

listening to ourselves, and that voice that says, when you know,

when you're reading something that's meaningful that you go,

this is, so where I am right now, or, this is such wonderful

advice, I'm going to write that down, or I'm going to actually

print out that quote, and put it somewhere where I see it every

day. So I think it's doing stuff like that. And I've even, I

mean, you're going to I'm going to sound like a nutcase a bit to

your listeners. But I think becoming intentional is a visual

thing as well. So I've created a vision board for myself that

actually tracks things that I want to do and be in my work. So

I want to be present. And I definitely want to create, and I

definitely want to write, and I want to spread kindness, and I

want to do no harm. So that's one for 2017. Something that I'm

trying to think about every day is 'Do no harm.'. I think that's

really important in our workplaces, it's so easy to do

harm with our students or with our colleagues or to ourselves.

So I think having some tangible things that represent your

vision, and you know, for me, I'm a visual person. So I like a

vision board type thing, rather than writing a list of goals. I

don't like goals that I have to meet particularly. Yeah. But I

guess, if they're in a nice planner form with a sticker

maybe.

I like that. But I like the fact that this vision board

wasn't just about doing and achieving, but being. [Ali:

Yes.] And that the aspects that you are being and doing for

covered, you know, work productivity things, as well as

caring for colleagues, as well as caring for yourself.

Yeah, I think that is just spot on. In Australia, we have

an early years framework called, I've just had a mind blank, but

it's 'being' are 'becoming' are key words in there and I should

note, because I refer to it all the time. 'being, belonging and

becoming'. And I think those three words are really important

for us all. And that being an educator is just as important as

doing. You're doing the work of an educator. So I love that

focus on being and becoming and being versus doing, because I

think we get caught up that we have to do all these things. And

maybe if we are being a certain way as we do certain things,

that's the difference. It's not the doing of lots of things that

matters in the end. It's who we are when we do them.

Yeah. And the becoming also is really nice, because it

says that we're on a journey that we can always be learning

and exploring. That it is a process. It's not a destination,

is in to, you know, use a cliche.

That's right and I think with becoming, it takes the

pressure off. So there'll be days where you are steamrolled

by the academic machine and you have a shitty day and things

don't work out and you snapped at somebody or you've, you know,

you didn't, you weren't the person that you wanted to be.

But you can just wake up the next day and it's a fresh day

and you can become into that person the next day and we're

always becoming.

Lovely. I wonder sort of be looking at it just wrapping

up a little bit, but I'd like to read something that you wrote on

an article that you pointed me to on the research whisperer

website that I think is just lovely and just reflects also so

much of what you have talked about here and your presence

here with us in this discussion, you know, and I say us with

everyone who's been listening. And just reading from what you

wrote, and this article is called 'Saved by slow

scholarship', you say, 'It's important to shed light on our

academic experiences to make public the stories of what it is

felt like and feels like to be an academic. It's important that

collective conversations about academic culture and what

constitutes our social, political and intellectual life

in the academy can take place. We need to share our findings on

what matters to us and how we might cultivate kindness in the

academy, foster careful work and count that which is not being

counted. And I just want to thank you so much Ali for for

living and being that here. Are there any sort of final thoughts

that you would have, or any things that you would like to

say, still?

No, I just like to thank you for the opportunity of

talking with you and with your listeners and just, I guess,

that we need to find spaces of hope, and be differently in

academia by being ourselves.

And you're a great role model for that process and

seeing what that is. And I guess, we could encourage people

to look at what might be their own version of the wise women

writing group. And I recall, Katherine Isbister, talking

about a group of friends who have a call together, I think

she said every week or every fortnight just to support one

another and check-in. And it seems like, you know, that's her

version of what might be your wise women writing group. So

maybe there's also encouragement for us to see about how we can

within our local context and with people that we connect

with, find our own groups as well and start growing that.

That's right. And I should say, I mean, I'm not being that

good at adding to these sites. But as part of this process, I

have created a couple of websites as spaces and

resources. And like I said, I follow lots of blogs. So I

encourage people to find their own meaningful resources and

blogs and websites. But I have created two websites, if people

are interested in looking at them. One is, it's called

wisewomen.world. And there, I've put a range of different

resources, inspirational TED talks, writing ideas, just a

range of different things, I guess, to help us start

listening and gaining inspiration to what matters to

us. And then the other website that I've created is called

thewomenwhowrite.com. So it's actually got the 'the' in front,

because women who write was already taken by somebody else.

So that's someone else's group. So if you go to

thewomenwhowrite.com, there's also some links there about what

we're trying to do as a wider writers' group. But I think it's

important that you find local connections, because it's harder

virtually, with people that you don't know, to kind of, say,

'let's ride together'. So what you can do is put conferences

and writing ideas and support blogs and things there. But I

think whilst these websites and resources can be supportive and

helpful, really, it's in the everyday interactions with those

nearby that I think is going to make the difference with people

who are perhaps already in our lives that we just need to

cultivate some stronger relationships or set some goals,

like we did. Let's write a memoir, and just engage in a

slow writing process and see where that takes us. So you

don't need to actually identify what the exact output's going to

be. But maybe you set upon a process.

And the key thing in that process is just the connecting

with one another. [Ali: Exactly.] And as you said, the

listening, sharing and responding.

Yes, yes, yeah.

Well, you're a wonderful woman. Thank you for sharing.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you, Geraldine.

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