Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital joins me on this episode. A psychologist and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging advocate, we talk about research and springs from personal experience and who gets to sit at the table.
Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital joins me on this episode. A psychologist and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging advocate, we talk about research and springs from personal experience and who gets to sit at the table.
Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital joins me on this episode. A psychologist and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging advocate, we talk about research and springs from personal experience and who gets to sit at the table.
Hello listeners. Welcome to the agile academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. This season, I talked with my special guests from all over academia about purpose values and what it means to be an advocate in higher ed for students, for labor, for kindness, and for balance and self-care. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark.
Hi, Buffie. Thanks so much for being with me today.
Buffie Longmire-Avital: Thank you for having me.
RPR: So why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about yourself to get us started?
BLA: Sure. Well, I am a recently promoted full professor of psychology. I'm super excited. And in fact, I made a little bit of history because I'm a first African American or kind of black identified faculty member to earn the rank of full in the College of Arts and Sciences at Elon University. So I'm yeah. Riding a little bit of a, a high note. <laugh> right now. Uh, but my focus in scholarly area is really always centered on understanding the psychosocial development of black identified communities, particularly how it relates to health risk behaviors. I focus a lot on the experience of systemic racism and how we internalize that racism in forms of stress. And what does that mean for our overall health and wellbeing? The behaviors, the decisions, our mental health in terms of depression, as well as our eating. And I tend to focus a lot on that college student age. And then I do a little bit of work looking at the experience or trying to understand the experience of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, emerging adults as well, especially in historically white spaces.
And then in addition to all of that, I focus a lot on mentorship and what mentorship looks like and high impact practices when you are taking a, an equitable and kind of critical race theory approach. And so I've been doing that for about, since about 2008, I've really shifted and, and focused on that while maintaining this other area of research. And then when I am not teaching, when I'm not doing research, when I'm not just being a mom and all of those things outside, I'm also directing the Black Lumen Project, which is an equity initiative at Elon University, and really centering on how we are remembering how we are embracing how we are protecting and uplifting the black experience at the university across all levels. So student, faculty, staff, and also considering the intersections with the black community in the external area.
RPR: Wow. I think the listeners are probably wondering when you sleep.
BLA: <laugh> I do sleep <laugh> I probably have, I, I think I'm suffering a little bit from that your brain is going so often that I typically need to read when I should be sleeping, but eventually I do sleep, but it is a goal of mine to sleep a little bit more. <laugh> not that I've gotten full.
RPR: There you go. Sleep hygiene is very important for yes, it is at any point to our, yeah. To our mental health. So I've been jumping right in with folks, um, this season. So as I've mentioned before, this season is really about kind of purpose and values and advocacy work, which you've already mentioned all the wonderful things that you're doing, that all fit into those categories. So I'm curious, what would you say that your purpose is in higher education?
BLA: I think my purpose has always centered around being the face and the voice that I wish I had seen when I was navigating higher education myself. I struggled a lot with wondering whether or not I needed to be in higher education, whether or not that was even a potential path for me, partly because I didn't see anyone who looked like me, who had a similar lived experience as myself. And it just made me kind of automatically assume that this was just not an option. And I am grateful to people along the way that said, no, do this. You can do this. You should be here. We need you here. We want you here. And it hasn't always been easy. I'm thankful for those embraces, but I've faced a lot of obstacles, but, uh, really, and truly, which what has pushed me forward has been this desire to kind of, as we would say, in Hamilton, being in the room where it happens and not just to observe, but to really serve as an advocate to remind people that there are other voices, I just took a leadership style quiz and it said I'm a postmodern leader.
So I center a lot around voice and experience as opposed to just position and, um, I believe in experiential kind of knowledge, experiential epistemology. So those are really kind of central to, to, to my purpose. And I think all of the work that I've done really kind of aligns with that.
RPR: Would you tell us a little bit more about how those, those, that purpose and those values come, come out in your day to day work?
BLA: Absolutely. I, I mean, I think, you know, I'm the person in the meeting that is often saying, well, what would this mean? Or how would this feel for someone who isn't at the center, right? Let's not forget the margins and not focus on just bringing the margins to the center in terms of assimilating, but what can we learn from those who have historically occupied the margins and why are we even having those margins what's going on there? So I am that person in meetings. I think I'm also that person in spaces when we are working towards developing things, that's constantly looking at those connections and being extra mindful of context and asking us to sit and kind of reflect for a second. What does this really mean? If we do this, who is this really benefiting? Are we thinking it's approaching, uh, benefiting everyone? Or is it only benefiting those that kind of fit the mold already?
And what does that mean? What is, what is our responsibility to everyone who could come in contact and what is our responsibility to those who really haven't had those opportunities before? I think that I take on a lot of students in informal and informal mentorship, any person who kind of says, can I just kind of have a moment to sit down and talk with you and learn about your experience to, to share with you where I am in my journey, I have a very hard time saying no. So students will come through my office and, and will end up meeting for coffee or lunch, or, you know, over zoom now because we've been virtual. And I enjoy very much, again, listening to their story and helping them craft a pathway forward. And I am someone that recognizes that a student may do this and then need to kind of go off and try it and then come back.
So I have a little bit of a revolving door and it's fun to see people two, three years down the road, kind of coming back in and saying, all right, let's, let's check in again. Here's what I'm I'm doing. So I think those are other, that's another kind of big area and an example that really reflects that, that purpose and that level of advocacy, um, that I bring. And I also do this first staff as well.
I I'll give a perfect example. We had someone who was working as an adjunct, but a position became available and this wasn't in my department and they really, really wanted to go for this permanent position. And they, they were not new. I mean, they were weren't new to academia, but they certainly were new to the search process. And I had served on a number of search committees and chaired search committees. And so we made time to meet and I really looked at their material and kind of coached them through what they needed to be doing all the while. Recognizing that one, that things like that bring me joy. I love sharing my knowledge, but I also realize that, especially when you're from certain socio sociodemographic or positionality groups, you may not feel as comfortable asking others, or there's an assumption that if you don't do it yourself, then it's an indication that you're not prepared when we all could use a little bit of coaching. And so I'm happy to fill that role as well.
RPR: It's amazing how much of yourself that you give to your students and to your colleagues. Um, and how do you take care of yourself as you're taking all of that on as well?
BLA: So that's been the big journey for me that I am really now starting to recognize how to put more boundaries around the need to really take that time for myself. Because what people don't see is that this is very much the same approach that I take in terms of being a wife and a mother as well, and a daughter. So I recognized at a point in my life that I was just really depleting the tank and that I was losing kind of the anchor that I needed to be the anchor for others. And I will do things like I'm an avid kickboxer. I mean, it just <laugh>, it is developed. It's also, you know, when you are years ago, people used to joke when I was younger, that they, I reminded them of, uh, the black police officer in Police Academy, where she has this very kind of sweet and soft voice and is, you know, please until you tick her off.
And then, you know, you hear this other voice emerge and I can say this because I do get it. I understand the, the, the comparison. Um, <laugh> I see the similarities. So kickboxing has been fantastic for those moments where I just wanna get out that steam, but it's been something that I could really commit to. And I make a point on those days that I've mapped off or roped off saying, this is my time in the morning. I'm gonna do this, that I will not schedule anything until maybe an hour or two out. And that gives me an opportunity to get in there, get sweaty and stinky and gross and come back, have breakfast, compose myself, shower, put my kind of professional self back on, and then I'm ready to meet and I'm ready to be present, but I do not allow that time to be taken away unless it is really an emergency.
I started running and I'm not a runner. I, um, I think my upper body moves faster than my lower body. I think I'm running fast. And then I see myself in a reflection going by and I'm like, oh, this is more of a walk. And it's okay, because the importance is that I'm out there listening to music. I'm, you know, allowing my mind to just wander and merge with the sounds of nature and the sites, and just really being present in the moment. And I have started swimming recently as well. Um, just stealing little moments of way away to go to the gym that has the pool and just taking some laps. And, you know, when I come up from the water, I can look outside and there are the trees and I can just float for a little bit and, and be still because when I'm going, going, going, I realize that my mo my motor really does burn out.
RPR: Yeah. And obviously my work is in burnout recently and my, my own experience in burnout. So I think it is important. You, you mentioned kind of putting your work persona back on in a way, right. having, having those things be separate, but integrated in different ways and figuring out if there's a balance, if it is more integration, what that looks like. Um, I certainly didn't have any balance whatsoever. It was, it was very much all go, go, go all the time. So it's, it's so important to hear folks really explaining how they are taking care of taking care of ourselves. And we know from the research that part of closing a stress cycle is physical motion and physical movements. to kind of cut that out. So I think it's really important to make sure that we're sharing those stories about how we do take care of ourselves as well. And it's not. And I say this a lot. It's not just a pedicure. It's not just a massage, which are wonderful in the moment, but there needs to be these larger self care. We mentioned sleep hygiene, right? making sure that those things are, are present in our lives as well.
BLA: Yeah. I started to bullet journaling and I think that's been really helpful in kind of just mapping out my week as opposed to living from my phone. I actually feel a little naked when I don't have my journal and I haven't done that week. And it's one just the process of sitting down at the beginning of the week and mapping out, all right, what do I have to do right now? What are gonna be my to dos, the major things for giving myself for the fact that something I scheduled for this day, I couldn't get to, and I've gotta shift it over to another day. But it also just, when I laid it all out, I started realizing, where am I stacking things? And where do I need to put in more time for, for myself. And I committed to my self-care. I made that kind of, it was, you know, it's a mark in the journal. This is some, this is an appointment, just like my class time, just like my meeting. It is an appointment. I, that means that if you wanna schedule something at this time, I have a conflict. And I feel more confident in saying that because I've listed it out this way.
RPR: Hmm. That's something I, that I aspire to looking at. Some of the, some of the research on kind of health and, and wellbeing and, and mental health like being able to do that, to schedule something like that. And it's just another thing that you do, right? It's not something that you have to work for and necessarily think about, you don't have to kind of talk yourself into it or talk yourself out of it. It just becomes something that you do. And it is an appointment with yourself and you have to be able to, to hold that sacred for yourself, right. Because no one else is gonna do it.
BLA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
RPR: I wanna switch gears a little bit and go back to your work with, um, representing underrepresented and historically excluded students colleagues. So can you talk a little bit about where that passion came from? You talked a little bit earlier about it coming from personal experience. So, so what are some of the ways that you really got into that work?
BLA: Well, I mean, it really was a personal experience. I think I lean on this one example a lot, but, and, and for a variety of different things, but I think it really illustrates my point. Uh, so I went to NYU for graduate school and I was in a program for applied psychology and it was like social development. And we were taking a course. I was in a school of education, the Steinhardt School for Culture, Education, and Human Development. I think they kind of changed the name. So I'm pretty sure that's what it's still called, but I know it's Steinhardt <laugh> and we were reading a book called Ain't No Making It. And I'd never heard of the book before. It's a big education sociological, you know, book and being in a school of education. We were thinking about these concepts. We were, you know, maybe unintentionally being prepped to be somewhat of saviors in ways, but we were reading this book and just the chapter or two into it.
I realized that I knew exactly the neighborhoods that they were talking about. It's about a group of young men that is followed by the sociologists. And there are just struggles of trying to navigate high school and, and these crushing oppressive Sy, uh, systems and how, even though they have the drive, there are still these structural barriers in place that are both tangible and intangible that make it real, almost nearly impossible for them to kind of get through. And as I was reading this book, I realized that the reason why I knew these neighborhoods and knew kind of these areas was because this is exactly where I grew up and not in a, like I can relate, but in a, literally these were the neighborhoods. These were the streets that I, I grew up on and sitting in that room and being the only person of color at the moment and the youngest by far, and knowing my background as a first gen student, who'd always gotten either need based aid or merit scholarships.
And I think had always been labeled as kind of with this almost shock that I was in the space because how did she get there? I really realized the importance of me using my voice in that moment, because some of the students were starting to unpack that story in a way that wasn't really authentic to the experience of being in those communities and not recognizing the kind of community cultural wealth that came out of those neighborhoods.
And that was really one of the second experiences I had the first experience, not with this book was sitting in my junior year in college. We opened our abnormal textbook and I grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I think that's also why a lot of times my neighborhood kind of ends up in books. It was kind of the backyard of both Harvard and MIT, but we opened this book and there's a picture of a man who's wearing these kind of funky shorts and tops, and is on a roller on roller skates. And he's got a boom box and a big ‘fro. And the tagline is, is, is this normal? Is he normal? Right. And I think that they were trying to get at the assumptions that we make, but I remember laughing hysterically. And my teacher is, you know, my professor's looking at me, what is going on here? I said, I know him like this was somebody from my neighborhood. And he was an older gentleman who just, everybody knew my mom ran kind of, um, a meal service out of our, our church when we were growing up. And he used to frequent it because a lot of, uh, senior citizens who are on fixed incomes would come to churches for, for meals. And so I grew up knowing him, grew up, grew up seeing him around Cambridge. And it, that was just, that was my normal. And so the idea that it was being debated in this classroom without this larger context, um, was terrifying for me, the same experience I had when looking in observing how people were talking about this book.
And I realized then the importance of being in the room. I think there's a danger in trying to be the representative, but certainly someone who can say you may not know the full story. So let's stick to the facts that we have right now. Let's recognize that we don't have everything and ask ourselves again, who's not here or is it okay for us to be just talking about this narrative, this story, without that person having delivered it themselves, what is, what does that mean? So I think that was kind of the, really the genesis of my work around using my scholarship, using my service throughout the university and other spaces that I've been in to push back on narratives, to provide counter narratives and really to provide pathways forward for people to just tell their own stories and, and learn from the actual person, as opposed to the interpretation that somebody is giving.
RPR: I think it's really powerful to, to share that perspective and that kind of foundation for the work that you do. So can you tell us a little bit more about the research that you do that helps us understand some of those experiences as well, or folks who are not part of that experience?
BLA: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I focus on is not doing comparative studies, I've done a few and I didn't like them. And ironically, those were the studies that, that those were the research studies that I was able to get published. <laugh> the fastest, because it was like, oh, clearly this group compared to this group, but I really have made it a point in doing work. Uh, that is, for example, exploring the way race related stress might be related to emotional eating or understanding the ways that African American young women are navigating relationships and selecting partners of really focusing on a particular group of particular experience and pushing us to see the nuance and the various different points of experience perspectives that are there instead of just focusing on what is the average for this group and how does it compare with this other average?
The one comparison that I will say, I think I needed to do was looking at the depression rates for women who identified as white, who were enrolled in college in comparison to black women who were enrolled in, in, in college. And that research yielded kind of these shocking results. We saw that the white women, the white identified women had a rate of depression of about one in five were meeting criteria for major depression or chronic depression. The black women had a rate of one in two, and that was shocking. And when we started to try my student and I, we were saying, how do we explain this? What is going on? Because they're so similar on everything else we added in the measures around race related stress. And we realized that really just explained a lot, because when you just asked about perception of a perceived stress, you know, everyday hahas, they were pretty similar.
The black women may have been actually a little bit lower, but when you added in the race related stress, or I would say disaggregated it, so pulled it out and really held it under the microscope on its own. It explained so much. And I saw that again, when I started doing research with mothers who were balancing being professionals and raising children, particularly mothers of girls. And my questions were really about how are you teaching, preparing your daughter for the experience of gendered racism. And in addition to that, what are the stressors that you are caring? How are you navigating this space, your own gendered potential, your own potential gendered racism that you are encountering as well as just the stress of being a, a, a parent being a, a professional. So having a job, even if you're not having a job, you know, just life, you know, how are you navigating this?
And what was so interesting was that a lot of times the women, when we would look at the scores, the scores for perceived stress seemed about average, actually, maybe a little bit lower than average. It seemed like I'm not that stressed at all. Right. But then when we actually asked them to tell us what you're stressed about, totally different picture, right? So you are carrying all these stressors, but you've convinced yourself in some way that, that stress doesn't count, that it doesn't matter as much. In addition, you're carrying the stress of not only being a woman of color yourself, but of being terrified for what your child is going to encounter as a, uh, as a girl and, and, and future woman, uh, of color. And I don't think that I would've gotten there. I don't think I would've gotten that nuance if I had really just stayed in this point of comparison, or I had just used these kind of basic generalized measures.
So I, I do research that really allows us to dive into the context of a particular group and sit in it in all its messiness to really understand what that experience is about. And I think when that is done, it, it, it creates an opportunity for someone who doesn't have that lived experience to read that and not look for how look, not look to see how they relate to it, but to really have to sit and embrace that themselves. Um, on the flip, I will say when I'm doing my work on more professional development side, so I do a lot of training, uh, for other institutions of higher education and non-profit groups around diversity inclusion and, and racial equity. I always start with positionality. I do not think that you can do any of this work, that you can really understand anybody else's perspective until you understand and acknowledge your own perspective.
And it's always there, it's just part of the air. So we don't recognize right, that we, we are leading with this perspective. So we have to bring it to the forefront. We have to acknowledge the fact that we have had these specific experiences in life, um, that these experiences have led to a particular lens. And perhaps we make decisions. We make assumptions by leaning into that lens. And the only way we're going to really truly empathetically relate to somebody else is if we allow ourselves to that opportunity or reflection of thinking about who we are and why we are who we are,
RPR: Thank you for sharing your research with us and, and for continuing to open, open eyes. And I'm curious, maybe if the, have you done any research about how the, the pandemic, for example, might have impacted mental health issues for students?
BLA: I have, I've actually done two studies in the pandemic. So the first study was looking at black women who were living in the Southeastern area of kind of the us who were also living with a diagnosis of HIV. And my collaborators. I do a lot of work with community partners. And so I was working with one community partner who specifically focuses on women of color, who are living with a diagnosis of HIV. And we were just really curious what is going on in those very earliest days of the pandemic when we were all in lockdown, this is a group that is potentially immunocompromised. You know, how are they navigating? What were those, what were their concerns? And what we saw was there was a clear relationship between fatigue and loneliness. So the more fatigued the women felt, the lonelier, they felt the more the lonelier, they felt, the more fatigue they felt, and that fatigue was specific to being a woman of color.
Also navigating this pandemic, because what we forget is that at the surge of the pandemic, as we were surging up in this pandemic, we were also seeing this surge in this endemic of racism, right? Because this is also the time of Brionna Taylor in George Floyd and Amaud Arbery had just, uh, the killings of killing of Amad Arbery had just happened. And so we were starting to go into protests and, and I mean, all of that was taking a toll. And so the women really reported on things like there was this clear fear of, of potentially contracting COVID and not knowing what this could do to them. There was a fear of if they did get COVID and they were, and, and their bodies did not respond. What did this mean about the roles that they held? Like if they were a mother, a sister, a caregiver, themselves, a, a wife or a, or another form of partner, they worried about not being there for those individuals.
They worried about the financial strains and even just getting their medication. Some talked about the fact that, you know, we had a ethically slowed down postal service during this time. And while some of us were, and I'm guilty of this mad that our old Navy leggings were taking a little bit too long to come. There were other people who were really concerned about the fact that they needed to continue taking their medication, and the only way they were gonna get their medication was through the mail. And so that really put in, uh, perspective. And as a result of that research, we actually decided to, uh, apply for a grant, which we got, and we created an actually a social networking, like an online social networking site, something similar to Facebook, but particularly for black women who are living with the diagnosis of HIV, it was an opportunity for them to create community and space, as well as an opportunity to get connected to experts that could potentially allay some of the fears, uh, of the unknown that they were facing.
And we've been running that site for about a year and a half now. And that's been amazing. The other study I did was with a student and we were really interested in how COVID was having an impact on black young women, particularly black collegiate young women. And we were interested in understanding not only what they were doing for self-care, but what they were doing in terms of their self-contemplative practices. So really being mindful and present in the moment, because what we found is people were losing time, a lot in the pandemic. It was easy. You had so much time that you were actually losing it at the same time, because you didn't have the same anchors. And we added in an element around self-compassion. And then the other kind of element we added in was this notion of kind of this pressure to be this magical black girl, this strong black woman, which is in opposition of identifying and, and, and letting people know that you're stressed.
You just keep saying yes to everything and doing everything cause I'm supposed to be magical and I'm, I'm super strong. And so we were not sure how that was playing a role in this, particularly because when we looked at those protests, a lot of the leaders in that moment and previously had been women of color. And we know that a lot of the women of color that were leading social movements have later come out and talked about the health implications of being in that role and the stress that comes with it. And again, we saw this, we saw a very similar responses, not as much around the loneliness and the fatigue, but we did see the fatigue there. What we saw was more so that the more likely you endorsed this persona, that you were super strong, that you were meant to not share your feelings, that as a black woman, you just had to kind of keep the hustle, keep pushing forward.
The less likely you engaged in self-kindness in terms of beliefs, um, other forms of self-compassionate beliefs, mindfulness, and endorse this notion of a, kind of a common humanity that you two are human and we make mistakes. And when we saw this, we saw this as an opportunity to actually create an intervention. And so we created an eight week virtual intervention to really reframe this strong black woman persona to center. This notion of being selfish around engaging self-care and self-contemplative and self-compassionate practices. And so we were able to, my student really did this with her, her research prize that she won, but she was able to interview other experts in the field like myself and other people that I worked with all women of color, just having dialogue with her and giving tips on how to kind of start shifting these mindsets and deconstructing the strong black woman persona into one again, that said, it's okay to be selfish.
It's okay to kind of take this time for yourself. But it was really interesting seeing, knowing already that the rates of things like binge eating, uh, emotional eating, uh, anxiety, depression were already high. And then you throw this in as well. We knew we were gonna see these spikes and we were really in tune to, well, what do we need to kind of, what do we need to find to combat this? And it seemed like either one kind of this critical space, this counter space where you can be your authentic self, particularly for women who were navigating this chronic health condition. And for others, it was real skills on how to actually be selfish. Like I'm saying, I'm getting my hair done. My, my, my nails done great. I'm taking maybe a bath, but really pushing that boundary of self care saying, I'm actually not going to do something today. I'm just gonna sit and be, I'm gonna think for a moment. And I'm gonna allow myself to do that without guilt and, and, and embrace this, this, this idea of being selfish,
RPR: Right with selfish and selfish, not being a selfish term. Right. What other words do we have? <laugh>
BLA: Right. Well, and I always talk about this idea of, I kind of make the comparison when you're flying on a plane and you're flying with someone else. And even if you're not, they say when the, if the oxygen masks come on, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to put it on yourself first, because if you don't put it on yourself, first is a good possibility that you're also not even gonna get it on the person that you think you're helping, that you're gonna jeopardize both of your lives. So put it on you first and then get it on that person. So it, we acknowledge the fact that you want to help, that you want to be part of the change, but you cannot sustain that. You cannot do that. Well, if you are not kind of refilling your tank, making sure that the oxygen is flowing through, uh, fully through your body.
RPR: Absolutely. And it feels like self-care became such a hot topic during the course of the pandemic. And I, I, I felt that there's been a wave of real vulnerability to talk about mental health in ways that we haven't talked about it in so long, um, which is so important and, and thinking about self-care and, you know, people wearing buttons that say self-care is not selfish. I have a sweatshirt that says it's cool to talk about mental health, right. Just, just to just bring that to the forefront and make sure people are having that conversation.
BLA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's a part of our health. If we are acknowledging kind of the, who definition of health, it it's, it's mental, it's social, it's physical. You could expand that to spiritual, economic. I mean, it is comprehensive. This is one of the things that I'm constantly teaching my students when I teach health psychology. So you cannot have one and not consider the others, but I do think what we have now is this beautiful opportunity where people aren't under embracing the buzz word, but they don't necessarily have the skills. Because even though we're saying, this is okay, we want this. We are not actively taking opportunities to really focus on teaching people how to do it and how to do it in a sustainable way. You know, if you think self-care is just kind of pampering yourself, well, what happens when you don't have the funds or what happens when something else comes up?
You're like, ah, alright, I'll put that off. But it's really, you know, that self-care really is extending to the ability to just breathe and be in space with yourself without distractions and to truly embrace and love yourself and recognize you cannot do it all. And to know when you need help and how to actually ask and find that help as well. So we need to really focus on teaching those skills and providing those pathways beyond just the, the buttons are great and a great reminder mm-hmm <affirmative>, but how do we really make that? How do we really make it accessible to get the, the detailed support that's really, truly needed?
RPR: Right. Focusing on those, on that actual there's an actual skill associated, actual skills associated with, with taking care of yourself with self care with self-compassion I often think, and, and talk about with the burnout work, just boundaries being self-care being able to set and absolutely hold a boundary.
BLA: Yeah.
RPR: So how, how do we help people do that? When I certainly have my <laugh> my struggles with it, like we all do, how do we set those boundaries? How do we, how do we demonstrate that for our students and for our colleagues and for our peers as well, that it's okay to have these boundaries and it's okay to take care of yourself as you need to?
BLA: Right. And it's okay to pivot. I think that's a really big thing that you have to be able to pivot. We put ourselves on these paths. We say, here's our dream board. Here's our five year plan or our 10 year plan. And we are running, we're running the race. And I remember someone saying to me, it is okay to stop in the middle of that run turnaround, and really look at how far you've run because you're running and running and running, and you're not recognizing how far you've already come. And so you are constantly pushing for, for, for more. And you also need to recognize that sometimes you have a plan, but things come up and you need to make the pivot and making the pivot is okay, the path may lead to that final outcome or it'll lead to another outcome. And that's okay as well.
RPR: Mm-hmm I wanna switch gears a little bit to obviously still related, but thinking about, you mentioned your students work mm-hmm <affirmative> and thinking about your advocacy as a mentor and for mentorship. So when you think about mentoring, how would you kind of define that act or that process?
BLA: So when I, I wrote some papers on this and I think for me, it really crystallized while I was actually in the pandemic and watching my sons play a game of Monopoly <laugh> so I have a 12 year old and a nine year old at the time that I was writing this. I think that we're, they were about 10 and, and, um, 10 and eight or, well, yeah, 10 and six. So a little bit, 10 and seven. If I can do math, there we go. <laugh> about 10 and seven. I'm like, what is the math here? And we were outside playing monopoly. And the 10 year old had kind of picked up on strategy. It was Junior Monopoly. And the reality is you roll the dice, you land on a square, you just pick it up. Like you just buy it. If you have the money, just buy it.
And it ultimately at the end, the winner is whoever had the most property, because if you roll and you just keep ending up on their property, you're gonna end up having to pay rent, all these things. And my youngest was so excited about having the opportunity of just having money in his monopoly junior money in his hand, that he really did not wanna part with it. He really did not wanna buy all of these properties. And so he was holding on to something that really captured his eye. And we recognized pretty quickly that he was gonna lose this game and he was getting so frustrated. And my son could have, my oldest could have easily used this moment to just kind of obliterate him. <laugh> like knock him out of the game. And instead he started making these intentional pivots. He started saying, okay, well, let's make a rule that if you have less than this, that you only have to pay this amount.
And that if you have less than this, you get a little bit more back so that you can keep playing the game. And what I realized was he was not letting his brother win. He knew that his younger brother was never going to win this particular game, but by keeping him in the game, he was giving him an opportunity to learn it. So that the next time he played his strategy would be better. His strategy would be informed. He still might not win at that time, but eventually he would do it. And he was doing this in such a way that didn't make his younger brother feel like he was getting a handout, that he was just being given the win. And I wasn't quick enough to think about this. I would've just said, oh, it's okay. And it's fine. You know, and, and, and like I would've given in and just kind of started purposely, um, losing, making, making bad decisions on purpose.
This is essentially how I play all of my Candyland <laugh> games, so he could win. And I recognized then that, you know, I wasn't going about this the right way. And it was in this moment where I really saw for me, mentorship is this idea that you want this person in the game more than you yourself want to win, and you want them in the game to not just eventually win, but so that they can understand how it's. And that definition for me, or that terminology I use is really this idea around critical mentorship. So you are really paying attention to what are the strengths that the person is bringing, not just the deficits in what you have to teach them, but what they're already bringing and how can you kind of really customize create an experience, a dynamic, a relationship that is en engages mutual vulnerability that acknowledges their need for self-care, your own need for self-care, and is ultimately preparing that individual for the next step that they need to take, not the next step you believe they need to take.
And so in that moment, here's this little 10 year old who I think just didn't want to end the game. He wanted the game to continue going. So he found a way that was humane, that was authentic and aligned with where his brother was to keep him in without saying, Hey, I'm giving you a handout, right? Or, Hey, I'm reducing the standards to kind of keep you in, which is, I think a lot of the ways that we sometimes create programs in, in opportunities is more an acknowledgement that for some of us, we haven't been in the game that long. So we are not aware of all the, the, the twists and turns the possibilities we are learning on the fly, and we have to get, we have to, we need time to learn that. And that's what a mentor does. It is not simply saying, take this step, take this step, take this step to take, take this step. It is really, and truly maneuvering how you were working through the game to keep you in it so that you can learn yourself.
RPR: That's a really exciting way to think about mentoring. I, I come from a coaching background. So I think about coaching versus mentoring versus consulting versus therapy. And that, that sense of really your, your passion is to keep that person going, keep that person in the game to keep seeing them develop and championing them and, and supporting them as they go through what they're going through. Um, as they're learning specifically is a, is a really exciting way to think about that.
BLA: Yeah. It just, it made sense. It was that moment. Right. And I wouldn't, I probably would not have had that moment. Have we not had the pandemic? Right. And had I not given myself the boundary of, I just need to play with my kids right now and not be doing work. And then lo and behold, they gave me the key and their interaction, um, to what I needed to, to, to do, to kind of finish out this, this larger thought piece that I had been working on.
RPR: I wanna go ahead and respect your time and start wrapping up. So I'm, I'm thinking about P pulling all of the threads together. And when you're speaking to maybe women in a higher ed or around higher ed, what are some of the takeaways that you want them to remember from your research, from your perspective on mentoring and working with students, what would you like to make sure people take away?
BLA: I think one, you have to find the pace that works for you. I, I think that I had an, I know I've had an epiphany where I realized I had been running on somebody at somebody else's pace for a very long time. I mean, that's why the list of things that I do <laugh> was so long, and I'm really trying to pivot to a space where I am finding a pace that really works for me and surrounding myself with individuals who again, want me in the game, they may be playing it themselves and learning, and we're learning together. But the, I am around individuals who are not trying to kind of knock out players, but really are trying to keep players in those spaces. So I think it's critical to, to, to look for that. I think it's very easy as, as women, especially based off because of the experiences of sexism and oppression.
And especially when you are intersecting that with, with race to dismiss the stress that you are navigating to hide it and think that you just need to keep pushing, keep pushing, but eventually you are going to run against a, a wall, perhaps a wall that you've constructed yourself, that you're just not going to be able to push through because you are so tired. So taking those moments and, and, and, and really committing to taking those moments, to breathe, to pause, to get your strength to where it needs to be is not a, an endorsement of being that kind of strong woman, but more so that, that selfish woman that is going to sustain the, the strength that she needs to have. And I think the other thing that I would kind of say in pulling this together is that I have valued greatly from people who expressed mutual vulnerability that modeled the vulnerability that I wanted to express myself.
I think it's really imperative to have people in your life that where you can say, I'm not okay. I need to have a moment cry. And I know that this person is not keeping a catalog of all of these times that I, I just need to be in my feelings. I need to ruminate, or I need to scream or whatever. And, and is just recognizing that this is part of the process and that they know that I will be that person for them as well. So I, I really think that there is an important, uh, importance in finding mutually vulnerable spaces. And I think a good mentor can, can be that to some extent, right? Not every mentor is meant to be that, but a good particular mentor can, can offer that as well. And then I'll, I guess I'll end with this. I realized, especially during the pandemic that you can't sprint a marathon.
RPR: Very true. Very true. I think we all have to remember that as well in so many different aspects of our work in our lives.
RPR: It was so great chatting with you today. Thank you so much for joining me.
BLA: Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful.
RPR: Thanks for listening to this episode of the agile academic podcast for women in higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did to make sure you don't miss an episode. Follow the show on apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode, a transcript and shownotes theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care, and stay well.