Katie Rose Guest Pryal on Mental Health, Neurodiversity, and Being Well

On season 4 episode 6 of the agile academic, I’m joined Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal, law professor, speaker, and author. We talk about neurodiversity and mental health, stigma in higher ed, and being well. 

Transcript

Welcome to the Agile Academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. In each episode, we tackle topics from career vitality to burnout, and everything in between. Join me as I chat with inspiring women about their experiences pursuing purpose, making change, and driving culture in the academy and beyond. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope Ruark.

Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Hi Katie. Thanks for being on the show today.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal: Hi. Thank you for having me.

RPR: Great. So why don't you just tell the audience just a little bit about yourself and the work that you do in and around higher education.

KP: Sure. I am a law professor and have been for about 20 years, and I am a writer and I am a speaker, and I go around to campuses all over the country and give talks about mental health and neurodiversity, which is my main area of expertise.

RPR: I always like to jump in, kind of right into the deep end with the show. And when I think about higher ed culture, I like to think about some of the more positive aspects of higher ed culture and focus on things like purpose, compassion, connection, and balance. So what would you say defines your purpose in the work that you do and why?

KP: I have a phrase that I like to use to define my goal in my work, and the phrase is this, accessibility is for everyone. And the term accessibility is one we use when we talk about disability. It is not the same as accommodations, and we can talk about that later if you'd like. But more importantly, moving forward, when I say accessibility is for everyone, my sharper focus is on neurodivergence and mental disability. But I advocate on behalf of all disabled people, just as a sidebar. And what I mean by those, that phrase is this, by making spaces accessible to neurodivergent people who can articulate their needs, let's say people who are diagnosed with some kind of neurodivergence, then we, we make spaces like work learning spaces or living spaces or working spaces, more humane. Then we are also making those spaces more humane, more accessible to people who don't know that they are neurodivergent because they have not been diagnosed and may never will be because of all the barriers that stand in the way of getting a diagnosis. We make those spaces more accessible to people who are struggling with their mental health and that in ways that might not rise to neurodivergence per se, or not yet, for example. And also to people who are suffering in other ways, say with grief or sleep deprivation from a new baby. And all the ways that our society, we were talking about this earlier, our society puts strain on us mentally, uh, but doesn't account for it. And so accessibility is for everyone, and it makes the world more humane for everyone.

RPR: Yeah, I love that you write very honestly about mental health and neurodiversity, um, and your social media on your blog and, and higher education media. So tell us a little bit about where that passion comes from and why it's important to you to, to advocate in that way.

KP: Yes, I'm very open <laugh>. I asked my students, uh, we had a, we had some tragedy on campus. I think a lot of campuses have students die by suicide. And I asked my students if they had Googled me before, I shared some stories about myself couple years back, and, and they said no. And I was like, really? Because if I lived and was a student in the time of Google, I would be googling the heck out of my professors. But they hadn't Googled me, which was unfortunate because I did not have the background to stand upon to tell them the stories, like I was about to share with them about depression, my own depression and things like that. I said to them, I was like, why not? You know, my entire mental health histories on the internet <laugh>. But anyway, it was a bummer. So, uh, yes, I write very honestly about my own mental health and neurodivergence all over the internet.

It's true. So one of the reasons, well, the reason I do it, of course, is because there's so many people who can't. And by being open about it, I de-stigmatize it. And that is one of the most important things that I can do, is to break down the stigma around mental health struggles and neurodivergence. And so I, I know firsthand what that stigma feels like, because the first decade of my higher ed career, I kept my mental disabilities secret because I was afraid I would get fired. I just, I didn't have any sort of, I hadn't watched someone else get fired for it, but there was all sorts of subtle things and not so subtle things that we in higher ed see that let us know that it's not super to have bipolar disorder in higher education, which is I I'm autistic, bipolar, uh, and so, and at the time when I first started, I did not have a autism diagnosis yet, so it was only bipolar.

And so, but you know, like even that word, people toss it around, they're like, oh my God, the dean is acting so bipolar, you know? And I'm just like, yeah, you know, I'm just like, don't need to hear that. Thanks. And, and you know, so we tossed around like a insult. But then also there's, you know, all these research studies about how people are terrified of certain diagnoses and bipolar disorders. One of them, when I took the bar exam, I had to fill out all this paperwork that shows that I have good character and fitness to be a lawyer. And one of the questions is, do you have bipolar disorder? That was actually an actual question I had to check. Yes. And then I had to give all of my medical records to the Board of Law Examiners, which is just like a bunch of lawyers in North Carolina. One of them might have someday been my boss, uh, so they could like approve me. We talked about me failing the bar. That was one of the reasons I was like, why am I even bothering? Because they don't tell you if they approve your character or not until after you take the bar exam. I was so alienated. 

So anyway, so like here I am, you know, a law professor, and I'm like, the lawyers super don't want me to have a broken brain, so I'm definitely not gonna tell them that I do. I'm using that. Um, obviously, ironically that phrase. So as soon as I quit, I wrote, one of the very first pieces I ever published was in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, in 2014 in June, and it was, so it's almost 10 years ago now, and it was called “Disclosure Blues.” And it was about disclosing a psychiatric disability in higher ed and whether or not you should do it. And I came, I did, you know, I came down on the side of don't do it <laugh> unless you have bulletproof job security. And, um, and even then, probably not. So it's just too, too much at risk. But I was out, and so I could do, I could do what I wanted. And, but I will say in the 10 years since then, it's, I've got, I've, I've been able to do more and more and more I've gotten more comfortable because even 10 years ago, I was still stressed out by it.

RPR: Yeah. And I, I wanna say that, that your work and, and Kelly Baker's work were really inspiring to me as I was going through my burnout and starting to write about the burnout as well. It gave me models for outlets for how to process some of what was happening. And I know that burnout is, it was clinical in, in my case, and for many of us, it is to the point where medical leave is necessary and absolutely medical care was necessary. But there's even that diagnosis, there's shame there because again, you use the, even ironically, using the term broken brain, I mean, that's what it feels like. Suddenly my brain can't do what it used to do, or it just cannot keep up with the expectations that are so unrealistic anyway, that you feel broken. And you know, that, that that drive to hide is just so innate and so socialized into us where we're missing all of these options to really connect to each other as human beings and, and just, yeah.

KP: When I first started writing about Mental, well, that column became, uh, that that one, that one column became the ongoing column, Life of the Mind Interrupted, which ran for three or four years, and, um, which was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Um, it really sent me on this wonderful path. We never know where a career is gonna take us. So I wrote this one piece and it became this monthly column, which became a book, which is why we're talking today. And so, and the, when I started writing that column and talking about, you know, mental health and disability in higher education, so many people came, you know, came to me either in liked or direct messages on Twitter or even by email, um, and saying, me too, me too, me too. But they're definitely, especially 10 years ago, definitely not a thing people talked about at all in Public.

I think there's more, it's more, more okay to talk now. And I think that one of the most wonderful things, <laugh>, not a lot of good came outta Covid, but that people are demanding more recognition for mental health struggles after Covid. I've seen this, um, and I, the best things our students are demanding it, and it's out, it's outstanding. I, oh gosh, I'm so proud of them. Our students are just, they're standing there and they are looking ba back at our us in their, our eyes, and they're saying, we need help and we need it now, and we need breaks, and you guys need to take this seriously and need to listen to us. And I am just, I wanna like stand up and cheer whenever I hear our students stand up for their own mental wellbeing like that.

RPR: Yeah, absolutely. I think, and I think, you know, in some ways it feels like universities were responding to student mental health before Covid. They were starting to get their act together. Um, and I think now it's, we really need to see that continue. We need to see that grow, and we need to see the focus on the faculty and the staff as well, because, you know, many of us are not okay in, in the, in the same way that that's the, there's this ongoing trauma of covid still surrounding us and political and economic and so much strife and divide. How do we, how do we manage the stresses of daily life and, and, and thrive? You know, I think we're, so many of us are just struggling, and I think it's important to just have this conversation. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I was gonna say about burnout too, is when I was writing my new book, A Light in the Tower that's coming from Kansas, I, I talk about burnout in that, which is how you and I became friends or closer friends. And what I say in the beginning is that I say, you know, this idea that I had that burnout wasn't real. Okay. And I say, you know, heck, I had bipolar disorder. I burnout's this nonsense that investment bankers, you know, get, because they work too many hours to afford their sports cars. You know? And I'm like, I was just, I thought it was such, and then I got burnt out <laugh> and I completely crashed. And was abs an absolute, like an in Abso just completely, I, i, as, as you have written about in your wonderful book. And, and then, and then I was like, oh, I ha I am so wrong.

I am so wrong. I have been so wrong. Unless you have experienced burnout, which is, which is now real, right? It's a real syndrome as of 2019. It is real. It is not a fake thing anymore. Never was actually, but been validated by the World Health Organization. Um, the, uh, you know, until you've experienced the, you know, clinical burnout, you have no idea how awful it is. It's so awful. You know, I try to explain to people the difference between, you know, there's one thing to feel so overwhelmed by all your email and your inbox and another thing to see all that, all that email and just not care. And when you just, you're just like, Ugh, I just can't, I just can't find an in me to give a crap about it and just let it pile up and walk away, then you are in deep crap and you need to do something about that. And that is an entirely different place than just not just overwhelmed, I don't wanna say, just because if you're feeling overwhelmed, red alert, okay. But once you've crossed over whatever that line is into burnout where you don't care anymore, then depression and all these other things are just around the corner. And it's just like, it's horrible. And, you know, I, I just, I, I, I don't know. I ate some, I ate some crow <laugh>. Really? It was, it was not good.

RPR: Yeah. The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome. Uh, yes. They're not defining it as a mental illness yet. So, you know, I think there's work to be done there to decide. The clinicians need to decide, but it's, it's debilitating. It can be really debilitating. It can be shameful. Um, and I think, you know, we're, we're, we're talking about how do we remove some stigmas, right? From, from a variety of different just ways of being, just the way, ways of, of who we are and what we are as people. How do we just accept that support people provide accessibility and not even in, in, with that word, right? Provide accessibility. Just accessibility just should be <laugh>, right? It just, it should be a being a state of being. So, you know, how do we do that work? Well in a, in a piece recently you talked about scaling back from many of your commitments for your own health and healing recently. So what advice do you have for women in higher ed who might realize they need to step back from something, but it might feel impossible? Cuz we've definitely been in those situations.

RPR: So like I was on the road to burnout again, again, okay. Last year and had to, so for me, it'll happen. What can happen is I will start getting manic. I, because I'll feel overwhelmed and, and they can send me into a mania, which is really dangerous, and I'll have to go on this medicine, which is horrible. Oh. And, and then it only for a little while, hopefully, usually, and then come back. But what happened was, is my therapist said, okay, you have got to cut things out of your life. You have to stop. And, and I didn't even think I was doing that much. She was just, I was like, I don't know, this is not a lot. I don't have a lot. I don't really, you know, and, and so I did, I had to scale back so much. And so, but the thing is, is that I'm lucky because I work for myself.

And the problem is that for a lot of higher ed workers, uh, they don't have the freedom that I did to cut back the amount of things that I cut back. My therapist had me make a list of every single thing that I did, like literally everything except for eating and sleeping, you know, if it wasn't keeping me alive, I had to write it down. And then she had me cross it. Everything, just everything, all it was, it was excruciating. And so I'd start there, I'd just make that whole list and, and every single thing. And, and you'd be, I was shocked by all the things that could grow. I just struck another thing off the list today. I was, I, it's the dumbest thing, my family, I make this calendar, our calendar for the family, and I print it out and I spend all these hours on Sundays like futzing with this stupid calendar, making sure everything lines up for the week. And then I have, I have, have to make it perfect, Rebecca, it has to be perfect because once I print it and hang it in the kitchen, you know, it's done. And then I was like, you know, my kids have phones now, and so does my husband and the calendar is actually synced to their phones and they can look at it. I do not need to do that work. I don't need to print it. I don't need to have it on my to-do list. Sunday. You gotta do the calendar. I just was like, I deleted it off the repeating thing. I tore it off the wall in the kitchen. I sent a text to our family chat. I said, y'all are not doing the calendar anymore. I'm not doing it. I said, you can look at your phones. You gotta, you're gonna have to check your phones every morning and I'll put things on it. Y'all gonna have to put your own things on it. But like, I was a thing that I had taken on myself in part because I'm, you know, the household manager, which often falls to women in a heterosexual relationship with kids like mine. And so, but I mean, every single day, because of this new mindset that I had, I just, I see something and I, I'm like, ha. And then I'm like, Ooh, do I need to be doing this? And the answer is often no. Okay. 

But in higher ed, there are real pressures on women and the household managers of departments, which we often are. But other vulnerable faculty in higher education say people of color, especially women of color. There's a classic article called “Maids of Academe” about women, uh, women, faculty of color at predominantly white institutions. And I recommend everybody read it. And then also even disabled people in queer people because of our jobs mentoring students like us. And so, so there's this pressure on us to do more. And what I mean is to serve, to serve other faculty, right? And his pressure is real. Okay? This term, vulnerable faculty belongs to a law professor Meera Deo. She's very smart. And she writes about, uh, a lot about mental health in higher ed, and I love it. So vulnerable faculty. So who's vulnerable? So we have, you can be vulnerable based on your identity, based on your job security, if you have tenure, if you're a non-tenure track, if you're not tenured yet, okay? So if you are in this v one of these vulnerable populations of faculty, you don't have tenure or don't have tenure yet you, it can feel like you have 50 bosses. Okay? So every, you know, senior tenured person is telling you what to do, and you feel like you have to do it.

And guess what? You might actually have to do it. And, and it can be, there can be real consequences to saying no. And so they all think you owe them your time. And it can be hard to say disabuse them of this notion, Hey, I thought you'd be great to head up this, you know, diversity committee. You know, like every single person of color gets to head up the diversity committee. It's like, I don't want to do every diversity committee. Why should, why should this be a thing that ev you know, there's, you only have five people of color in a department, 50 people. They're gonna be on every single diversity thing ever. They're gonna be on every hiring committee, they're gonna be on everything. And, and it's, that's not fair. That is, that is way too much work. So how do you say no to that?

It's really hard. And so, and then of course, women faculty as a rule, as you know, studies show we have to take care of our students. We have to be mommy to our students, or they just burn us on our course evaluations. One of the things I stopped doing was reading my course evaluations. I just quit that because I worried way too much about them. I just was like agonizing over them. And I realized that it made absolutely no difference. I, you know, they would say these threatening things, well, you're going to be, you know, retained or not based on your course evaluations. And I realized that was actually nonsense. Actually I was retained or not based on the state budget. And so it didn't really matter. And I'm sure if they had been really bad, it would've been one thing, but actually if they were just 75%, okay. And so those 25% students who thought I wasn't nice enough, I just didn't care. I stopped caring and my boss would've let me know if they were so bad that I needed to worry. I didn't need to torture myself with people telling me I wasn't nurturing enough. So, so I just stopped reading them. But again, I, that's, that's a choice I made and it was risky. 

So every single one of these choices that you make to step back from things are going to be risky. No, I don't want to be on the hiring committee. No, I don't want to mentor a student who has bipolar disorder. I have mentored many students who have bipolar disorder. I've had faculty come to me and say, I have a student that has anxiety disorder, depression, the bipolar before disorder. So this, this, this. Okay. And I have, I am not going to say yes to those requests anymore. I'm done. I can't do that. I can say, here's the book I wrote, here's another book I wrote. Here are some articles I wrote. Here's lots of things there. And I just, but I'm not gonna do that. It's not, I, I'm an adjunct. I teach rarely. And, and our, our school needs to provide better advising than just me. And the one faculty member who talks about it on the internet. I know this are the faculty. There have to be by the numbers. Other faculty who, who have mental disabilities, they just don't wanna talk about it in pub. So, so that's something that I'm gonna say no to. But again, I don't have anything to lose with as with as far as my institution goes. So this is a, a tough thing to balance.

RPR: Yeah. I, I, so many of the things that you just said, I've connected with or had that experience as well, I stopped reading my course evaluations. Um, and cuz it was just, it couldn't, you couldn't really do anything <laugh>. It was like, it felt inauthentic in so many ways and, and, and a struggle. And how do we, how do we support each other equitably and with that accessibility mindset without overburdening the faculty that are typically overburdened and still making sure, this is where, this is what I've been struggling with lately that, and a lot of coaching clients and, and folks that I've talked to in different venues, this idea that there's way too much work. There is mu much more limited and administrative support for a lot of the work that faculty do and the work still has to get done. And we can preach, say no, and we can preach, have boundaries, but the work still has to get done unless we can figure out where the sludge is and, and cut the things that are unnecessary.

Yeah. So, you know, people are coming to me as someone who's written about her own burnout saying, you know, what did you do? How do you say no? What? You know, but there's consequences to that. There are consequences to saying no. Some people have very long memories. Some people will say, that's nice, but you're gonna do it depending on, on what the context is, you know, or what your situation is. And it's like, what, what do we say? Like, I, I, you know, I don't know what, and as a coach, it's not necessarily my role to give advice, right? But folks are coming from, from looking more for a mentor in in that sense. Yeah. What, what do I do? How do I do this? Yeah. And I don't know what the answers are. And I think that's something that's been kind of weighing on me now that we're talking about it. What, you know, what, what do we say? How do we, how do we help folks who are in this situation who have all of the weight on their shoulders? 

KP: I wrote a kind of tongue in cheek article, a law review article about this, the essay about who I called “Front-Line Faculty,” you know, playing on, you know, frontline workers and, and covid, so frontline faculty and burnout. And I use a phrase called “tenured abdicator.” And so this also ended up being a chapter in my book. But the article you can, anybody can access, you just look up frontline faculty in my last name and it's, you can download it for free online. And I, I, I proposed all these really s great solutions that will never be implemented. But one of them was that if, if you would like to be a tenured abdicator, that's your, that's fine. But you should put it on your syllabus that something like, um, I am only here to talk with you about during office hours, about, um, you know, US history and I am not here to support your mental health struggles or anything outside of the topic of this class.

So you put that line on your syllabus because that way students know that they cannot come to you for those things and then, then they, you know, so that's fine. But we, we need to let students know. Um, so cuz everybody keeps saying we should, you know, have lines on our syllabus that say, you know, we're here for you men, your mental health support and all these things. But actually that's not true at all. Most faculty actually are not there for that <laugh>. That's fine. Actually. Just let them know. Because students come to faculty and they, they're like, you know, in, in crisis or at least struggling and they get shot down. They're not gonna go to any faculty ever again. They're not go to anybody. They're, they're gonna be too scared cuz they came to you when they were vulnerable and you pushed them away like that, they're gonna be too afraid to reach out for help again.

So, although I am saying this slightly tongue in cheek, I am only here to speak to you about US history. I am not available to help you with your mental health struggles or any other <laugh>. Okay? But at the same time, if students read that, then they would know never to go to that professor would never suffer getting pushed away when they were in crisis and would know who they can go to. So if you would like to be a tenured abdicator, that's fine. Just own it. Just no, just say recognize it. Don't stand around thinking you're doing a good job in all ways. You're not, you're doing a very bad job in one particular way and that way is in that way. And then the frontline faculty who are doing all of the work that you aren't doing because you've abdicated it, maybe they can get a little bit more money.

Of course that will never happen. Course releases, other kinds of support. But that this was this, like I said, maybe a little bit tongue in cheek piece that I wrote, but recognizing that this, these sorts of are real, and maybe we need to think bigger about the kinds of things we can do by, you know, saying the quiet parts out loud. what is the problem? We have an entire population of faculty on campus that aren't doing the work. It's not that we have this population that is doing all the work, it's that we have these other people that aren't doing the work. Okay. <laugh>. So we have, we have, we have two populations. Okay. And so the fact that these people are abdicating the work and these people are bearing this on this, this extra load, how are we gonna, how are we gonna square that? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, well we have money and we have time, we have, you know, meaning course releases and things like that. Okay. So let us, you know, you guys, here's the problem. I just said it out loud, so work it out, figure it out. So again, it's a little, little bit satirical, but also, I'm also not kidding.

RPR: Yeah. Just so much, so much to like, just to, to dig in and to, and to think about. Yeah. And I'll make sure that we, we link to that article in the, in the show notes so folks have access to that. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah. I think, you know, you're raising a, you're raising a lot of specific points, you know, and faculty are, many faculty who do care deeply about their students are just so overwhelmed and don't know how to help and, you know, don't feel like they're qualified to help and have their own things going on. And that we just, we just don't know what's going on in people's lives and, you know, how do, and again, how do we build a culture that supports everyone in the ways that they need to be supported and feel supported and feel like they deserve to be supported. Um, if that makes any sense.

KP: That makes total sense in, in higher ed, it's, I mean, like I said, it's time and it's money, um, course releases, bonuses, raises, and, and those are things that if you are early career or non-tenured track, those are things you don't have. And so, and then of course then you also bear this extra burden of work. So it's a, it's a double problem.

RPR: I wanna shift gears just a little bit. So we, we know that there are, we've, we've talked a lot about kind of the struggles and the, the, the stigmas and, and those kinds of things. But I also like to talk about burnout is one end of a spectrum and the other end of that spectrum is really kind of more of a vi a vitality space. So I'm curious, what would career vitality mean to you and what might that look like?

KP: Vitality. Okay. So life <laugh>, thinking about the word itself, strength, energy. My therapist once asked me, she's like, what, what would your perfect day look like? And I scoffed at the question, I wouldn't even entertain the question. I was like, Ugh. Like it was a stupid question. She goes, no, really? Well your perfect day. And I said, why are you, why are you even asking me this? And she's like, can't you just answer the question? And the answer was no. I could not answer the question because it was too farfetched, but also painful. So to even think about what it would mean to me to have a day that made me not going towards the word happy, I think happy is overrated. Right? So you're, you didn't use happy, you said vitality, right? That, that would energize me and make me feel like satisfied those, and, and that would be pleasant, right?

All those things, it seemed like such a pipe dream that I, that for her to even ask me the question made me really uncomfortable. And she's like, okay, so you're gonna have to go sit with this discomfort and write down like 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 10:00 AM And I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay. So, and then that was my homework for the week and I actually cried a lot when I sat down and did this. I was like, I, it was so painful to think how, not how far I was from it cuz I really wasn't that far from it. But that it never occurred to me to put myself first. And that it never occurred to me to think about what my perfect day would look like. And I don't mean sipping, sipping, you know, uh, pina colada and Cancun. That's not what I mean. I mean like a perfect like regular day, just a regular old day with dog walking and the what would it look like because I had spent so much time running around and, you know, organizing the stupid calendar that I hadn't thought about this, about I, I, so this is what vitality means to me, is putting myself, my life, my perfect day, literally down on paper that this, this ex this, the feeling that I got when I did that exercise, that, and it, it was a, it was a thought experiment.

It wasn't, I mean, it's like <laugh>. I mean, life throws you curve balls. I mean that's not, that's, that's no day is the same. That's not how it works. But it's the idea that, that I'm, that that these parts of my life are important. That it is okay to prioritize these parts of my life, that I have goals and I get to achieve them and I have things that are more important than other things. And that's okay. And that it's okay to put myself first a lot or even, or sometimes or even a lot or even most of the time and all that sort of thing. I really did make me happy to do that exercise. It, it did. Um, and I actually recommend it to everybody just to, just to dare or to dream like that, to sit down and write your perfect day.

Get up at what time, what time would you get up, right? And then what time would you make your coffee and what kind of coffee would it be? I mean, it was wild. I ended up with a new espresso machine <laugh>. So, um, it wasn't, heck, it wasn't even that expensive. I just really wanted to like to have, because that's the kind of coffee I like, right? And it, it was just, I would like to have this kind of coffee, so I want this coffee. And then, and it was, you know, and then I thought, I really wanna spend this time writing books. And it actually, you know what I think about it, it had a big, it made a big change in my career because I gave up an element of work I used to do. Now that I think about it, I did, I gave up a piece of work I used to do that was a big emotional drain on me. I'm not gonna mention what it was, but I used to do, I used to do a different type of work also in addition to writing and speaking. So I write for magazines, I write books, I give talks and I used to do another thing and I stopped doing it because I realized that the, it was amount of labor was so hard on me. And I was like, you know what? It does not involve this. And so I let it go. So

RPR: I think we, no, I think that's a great, that's a great exercise that maybe we should all think about. I mean, I try, I try to talk when we, going back to the, the idea of purpose. Like, you know, for some people understanding what the purpose is of what you're doing is important and having that kind of driving motivation behind sometimes it's really just what is satisfying to me, right? That's right. Right. It doesn't have to be this all encompassing driving purpose of your life or your work. You know, what, what is a day that makes me satisfied, that makes me, that feels some joy that, you know, has the pieces of the things that I love in my life and in my work. What does that look like? And that's seems like it's much less scary than trying to figure out kind of what your purpose is. Right? It feels like that would be an all capital letters <laugh>.

KP: Well, yeah. And then the other thing is that your purpose can shift and change and morph, right? As can your perfect day. Um, I think that a lot of people who carry other people's burdens do not think about what their perfect day might be. Yeah. Much because we're too busy thinking about everybody else's darn day. Yeah. And so that's why it was hard for me cuz I had to set down everybody else's stuff in order to take a look at mine. And that is sort of been the through line of this entire conversation that we've been having having today. Yeah.

KP: Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So to wrap it up, I always ask one question. So what's one thing that you wish all women in or associated with higher ed knew or practiced?

RPR: Oh yeah. So this is, this is like, if people have not picked up on this yet, uh, Rebecca and I, uh, talked a little beforehand, plus we know each other. So, uh, she's knows we're about to say, which is this boundaries <laugh>, boundaries, boundaries. And I did not understand just how important boundaries were until even fairly recently. So Brene Brown in Daring Greatly says something like, “the happiest people she knows have the best boundaries.” And I'm sure you know this because you know her work well. And what she means by this is that it's easy to be happy when you don't feel like you're being abused or taken advantage of or taken for granted. And when you have good boundaries, you know your value and you make sure that other people know it too. Not that you go and tell them, but they don't get to take from you unless they're respecting your value.

That's what boundaries are. But of course, if you don't have good boundaries, that breeds resentment. So people trample on your boundaries and then you get resentful. Now you could say you let them trample on your boundaries and that's why, and then you become resentful. Okay, well, and that's this unhappiness that Brene Brown is talking about. And then poor boundaries also lead to burnout because you have taken on too much people piling things on you and you, okay, so now here's the thing though, is that that sounds an awful lot like blaming the victim. Well, you did not set good boundaries and so you became resentful and you did not set good boundaries and now you're burned out. Okay, so this circles back to when we were just talking about, which is vulnerable faculty have a hard time setting boundaries because we often feel like we can't and often we are.

Right? And so, um, what we have to figure out is the difference between the, we sense that we cannot set a boundary when we feel like we can't and when we actually can't. Mm-hmm. Because there will be a professional consequence. And that right there is where you start, okay, what can you say no to without negative consequences and what can't you? And that is, that is a difficult thing to figure out. But if that's all you do, like if you spend a whole semester only working on that, that will have a huge payoff because then that's when you can start to say no. And saying no is the, that's the, that's the foundation of setting boundaries is saying no. And, and well, and then of course, those people who think you owe it to them to do work for them, they can be trained. You just start so that, so after you figure out who, who thinks you owe them, and you can't say no to the next semester, your next semester project is start disabusing them of that. No. Right. So you start to say, you start managing up a little bit and, uh, and, and helping them understand that, that they're wrong Okay. In various ways. And there's a lot of great writing out there by, by, by vulnerable faculty, by, by mi for example. Um, on how to like help people understand that actually they don't own you. You, you, you are in charge, but it's not easy. And so b, boundaries are, are everything. Understand what they are and figure out how you can say no when it's safe to,

RPR: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for that, Katie. It's been a pleasure to talk to you this evening and always to, to catch up. So thank you so much for all the work that you do and the vulnerability that you show us and reminding us that it's okay to be human.

KP: Oh, thank you so much. And same to you.

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 show notes at the agile academic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.