Jim Luke - Of Many Minds

Welcome to this special mini-season of the agile academic where my co-editor Lee Skallerup Bessette and I introduce our edited collection *Of Many Minds: Mental Health and Neurodiversity Among Higher Education Faculty and Staff* out now from Johns Hopkins University Press. In this episode, we do something a little different - contributor Jim Luke walks us through his life and how his neurodiversity and physical challenges shaped his career in industry and higher education. 

Transcript

Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): Welcome to this special mini-season of the agile academic where my co-editor Lee Skallerup Bessette and I introduce our edited collection Of Many Minds: Mental Health and Neurodiversity Among Higher Education Faculty and Staff out now from Johns Hopkins University Press. In this episode, we do something a little different - contributor Jim Luke walks us through his life and how his neurodiversity and physical challenges shaped his career in industry and higher education. 

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. 

Welcome back to this special edition of the Agile Academic Podcast where we're talking to folks who have contributed to the collection Of Many Minds. I'm here with my co-editor, Lee Skallerup Bessette. Hi, Lee. 

Lee Skallerup Bessette (LSB): Hi. 

RPR: And then we also are joined today by contributor Jim Luke. Hi Jim. Thanks for being on the show. 

Jim Luke (JL): Hi. 

RPR: So let's get started just by having you tell a little bit about yourself to the audience. 

JL: Okay. So actually since the chapter was written, I have recently, the beginning of this year retired. So I'm an old guy, just turned 70. And in typical ADHD fashion, I have just been busy and running for the last 50 years, always doing more than one thing. So I went to high school and I didn't go to college right after high school, unlike my, I was in all the advanced classes in a grade high school and everything and in the seventies and stuff like that. But clearly back then I didn't fit in. The school didn't know what to do with me, which was mutual because I didn't know what to do with school and didn't have much use for it. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to graduate and go drive at the Indy 500. So I had no interest in going to college. 

They didn't tell me about college. A counselor never even suggested that I go, but about a year and a half later I was out. I was doing things like working, delivering furniture, and my grandfather died and it struck me that, well, maybe I ought to do something better. So I started looking around and the local state university, Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio had a middle of the year guest program. You could just show up. This is back in the seventies. You could just show up, sign in, pay your money, pick some courses, and for a term or two you could take classes and then do all the formal admission stuff. So I thought I was going to sample it and then pick a university for the following year. I stayed at Wright State for about three years all the time. I was working full-time one year halftime and decided, oh, this college stuff's pretty cool, so I'm taking a heavy load. 

I had wanted to get a bachelor's in finance, which I got bachelor's science, business finance, and decided, oh, well, I'll go a little bit further and pick up a bachelor's in communication. Largely because I got involved in speech and debate, and that was a critical turning point for me. End of high school and in college, getting involved in speech and debate mentally, because I learned to be a very good speaker. I was competitively very successful. Graduated, got out was again just looking for a job where I could make money to go racing. And so I went into corporate world and a couple of different jobs. Picked up a couple of Fortune 100 companies and was incredibly fortunate looking back on it to be identified while I was, age 25, I was made director of planning of a business unit that in today's dollars would be like a 3 billion unit and it needed vast turnaround. 

So I became the strategic planner and got a lot of technology background and managed to work with one of the best managers, the vice president mentors you'll ever find. So it did that and then went off, started my own consulting business from all that go into the eighties. I did a year in California, actually did go racing and then came home, came back to the Midwest, moved to Detroit and got found my current wife of 37 years. We got married and started a family. I needed a little more solid income that whole time in the eighties while I was consulting and working for me, I was going to school to get my master, my MBA and A master. For some reason I like to do these things two at a time. So I was getting both an MBA and a Master's in Social and applied economics. 

So then I got a teaching job, a small Catholic liberal arts college here in the Detroit area where eventually my wife eventually got a position too. We're both, and I go back. While I'm doing that, I'm still consulting and I go to grad school for my doctor. So all this time I don't fit in. I finish, I do the doctoral studies, and then in the nineties family hits and that was a great part was yeah, I became a father. We had our own family, but at the same time sandwiched, my wife was a gerontologist and started doing elder care and my mother, my parents both passed away after cancer bouts in the nineties and then her father in 2000. So both of us got to ABD so neither one of us finished 2000 comes along. I had been working on doing a startup, a tech startup in e-commerce. So I learned a lot about that. But 2000 comes along and I was done with all the travel and stuff. So I went back to academia. 

There was an opening at a community college in Michigan 80 miles away, which plays a story in my chapter, and I thought, well, I'll do this for a few years. Ended up that's where I retired from last year, 24 years there where I was an economist while I was at the community college. It came to a point they were told by Higher Learning Commission that they needed a strategic plan. And the provost at that time, who I liked, we got along quite well, discovered that, oh, hey, yeah, I'd kind of had a lot of success.  for 25 years of doing strategic planning for a lot of companies. And I said, sure, I'll do that. So I led that project for a couple of years. It was very good experience. I got to know a lot of the school, a lot of the school got to know me, mixed results in terms of relationship with administration, and I continued to teach during that whole time I was big on online and my whole career has been one of innovation and doing that stuff. 

So I started doing online stuff and then that led to, in the last 10 years, I created what we call the open learning lab. There was an opening and I ran through it and the school let me set up an experiment with the Center for Teaching Excellence. Then I got real sick around pandemic time, but not with COVID. So I spent the last six years working exclusively online until I retired. Now, in those last five years, I started to shift. I started to doing things that I had always wanted to do, which was some writing and wrote chapters for two books. The first one was a chapter in the book Higher Ed for Good, and that led this one by about a year and then this project and it's great. And now I've had the taste of what I hope to be writing. And so I'm retired. 

I think I’m done teaching, but I'm hopefully not ready to go on the cart. I've got some projects I want to write and research and stay connected to higher ed. So that's me in the midst of all of that. It was a process of discovery throughout my whole life. On the surface of it, there's nothing abnormal about me. I look like I, I'm white, cis came from a suburb that was middle class to upper class. I should be fine and dandy, but the invisible part is my entire life. What we now know is I was born with some genetic defects. I have a bundle of immune system issues. I have allergies that are literally off the charts on things, and it has caused problems throughout my life, particularly when I was younger and then didn't know that led to me, my neurodivergence actually. We should have known if you knew my dad or you knew my mother and you said you combine these two, yeah, the kid's going to have some neurodivergence, but nobody talked about that back in those days. 

It also intertwined because schools didn't know how to handle my physical issues. It led to a lot of what today we would call, I forget what the C is for in C-P-T-S-D, but it would create a lot of that and then that interplayed with mental development. I just don't think my brain doesn't work the way most folks do, and I struggled with all of that. Eventually, as it turns out, I'm ADHD. I'm dyslexic. I've been diagnosed as a very high sensitivity, part of which translates as rejection sensitivity, but also other just sheer physical sensitivities. And then dealing with the PTSD, it just makes for a bundle of stuff. And what the chapter is about that I wrote was my story of how I had masked my entire life and there were things I had to do to cope with my neurodivergence issues. And eventually that caught up with the physical side and I had to stop doing those things. And when I did, it just felt like ripping off the mask. So it started the last five years of an incredible self-discovery and rewrite of everything that I knew and understood. And that's both the physical side of it, the physical disabilities, thanks to a lot of research science there, but also all the neurodivergence. 

So who am I? I don't know. 

LSB: I think we're all work in progresses, let's be honest. 

JL: Right. Yeah. 

LSB: You've had a lot of experience both inside and outside academia, but what do you think some of the biggest challenges facing higher ed as a workplace are when it comes to supporting neurodiversity? 

JL: Higher ed has to do, in my opinion, the starting point. There's a lot of work to do, but the starting point is actually to reword the question. We've got to reframe, and this ties back to a lot of stuff in strategic planning. To be successful really involves being careful about the semantics you use and what does that say about your hidden assumptions and making an effort to reframe. The whole idea of “what does the school do to support us” plays in and reinforces much of the unfortunate medical disease model, which is that there's something wrong with us, that there's something about us that is defective. Actually the issue is that neurotypicals and in particular administrators, managers, and senior other faculty need to really take a look in the mirror and before they jump into how can they be nice condescending liberals and support us poor marginalized, inadequate, deficit disorder folks - first of all, take a look in the mirror and ask, what are they doing to get in our way? 

What are they doing that blocks us or harms us or what are they afraid of about our contributions? For example, from my experience, I mean one of the strengths, looking back at my ADHD combined with my dyslexia, -  it's not a universal, and I hate the superpower talk about neurodivergence - but it has created a mind that focuses on context and big picture. I understand complex systems very well. I can't always explain them, but I understand them and there's a real opportunity I can help and have helped all kinds of organizations because I can do that. I come up with plans and projects and work with folks so that they can change their own seat in higher ed. I always found, not just at the schools I worked at, but others that was threatening because the idea of, oh, well now I'm a faculty. , Somehow or another that threatens administrator's sense that they're in charge and they know how to do this. 

So yeah, the first one is back off and start thinking about that. Start taking a look at inclusion. In a lot of areas for inclusion, they will look at, they'll have programs internally for staff and faculty to look at how do you not do microaggressions for other groups and stuff like that. And yet nobody talks about the microaggressions of neurodivergence. How am I going to bring up and get support when I'm in a faculty meeting and both the associate dean and other faculty are taking time in the meeting to complain about they have to comply with with these orders for students for certain accommodations. And they're chitchatting about how it's all just students who are just scamming things and they're all looking for an easy way out and they don't deserve this. And it's just all that kind of stuff. It's like, I'm not really going to turn around and disclose that, hey, I have some issues or those kinds of things. 

So I think the biggest thing is, they got to start with that, and part of that means they got to relearn - I hope it's relearn,  -but at least learn it's law. And they've got to reorient on ADA.  ADA and accommodations does not say, oh, neurodivergent are allowed to ask permission for special help and then school decides whether or not to give some permission or special support. The law says the school has to work with them. Accommodation is required except when the college can demonstrate that the particular accommodation is unreasonable. And even in that case, the law requires the school to come up with alternatives to negotiate how to get it done because people are entitled to be workers. There's way too much acting like, oh, this is just a special benefit. I've had HR tell me like, oh, an accommodation is like getting long-term disability and not having to come to work. No, I want to work. I'm able to work. I've got the data that shows I can do this. Your obligation is to make sure we can do this and not put the barriers in our way. So I guess that would be how, if they can start that way, a lot of the others, the other stuff will fall, will come out. 

RPR: So what was it that attracted you to the Of Many Minds projects? 

JL: First of all, the timing's very fortuitous.  I said in the year, year and a half before the call came out, I was just discovering and getting the breakthrough that I was neurodivergent the ADHD. I remember -- my wife is a clinical licensed clinical psychologist. I remember talking to her one day, I had seen on social media this long thing, and it was some sort of a ADHD month or something. And I saw a lot of this commentary and lists of essentially, you might be a ADHD if you've got these characteristics and stuff. I brought it up and I said, wow, this is interesting. I kind of checked all these boxes. 

I don't remember the exact wording, but she said “you think?”. And then I found out, oh yeah, she knew that 37 years ago. And then I started remembering, oh, I had a great friend that I mentioned in the chapter.  40 years ago his job was diagnosing dyslexic and low vision kids. And he knew me very closely and he had told me repeatedly. You're dyslexic. I had always dismissed that. 

I had just discovered all this when the call came out, and so I figured, Hey, I do want to figure out how to write. I've never considered myself a writer despite the fact that evidence says I can produce written artifacts that people read. I don't know how to do it right, do it correctly. So I thought it would be an interesting project. And fortunately you all accepted the proposal and it's been enormously worth it. 

What was the process of writing? Yes, I like, for me, I think I can say this is the first piece of writing I've done where I started to deviate and do some of the things that comp teachers tell you to do. The way I think of my brain is there's three big rooms in the brain and there's lots of folks running around constantly doing the work. I'm just watching the thing. But in all of the thinking happens in the first room where all of the senses come in, and that is entirely nonverbal. It is visual, it's felt senses. I hear all in it. I hear and listen, but I honestly think there without words. And that's one of the things that's been difficult at times when I deal with folks in higher ed or other folks is sometimes I may get asked a question or something put to me and I can't answer right away because I've got to stop and think about this. 

And when I say that, that means I'm over there. I don't have words to attach to these. Then everything moves. When it gets kind of thought up, it moves over to this other room that is all speechifying. I'm good at speaking, putting words to this. So everything becomes chunks of conversation or little speeches. And that's my speech background from high school and college. I was an extemporaneous speaker. So typically if I'm going to write something, I will think about it. It'll get tossed around in that room endlessly. It may be at night, it may be when I go running or used to run, it'll be when I drive, it'll do whatever and I'll end up coming up with elements of a speech. Then it moves over to the third room and I sit down and actually just start hearing myself give the speech. 

And at that point I can commit it to writing, commit it to pixels. These days for me, that first time I do it, it's like I just write it. That's it. I'm done. The written, when it comes out written, that's a tombstone, I'm done with it. It's out of the head. This whole “writing as thinking thing” is just totally foreign to me. 

So what was different about this project? I did a major rewrite a few weeks after I had done the first, largely because of some other stuff that had happened, and I was inspired to approach it a different way. And I actually really trashed, didn't totally trash the original, but I really moved things around, changed the whole tone and the narrative in it and did that and wow, it worked. 

The other thing that was really different and first time for me was writing about me. O, other than a blog post that I wrote once about my vision issues, I've always written, I dunno what you call it, I mean I give speeches about economics or business or explain things and stuff like that. I'm used to writing first person but not about me. And that was a breakthrough of minor hill to climb to breakthrough, and it felt great. I mean, I'm proud of it. There was a lot of anxiety with that. I think I've gotten to the point that  --I'm not totally there-- but it's okay. I'm safe enough here. I've done my stuff. You can't harm me now. It was great. And I also want to repeat thank you to both of you and thank you for the honor and the support in doing all that. 

LSB: So finally, what do you hope that this book accomplishes with readers? 

JL: The simple objective is, I hope that my chapter, along with the rest of the book, gets people, hits people in a way they gets 'em to stop and pause and be open to and think about:  how do they think about it? Whether they're neurodivergent themselves or not, how do they think about it? What have they thought? What was their definition or their conception? I would hope out of my chapter that folks who are neurodivergents I hope you take away from the book, you're not alone. There's a whole bunch of us and we are all very different from each other, but we all have a whole lot of common experiences. And if you aren't neurodivergent, I hope people would take away this whole thing is not the nice simple, oh, put people in a category and they all fit in this box and then you treat them all the same. 

That's not this stuff. If anything, first of all, I think everybody is different and you can't even talk about it on a dimension. , People talk about autism as a spectrum, but even there they tend too often to think of, oh, there's some sort of singular dimension and people are just more or less. No, that's not how it works. It's like clusters of differences in people and it isn't one category or another. 

Look at my own case, I'm a bunch of physical disabilities, at least four different forms of neurodivergence and mental health issues, and they've been braided together and interacting throughout my whole life. The other thing I would hope they would take away is the idea of it makes a tax on us. It's an extra, the burden we have to carry in order to, I mean, we know how to be with ourselves, but how to fit in and fit in safely and at times just deal with what it takes to keep ourselves going. If anything, we are not lazy. That was one of the knocks on me my entire life, especially K through 12. Oh, I was “lazy”. No, I was bored. And it wasn't that I was attention deficit. I was trying to deal with sensory surplus and multitasking at the same time, and the fact that I had a very low boredom threshold. So if folks could take that okay, and get to the spot of difference, not only okay, in many cases it's very helpful and a plus to the group. 

RPR: Great. Thanks so much for being with us today, Jim. It was nice to learn more about your story. 

LSB: Yeah, thank you so much, and especially for your honesty and candor about it. I think that it's also important that you joked about your age, but I think that this is something that, no, but I mean, I think it's important to know that this impacts everyone during the entire course of their lives. This isn't something that goes away when you become an adult. This isn't something that goes away when you retire. This isn't something that goes away when you find the right job and that a diagnosis can come at any time 

JL: And it can just -- when your life situation changes, you get older -- It can just manifest with other challenges. For example, the physical issues I've been having in the last few years, so a lot more doctor appointments, but the physical stuff I have, I'm always out on the fringe. I don't have common either medical or neurodivergent issues. I’m not mainstream. So if you just, most doctors want to look at the typical, they're trained to look for horses, not zebras. And at times I can have problems processing words and sentences properly, and even simple dumb stuff like I can't tell left from, right, that's the dyslexia. 

LSB: Neither can I, neither can I. Easy drives... 

JL: YES. 

LSB: ...my family crazy. 

JL: So we've adopted the practice of, my wife goes to all doctor's appointments in with the doctor, partly to translate. In a doctor's appointment once, I'm telling him I'm having this problem with my right leg, or I'm sorry with my left leg, and I'm tapping my right. And she clarifies “Jim the other leg” because she knows right, she knows which one I'm talking about, and she knows that I get it wrong. So little things like that, which makes it easier with the doc. 

LSB: Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks both of you. 

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 Google or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode a transcript and show notes at the agileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.