Katie Rose Guest Pryal - 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, I talk with Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal who wrote the foreword for the collection. We talk about the book, her experiences as a neurodivergent author and scholar in higher education and her new books exploring parenting neurodivergent children and pregnancy for neurodivergent mothers.

Transcript

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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, I talk with Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal who wrote the foreword for the collection. We talk about the book, her experiences as a neurodivergent author and scholar in higher education and her new books exploring parenting neurodivergent children and pregnancy for neurodivergent mothers.

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. 

Hi Katie. Welcome back to the show. 

Katie Rose Guest Pryal (KGP): Hi. Thank you for having me back. 

RPR: It's so good to see you. So why don't we just start by having you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? 

KGP:Sure. I am an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was full-time there for I don't know, many years, and then I stepped back to write full time and am still adjunct faculty. I also live about five minutes away from campus in a very small town that is just basically the university. So it is very much still a part of my life, even though I'm not teaching every semester and I'm an author, I write books, fiction and nonfiction that center mental health and neurodiversity. So for example, I just finished my most recent manuscript, which is called Navigating Neurodiverse Pregnancy, and this is something that Johns Hopkins will be publishing in a couple years whenever I just turned in the manuscript. So you know how slow the process is. But I also just finished the first book in a trilogy with a main character who is neurodivergent and it's a paranormal romance trilogy. So I also write romance novels, which you'd think these don't really go together, but they're a blast to write. I have a whole other series, again that's not paranormal, that's still romance. Again, with neurodivergent main characters, I really don’t know how to write neurotypical characters. So that's just what I do. And I also do writing, coaching, neurodiversity, affirming writing coaching. So for authors and SES writers generally people working on their dissertations who need help but haven't been able to find the right kind of help because they are not neurotypical. 

RPR: You do amazing work and we're so glad to have you on the show again, and we'll make sure to link to all the writing series and the books and everything in the show notes so that people have access to those and can look those up. What would you say your purpose is in and around higher education? 

KGP: When I started in higher ed, I did not have a diagnosis of autism, and I did not know that I had a diagnosis of ADHD, which I did have as a child, but because I'm Gen X, my parents were like, yeah, it's not a thing we're going to do anything about. And they didn't even tell me until I was writing this book and I interviewed my parents about something and she goes, oh, right, yeah, you have. So that was funny. But I did have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder from when I was in my early twenties. And so when I entered higher ed from the very beginning, I knew that I had a stigmatized mental illness and disability that although I could have used accommodations or at least understanding, I couldn't share it with others. So as soon as I stepped back from higher ed, so what I did while I was in higher ed is I wrote, I was in disability studies focus with my research and I wrote all sorts of things but maintained this barrier of secrecy. 

But the pieces I wrote definitely advocated for greater understanding for neurodivergent people. And then as soon as I was no longer at the mercy of my institution, I started writing publicly about my own experiences and I had a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education called Life of the Mind Interrupted, and I wrote it for three years and it was about being neurodivergent and disabled in higher ed and it's my life's work. That was it right there. And so I still publish occasionally in scholarly journals or scholarly venues on this subject, but it's very much a active practical sort of thing that I publish. It's like how can we make things better? The last time I was on here, I had just published something about frontline faculty and mental health and that sort of thing, and so that's the sort of stuff I still write, but mostly I write books and articles to help make higher ed more inclusive and understanding of divergent people and disabled people generally. 

RPR: What are some of the things that you see as the big challenges facing higher ed as a workplace, especially when it comes to supporting those with mental illness and neurodiversity? 

KGP: It's this odd thing where we're fighting for the ability to just say the word inclusion. Inclusion is a dirty word, just means to include everybody and make them a part of the community. It doesn't seem like that radical of an idea, but as a person who often felt not included, I am also viewing it from a different perspective. I can't help but feel like inclusion was something that really was window dressing, kind of like diversity. It's have a nice colorful lookbook for prospective students and faculty or donors or whatever. And so inclusion for neurodivergent and disabled people isn't something that colleagues really understand. As far as faculty and staff, I just say faculty, everybody's faculty. If you're responsible for the education of students, then you are faculty in higher education. This faculty staff divide is something I don't buy into and I say this every time I talk to anybody. 

So if you're faculty in higher ed, what our bosses want from us is especially now, is somebody who can just take it all in and not have any sort of emotional reaction. And this is a very common thing I think, and it has been for years. You write about it in your own work a lot that we should be able to overwork and be okay and not burn out, and we should be able to keep our home lives separate from our work lives. And you might say, okay, this is the same as anywhere else, like a law firm or anything like that. But in higher ed, we like to pretend that we're not that way, that we are a family or all this stuff. And the thing is that this is not a family that I ever felt very included in. So I think the challenges are if we're going to talk about inclusion, if we're going to be truly inclusive of neurodivergent faculty, then we have to understand what it means to be neurodivergent and to expand our concept of social norms of humanity itself to fit that definition. Because right now social norms limit what is acceptable behavior in higher ed when in reality that's just an artificial limitation that we are putting on ourselves to everybody's detriment. 

RPR: So you're involved in the Of Many Minds collection. I want to talk about that a little bit too. And I think that, I mean it connects directly to what you just said, that what Lee and I were trying to do was open up a conversation through some stories, through narrative so that people had a tool in their pocket. We're not making big claims, we're not making big suggestions for change right now. We just wanted to get people to think about the stories of folks and understand how even tangentially you might be contributing to that experience of not feeling included in the workplace and what that looks like. Lee likes to say, if you feel uncomfortable when you read these narratives, to lean into that and think about that, what is causing you the discomfort there and what is leading to that feeling as you're reading these narratives. So we invited you so to be our forward writer, but what was it that attracted you to the project to work with us? 

KGP: Well, I mean, I was so flattered when you asked me because it was such an important book with so many really great people contributing. And to be asked to write the foreword for that book was just a huge honor. I just wanted to say that first. And of course it was very well done. Everyone in it wrote such incredible stories and you and Lee did an incredible job editing. It was a no-brainer for me to write that piece for the book to be able to invite people in and experience, I believe I called it and lifesaving the book because, and I wasn't exaggerating when I wrote that. I don't remember my exact words, but it was something to that effect that this book will not only change lives, but it will save lives because there will be people who read it who are not neurodivergent or who are, we'll say neurotypical and they will feel that discomfort and maybe they'll change and that would be great. I'm thinking about the people who are divergent, who read it, who have felt alienated and alone for so long, and then they read this book and they don't feel aloneness is a killer for real, literally. And so the more we can share these stories, the more we can help all the people who have to keep their secret in higher ed. 

RPR: And that was obviously one of the big sections of the book was on that stigma. And then the other section is on masking. So it was how do folks show up in these spaces? How when you can't fully be yourself and what does that look like? And it's so hard in higher ed because, and Lee and I have talked about this before and in other spaces, but when you're in higher education and your brain is your currency essentially, and your competence is your currency for someone to have even a slight difference from what is neurotypical can be really damaging to that person's experience in higher education, which is really unfortunate as a place where our differences should be celebrated. So that was definitely one of the reasons why we wanted to put the book out there. 

KGP: I like to say when I give workshops and talks to schools, I say, school leans heavy on Descartes, I think therefore I am. And so if you are thinking poorly, you are being poorly. Now I'm thinking poorly of course is what someone else might apply to. Just thinking differently how I might think, for example. But if your brain is broken, then you're a broken person. This is the idea behind those words that higher ed just leans into. And like you said, why would you ever share that information with the people who have control over your livelihood when they hired you for your brain? Why would you share that? Your brain doesn't meet this very narrow, and I will say this, I cannot say this enough. So narrow social expectation of how thinking should look. Scholarships should look, how our behavior should be. And what's hilarious is that we like to think that higher ed's all quirky and weird, but it's only quirky and weird in a very particular way. 

There are so many social expectations. Even that quirky and weird thing that we have going on in higher ed is a social norm. If you show up and dressed in this way or that way, depending it is in your department. For example, I moved from an English department to a law school, completely different expectations regarding wardrobe and things like that. But those norms, they're strict, man, let's not pretend that higher ed is this place where you can just be all free and floaty or whatever. It's not. It's just like any other workplace with rigid social norms. 

RPR: And I think that's one of the things that we wanted to make clear that higher ed is a workplace and it's part of people's livelihood and lots of different people show up in those spaces. And how do we make sure that you feel included? Yes. And that there's belonging there, especially in a mission driven place where the mission is core to what you do and you value contributing to that mission. How do we show up in a way as a workplace to support everyone that we bring into that group? I totally agree with you with the family thing. I think it's kind of gaslighting when we call a workplace, our family work can't love you back, but we can still create environments where people are welcome and feel like they can do their best work to help achieve the mission that we've set forward. 

KGP: Yes, I agree. 

RPR: So tell us a little bit about your writing process for something like a foreword. What was that like for you? 

KGP: Well, first I read the book and I couldn't highlight everybody's essays in the forward, but I tried to grab hold of the feeling and the goals of the book, like I mentioned before. And then I did highlight a few in particular, I pulled some quotes that really jumped out at me. My goal was of course, to entice people to read it. People, I mean, people skip forewords, so I mean anything or they'll read it and hopefully be drawn in. I think I talked about Cate Denial's essay. I talked about Lee's, I think also, and then a few more. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's ones that really I felt exemplified what the Book's project was. And of course, I wish I could have written a one sentence summary of everybody, but it just isn't possible in what, a thousand words or something. 

And so it, it's not easy. I'll say that's the first forward I've ever written. And so having to encapsulate and grab onto that, I keep saying the word vibe in my head and I feel like that words ever used grab onto the mission of the book and put that forward in just a few words is not easy. But I think I did a good job and I hope people do read the foreword because I tried. Here's what it is. I tried to make clear the stakes of the book. That's what it is. What are we reckoning with? And I use some of the essays for examples, but really the stakes are, and I'll say it again, life and death. 

And if people want to email me for some statistics, I got all kinds I can share. It's pretty googleable actually about rates of self-harm among people who are divergent and masking, for example, things like that. These are not secrets. And the stories in the book, people talk about this very candidly, so let's make high ed a place where people don't want to die if they are neuro divergent, let's start there and then we'll work backwards. How about then we can make it be a place where people actually want to go to work? And then maybe if we're super doing a great job, it can be a place where people are happy to go to work, who are neurodivergent. Let's do that. I mean, it was really, I sort of worked backwards. So because the stakes are that high, 

RPR: When Lee and I were imagining the book, when Lee came onto the project, I think one of our very early decisions was to make sure that you were involved in the project. Thanks. And we could think of no one better to introduce the collection and really bring it together to kind of like you said, into the vision and really show what the stakes are that we were trying to accomplish. I think I know that Lee and I were both extremely touched when we read your forward the first time and very, it's so compelling and it's so emotionally forthright and vulnerable even in telling part of your story again and bringing in the other stories. So if we haven't thanked you enough already, we want to thank you more because thank you. It's a beautiful introduction to what we were trying to do. 

KGP: Thank you. That feedback is very meaningful to me. 

RPR: So what do you think it's important for readers to know about the stories in this collection? 

KGP: Well, your organization does a very good job. Like you said, you have different sections that handle different challenges. And so I think that the pieces do stand alone and you can read one or another, whatever. That's fine. If you see a name, a friend of yours is in it, read their piece for sure. But if you are compelled by their piece, then read the rest in that section. Because what they're talking about, well, I'll pick masking for example. Masking for those who don't know is he your neurodivergent traits and an identity so that you are accepted in a neurotypical environment and it is always detrimental. There is no form of masking that does not hurt you. If it doesn't hurt you, then it's not masking. It might be what I call at my house with my kids. We say social acting. It is very deliberate, and as soon as we start to feel uncomfortable, we leave. 

But this is the, and it is not something that crosses your emotional or bodily boundaries. It is very different. Masking is allowing people to trample on your boundaries. It is giving up your boundaries because hiding who you are to great harm and shame frequently, shame is attached to it, which is what motivates it. Because you feel like who you are without the mask on is not good or right, you're wrong if you aren't hiding all these other aspects, these traits. So if there's one piece in the masking section that you enjoyed or that you really resonated with you, then I would encourage you to read all of them because that is a way in to this topic that you might not know much about. And sure, this person's story you might relate to more, but it's important to see how masking happens with a variety of people. And you guys did a very good job bringing in voices from all over. I was very impressed by that too. 

RPR: Thank you. And I think we definitely tried to get a wide variety of stories, and Lee's spoken to this before that there were even stories that for whatever reason, didn't make it in that maybe the author pulled out or didn't feel like that they could go into that depth once they started the process. And we wanted to respect those voices just as much as the ones that were included in the collection and respect that people are at different stages of acceptance and comfort with their own diagnoses, and it's part of the journey and it's part of our responsibility to make sure people feel comfortable wherever they are in that particular journey. 

KGP: Yes. 

RPR: Yeah. So you've talked so eloquently about your hopes for the book that honestly, that it could potentially save lives. But what else do you hope this book accomplishes with readers? 

KGP: I mean, any book like this, ones that you've written, ones that I've written, and then this one for example. I think that we need to affirm the experiences of other narrative urgent people in higher ed because like I said, that affirmation helps. It erodes the shame and the stigma and makes a person feel not alone. And there is nothing more valuable than that. I hope that that's the reader who is reading it for community. Then there's the reader that is a hopeful ally. This is somebody that is maybe at the same level in the administrative tree that wants to learn more about the subject. I mean, who's going to pick the book up? I hope it's adopted as reading group material or the Center for Teaching and learning at different schools. I hope that, so then it becomes honestly mandatory because people who need to read this are not the people who are going to just go, oh yeah, totally. 

And so for those people who may or may not be already leaning towards being allies, I hope that they can see the humanity behind the diagnosis and the traits that they might have thought were weird or silly. And also not just the humanity, but also the hardships. And so they understand that this person, someone who might say ask for some sort of accommodation isn't trying to cheat the system or take the easy road, that it really is something that isn't easy. And so I'm thinking for example of asking for an extra year for tenure or for time off for grief or something like that. There's a certain place where people are just suspicious of disabled people. We're trying to get that good parking. My colleague Doron Dorfman calls it “fear of the disability con.” So we're trying to fake out the world. All these get all this good, okay, it's a lie. 

I mean, it's extraordinarily difficult to get any sort of accommodations at all, period. I never had them. I never asked for them. And even if I had, what would they have given me, right? Because this isn't not even set up as an institution higher ed to accommodate neurodiversity. They're barely set up among faculty especially. And so what am I going to get more time on my own exams? No, I don't have to take them anymore. So what am I going to get? So among potential allies and decision makers and people like that who hopefully will read the book when it is adopted by reading groups on campus, for example, they will see a humanized group. They will see that where inclusion is failing, where accommodations are failing as are different things, and hopefully ideas for how to make higher ed more accessible still yet a different thing because accommodations and accessibility are not the same. And in an ideal world, we have an accessible higher ed that is welcoming, already welcoming and able to be used by neurodivergent people without them having to ask for accommodations and disclose and do all these things that might make them uncomfortable. 

RPR: I'm thinking about your work as well, and I'm thinking about which book to recommend as the best companion for this book. So if you think about your work, would you recommend Life of the Mind Interrupted? Would you recommend A Light in the Tower? What do you think you would have people read? 

Speaker 2:

Well, A Light in the Tower is newer. That was 2024. Life of the Mind Interrupted is 2017. It's hard to believe how old that book is, but its tone is probably more similar to yours. And it's on track for a 10th anniversary edition, which when I say that I'm like, how is that possible? But that won't be till 2027, but it's still a good book. It is funny, I wrote that book with no autism diagnosis and no knowledge of my ADHD diagnosis, and it's amazing how much it still is, how accurate it. So the awkwardness and how strange I felt in higher ed at the time, it is not a memoir by any means. There's lots of interviews with other people and advice, concrete advice for both Rgt people and for faculty who would make their faculty allies who'd like to make the higher ed more inclusive. A Light in the Tower is a great book. Like I said, it's newer and has a lot of newer numbers in it, which I think might be helpful for people to understand. 

Exactly. I was just reading, I don't know why I do this to myself. I was just reading the Chronicle Review and somebody was like, there is no mental health crisis in higher ed. I can't remember the title exactly. Let's stop calling it a crisis. It's not a crisis. They're just stressed and don’t how to handle stress talking about students. And I was like, I wanted to pull my hair off. I mean, like I said, I don't know why I do this to myself, why I read the Chronicle Review, because it is just full of stuff like that and there's no talking back. People believe this, and I have so much concrete research by people doing really good research that that's just wrong. And so it doesn't matter though. So I was fortunate to be able to draw on a lot of that really good research. 

In fact, for law schools in particular called LSSE, Lesse, I think is what we call it, and it's a five letter acronym and I can't remember what it stands for, and I got to write, they invited me after I wrote my book to write for their website, write a short piece for their website because their numbers are so important, talking about depression and anxiety, severe depression and severe anxiety among students in higher ed. And people don't to call this not a crisis to minimize it is just they're stressed out because they've are away from home for the first time and actually have actual responsibilities. That's just not true. It's just not, A Light in the Tower that's with Kansas, University of Kansas. Maybe that's a better companion because it brings that sort of more research focused, although it's still a trade book, obviously it's still very readable and there's lots of stories next to this book of beautiful stories. So as soon as someone starts to think it can't be that bad, they can go to my book and go, yes, it is actually, and then come back. So it's nice. It is that bad, actually. 

RPR: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's a great recommendation and I'll make sure that folks have links to all of the books so they can choose, because I think they're great companions. But let's talk a little bit about the books that's coming out now. So you're branching out into the parenting space. 

KGP: It's crazy, right? Awesome. Have two books with Hopkins, one on pregnancy and all the way, it's like the four main parts are getting pregnant, being pregnant and childbirth and postpartum. And so that's actually coming out in a year, probably probably next year. Then I have one coming out in November. Oh my God, it's September. What happened? Okay, so it's coming out in a minute and it's called Your Kid Belongs Here. And the subtitle is An Insider's Companion to Parenting Neurodiverse Children. And that title, Your Kid Belongs Here, is what I called it from the very beginning because what made me write this book was the feeling that my kids just kept getting kicked out of everything. I mean, it was horrible. So they're both AuADHD like me. And we went through five schools, maybe six, five schools I think, and then kicked off the swim team, kicked out of tennis clinics off because of not disruptive behavior like you or I would think of. 

They're not dunking people or splashing the coach. When my 6-year-old, and I want to repeat this 6-year-old was kicked off of the neighborhood little neighborhood swim team. It was because he couldn't remember to swim backstroke and they were doing backstroke instead of freestyle. And I'm like, what? Or he would jump in the wrong lane by accident and immediately get into the correct lane once they corrected him. But it was confusing because his brother was in that lane and maybe that was where he was supposed to be, and he's six. And they said he needed too much individual attention. And it made me think of what are the stakes with that? Is attention a zero sum game? And of course, once that happened, you have to understand this, that event was like eight years ago now, but I just could not stop thinking about this idea of this individual attention as a way to exclude neurodivergent people, not just children from public life. 

And so I called it the individual attention fallacy because it is a fallacy because it has to do with what we choose to pay attention to. And this goes all the way back to norms like I talked about in the beginning. So in the context of children, there might be a complaint from a teacher or a coach that a non divergent kid is using more than their fair share. Fair share. This is the fairness thing with disabled people again, of attention and therefore depriving it from neurotypical kids. But the thing is, is that this complaint, this individual attention fallacy hides the reality, which is what's underneath it, is that these leaders, coaches, teachers, our colleagues, whatever, are choosing to spend their attention and forcing norms that are irrelevant. Does that really matter if a 6-year-old swims backstroke or freestyle, if they're not putting themselves in danger, not endangering other kids and not being disruptive and all these things, if they're just doing so, we have this, again, back to this extremely narrow pathway of social norms. 

And so if we're spending all our time focusing on these narrow norms that are, as you and I know, cultural norms are fake, they're not real. Just because they're not real though, it doesn't mean they don't cause harm. And so by enforcing these irrelevant norms, it drains attention from everyone. And so what's the solution? It's to throw out everybody who's outside of this narrow social norm. But that's not the right answer at all. The right answer is to expand what's normal is to be more understanding. And this is what we're circling all the way back around to of many minds, to everything I've ever written about higher ed. This is why this book felt like such a natural outgrowth of the work I've already been doing because, especially say with regards to schools, now I'm talking K through 12 now, but gosh, I felt like I was talking to when I would talk to my kid's teacher, granted I was probably crying while these conversations were happening because they were so horrible, but I felt like I was talking to my colleagues about who were annoyed about having to accommodate students in their classrooms. 

And I'm like, except this time it was my kid and I wanted to shake them. I wanted to hand them my books. I wanted to do these things, but I couldn't do that because when it's your child, at least for me, I was so just torn up. And what we realized was that there wasn't going to be a school where one or the other or both weren't being bullied and frankly abused by their school. And so we pulled them out and have homeschooled them ever since 2020. And they are thriving. Thriving. And so I've become a teacher in many ways and was able to apply all these things that I practiced and preached in higher ed with my kids. So they're teenagers, they're in high school now. One is taking college classes at a local community college. It's the dual enrollment thing where you can do that as a high schooler. So that's out of my hands. 

But at the same time, what I taught them all along was that it's not about the, we don't do grades. I have a huge pass fail. For those that don't know, huge pass, fail, advocate, huge, no grading advocate. And so they read books. They occasionally will write stories that they want to write, and they are incredible computer game designers, and that's where their special interest lies. And I just fed it. They have tutors they meet with twice a week that help them with coding and computer coding and game design and just all these beautiful things. And so whenever I felt myself wanting to get rigid and enforce something, I was like, whoa, listen to yourself. What are you worried about? And what I was worried about was what is their schooling going to look like to outsiders, which is what pass fail is all about. 

Which grades aren't for students, grades are for employers in graduate schools and things like that. I mean, in law schools, grades are so, the law firms know who to hire. That's why we have grades. It's all bullshit. Everybody knows that and everybody plays along. In fact, the last time I taught, I put my foot down and said, I will not teach unless you change this course to pass fail. And they did. But I'm only having that power now at this point in my career with my own children. I had to resist this urge to what I thought was going to help them. But really what I was saying was how will this look to colleges when they apply to college, what will this? And again, it's some outsider dictating, some amorphous outsider dictating what I should be teaching my children or what my children should be learning and exploring when in reality, again, it's all bullshit. It's all social norms that we self-inflict. And so it's been a great learning experience bringing those two worlds together. 

RPR: Well, as we wrap up, this has been a wonderful conversation. Sorry that we have to end it, but I always ask one last question before we wrap up. So what's one thing you wish all women in or around higher ed knew or practiced? 

KGP: So I knew this question was coming. I've been here before, but I cannot remember what I said last time, and there is a very strong chance I said the same thing. But here we are. And that is boundaries. Boundaries and more boundaries. The problem is, is that being a woman in higher education means the expectation is that you don't have boundaries, that you do everything that you are. Everybody's the wife and the mother and the professor. You have to be all of these things to everyone. You're the one who brings the snacks or takes the notes during the meetings or all the sort of stuff that the wife does. And then you're also the parent to all of your little children who are actually adults in your classes. And if you're not motherly enough, then you get terrible course evaluations, which matter because women make up a vast majority of our contingent faculty workforce, and they rely solely on course evaluation. 

So do what act maternal, do some social acting there. And the answer is, yeah, I did. But it wears you out. It is an emotional toll. So this is a balance, and I know it, but I had a mentor tell me a long time ago that you are allowed to say no. And she was a woman and she was non-tenure track faculty, but she'd been around a long time and she's like, you are allowed to say no more than you think you are, and you don't have to make up excuses. In fact, don't, okay, just say. 

And I was like, okay. But I was like my first or second year on the faculty, I think it might've been my first, and I just didn't, it was hard to say no. And so I started saying no, and then I got really good at it. And now that I'm 20, what, some 20 years? 20 aha. Two years in higher ed, I'm excellent at it. So you don't have to do everything. Everybody asks A friend of mine who is her advice is what she does. She says, if someone asks me to do something, I tell them, oh sure, yes, send it to me in an email. And then the email never comes. So it just doesn't, and then it's like, because how many times are we walking down the hall in our department and some person is like, Hey, do you think you could blankety blank? 

And it's just, to them, there's nothing but to you. They're just dropping one more rock in your way on your and your path to greatness. Okay, well no, we got to get those out of the way. And so you say, that's interesting. Don't say yes, say, that's interesting. Can you email me about that so I can give it some thought? And the email just never shows up because to them it's just some noodle brain passing fancy to you. It's a big deal. So make them make it a big deal. If they can't be arsed to send you an email, then you definitely don't need to think about it anymore. Do not even think about it until you get an email and then you say no when you get the email. But at least it is a good screener. And maybe when you get the email, it's more interesting than you thought it was. Yeah, boundaries. They're so hard. It's so hard and it feels so risky. But that's the thing. 

RPR: Yeah, we could do a whole episode on setting boundaries and saying no, and why we don't say no. Connecting that to your values. 

KGP: Yes. So it's hard. 

RPR: All right. Well, thank you so much, Katie. It was lovely to talk to you again, and we just love having you as a part of the Of Many Minds. I was going to say family, but I don't mean…

KGP: More a family than other things. But I, again, so grateful that you invited me. It was hugely flattering and I'm glad that you liked what I wrote and I was so glad to be on the podcast again today. 

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 show notes at theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.