Getting help

Who, why, when

Hello darlings –

I hope everyone’s June (WHAT?) is starting out soooo good. At the very least, I hope you bathed in the blue moon’s light last night!

I’ve recently felt really lucky in my professional career because a lot of very cool, smart people who have much better things to do with their time have helped me out in a variety of ways. I’ve been thinking about the kinds of help I have a lot and how it has made my life so much fucking better.

First! Will you be at EPSA or EPSS in the next few weeks? Would you like to hang out with me? Or… ask me questions (?) If so, please put your email here and I’ll send out some info about a location for a get together / when I might have some office (ahem, pub) hours if people want to stop by. I promise to only use your email for nefarious ends.

Get professional help

Let’s start with the most expensive but maybe easiest to find: there times when you need to pay someone to help you.

That might include hiring a professional editor – I highly highly recommend Kelly Clancy. Kelly is a really kick ass editor, in that she makes my writing soooo much better AND a very good and patient form of external accountability (owing someone I like something that they need for their work is very motivating!) AND has a great, curious mind so when she thinks something is interesting it is really reaffirming! Anyway, if you need an editor (or even if you just WANT an editor), you should hire Kelly.

There’s also a lot of other professional help you can hire to make your research smarter, better, tighter, more accessible. I had a great experience hiring Joseph Stuart to produce the index of my last book. I will never do an index myself again! I have hired people to make comics of my work. I have hired grant writers to help me secure money. I have hired coders and graphic artists. So many THERAPISTS! All of these fall into groups of people who have clear skills that I do not have or don’t want to have.

You might also get professional help by sending yourself on a writing retreat. Kelly and I are hosting our fifth retreat this summer and across our retreats, our retreaters have produced close to double-digits of books! So many grant applications! So many articles! So much writing! A retreat offers you an opportunity to truly tell the rest of the world to fuck off – if you need or want that, go on one!

Get help being feral

I remain fully and utterly convinced that the only way to survive modern academia (maybe just modern life generally) is be at least moderately feral. Constantly surprise authorities with your bites and hisses. Be calm for a great period and then freak the fuck out because of a loud sound. But it is hard to remain feral in an environment that constantly tries to tame you!! So you need to get yourself a coven of feral friends to remind you that you are WILD and to randomly hiss at people. Who are those people? They are the people who will prop you up with an evil smile in a meeting right before you say “I’m not going to do that” to some stupid request or will screen shot your crazy OOO message with a message of #goals or will buy you an ice cream when you say no five times. Find those people. Amp them up. Listen to them. Support their wildness.

Get help getting shit done

If you are like most academics I know (and I somehow know a LOT of you), external accountability is a key to productivity. But how do you set up external accountability? Many of us essentially take accountability hostages – we sign up for conferences or workshops so those chairs, discussants, participants unknowingly become our accountability mechanism. But maybe that’s not the healthiest way to go about doing this? What if you intentionally cultivated accountability? Maybe that’s a writing group? Maybe that’s someone you swap work with? Maybe that’s a shared weekly or daily goal list.

Get help realizing that you are amazing (and also, maybe not that cool)

Academia, man. This shit will fuck you up. Even the most positive revision comments still come with an editor note about how you CANNOT count on a publication. Reviewers can be fucking MEAN. Students can be fucking MEAN. Colleagues can be fucking MEAN. And the structure of our lives mean that we need to be attuned to all of these little fucking digs because any one might become the molehill that turns into a mountain and screws everything up.

So what’s a gal to do in this environment? Obviously, you need a cheer squad. A group of people to remind you that, well, actually, these people are giant dickwads. And yes, you are correct, there are assholes everywhere. And wow, that was super sexist that a student wrote that in the evaluations. And no, it is not acceptable that a colleague said that in a meeting.

But also, the pendulum can swing the other way: sometimes, we get so armored against the negativity that we do not take accurate and useful advice. Or we bristle at any form of criticism, even if it comes from an authentic place. Or we take things personally that are really just some old guy muttering about something that has nothing to do with you. In this case, we need support to keep us grounded. Who is going to read that line from the reviewer and go “well, yes, I think you should actually try that” or help you acknowledge that, yes, your colleague might have a point about the policy you wrote. Or that student feedback in some forms is accurate and if a lot of students say the same thing over and over, it is probably how they are experiencing your class.

The thing is, for me, the same people often fill both of these roles because they actually know a lot about our lives and can accurately tell the good shit from the bad shit. Find those people. Be vulnerable with them about the shitty stuff in your life. Get help telling the good from the bad.

Need more information? Several years ago (!!), I wrote this MHAWS about asking for favors.

It all still applies! Including who asks me for favors. You should ask for help more frequently than you do – all the white dudes are doing it.

XOXO

Mirya