Besides all sort of collections (see below my homepage at TU Delft), this blog will capture informal observations and handy reflections, e.g., intriguing or refreshing things for anyone who is curious about international and/or Dutch academia.
14 May 2023
New Start
For today is the start of a new stage/phase, this blog space will be revived.
Besides all sort of collections (see below my homepage at TU Delft), this blog will capture informal observations and handy reflections, e.g., intriguing or refreshing things for anyone who is curious about international and/or Dutch academia.
Besides all sort of collections (see below my homepage at TU Delft), this blog will capture informal observations and handy reflections, e.g., intriguing or refreshing things for anyone who is curious about international and/or Dutch academia.
08 November 2020
Reasons behind Lagging
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Identifying the reason(s) behind a mid-career slump
A look at some of the common research obstacles faculty may face once they have received tenure.
What is a mid-career research slump? Many of us in the academy have either witnessed or personally experienced how the excitement of becoming a tenure-track faculty member, and the energy (and anxiety) of working towards tenure and promotion, can be followed by a downturn in research activity. This in turn can be associated with a downturn in morale, in engagement, and in work-life balance. Mid-career faculty members and researchers often face a range of these challenges to their research aspirations and identity. Just to clarify, I am using “mid-career” to mean, roughly, faculty members who have held tenure for between two and 12 years – I recognize that this is an imprecise category. Some people outside this band might still reasonably consider themselves to be mid-career. This is a group within which many researchers face common difficulties and experiences. However, for the purposes of this article, I am focusing on the experience of tenure-stream faculty members who wish to reinvigorate their research.
In this three-part series, I will outline some of the common research obstacles mid-career faculty may encounter, offer some strategies and tips that might help to avoid a slump, and then finally offer some solutions if a research slowdown has progressed too far into an academic’s career. Some of what I say here will apply also to contract lecturers or researchers appointed outside the tenure stream, but these colleagues have distinctive experiences, as well as some mid-career challenges unique to their situations.
To start, let’s look at some of the common research obstacles that mid-career faculty face:
Post-tenure slump
The build-up to the tenure process can include both a burst of productivity and heightened anxiety. After tenure, you may have less work “in the pipeline,” and also be worn down by the hard push and high stress. A slowdown is quite natural in these circumstances. But sometimes the slowdown lasts until it becomes the new normal, especially given other pressures on time and attention.
Associate grind
Some institutional committees formally require members to be tenured, while other committees simply prefer to solicit colleagues who know their way around issues and processes. Either way, one result of gaining some experience and seniority is that faculty members find themselves pressed to juggle increased service commitments. Mid-career researchers go from being somewhat sheltered from administrative service to being the ones who do the sheltering for junior colleagues. A full undergraduate teaching load, increased demand as a graduate supervisor, and intensified service work all add up to a continuous grind that can put real pressure on research time and change your sense of what the university values about your contribution.
Burdens of life stages
While mid-career researchers comprise a broad age demographic, one common experience is reduced time, energy, and mental resources due to family and health pressures. It is not uncommon for researchers in this demographic to move fairly directly from raising young children to caring for aging parents – when the two don’t overlap outright. It is difficult to focus on research when your family or health commitments are top of mind.
Losing contact with contemporary work
Even a brief post-tenure slump can leave you worried that the field has moved on while you were less engaged with it. Suddenly it feels like you’ve lost contact with the hot problems and the new literature. If you haven’t been able to attend major disciplinary events, you might feel like a stranger where you once were networked with other researchers. As your research interests mature, moreover, you might substantially lose interest in the topics that had once been of all-consuming importance to you. It can come as a shock to discover that a research focus and expertise, maybe one that used to seem like a defining personal characteristic, no longer interests or motivates you.
Losing resources
A slump or run of bad luck in granting competitions can lead to reduced funding, less laboratory access, fewer graduate students, and loss of other elements of research capacity. And this can act as a ratchet, as the “Matthew Effect” kicks in: having fewer resources makes it harder to get the resources for greater research capacity. Grant programs that have a special separate category for early-career researchers are a great support during that earlier stage, but a research slowdown that occurs once past the window of ECR eligibility can leave a scholar at a disadvantage in a (theoretically) more competitive senior scholars’ applicant pool.
Taken together, these challenges can have some unhappy effects on researchers, who are accustomed to being, and being seen as, highly active scholars. I have been in this position myself, and over the years have worked with and counseled other people experiencing it as well.
It is worth noting moreover that the pressures summarized above may be experienced disproportionately by women, people of colour, people with disabilities, Indigenous colleagues, and faculty members belonging to other underrepresented or marginalized groups in the academy. For example, well-meaning policies requiring diverse representation on collegial governance committees can create an unusual number of service requests for members of these groups, and can engender a greater emotional burden related to the aims of diversity and inclusion (i.e., “if I don’t personally shoulder this load, these ends won’t be achieved for future students and colleagues in my position”).
Taken together, these pressures may leave some colleagues feeling self-conscious or embarrassed: “I used to be on the cutting edge; am I now perceived by colleagues or students as lagging?”
There might be a sense of pessimism: “It would be so much work to get back up to speed on the literature and new techniques, and I just don’t have time to do it now. Has my window of opportunity for being a successful researcher now passed?”
Some might end up feeling cornered: “I don’t want to focus my efforts solely on teaching or administration, but at least those are ways I can make valuable contributions without doing a prohibitive amount of scholarly re-tooling that I just don’t have the time and energy to do.”
Of course, colleagues who focus heavily on teaching and service are highly respected contributors within their institutions and beyond – influential and deeply appreciated colleagues who make a lasting impression on a university, on a discipline, and in countless students’ lives. Teaching, mentorship, and academic leadership too are outlets for the creativity and innovative impulses of scholars. So, any attempt to impose a very sharp contrast of skills and achievements between research, teaching, and service is to some extent a false one. Still it is a genuine distinction, marked by different effects, activities, valorizations, and descriptions of employment duties. By and large, scholars want to be engaged with their disciplines, with research communities, and with problems, by way of active research programs.
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26 March 2020
Chronic Stress - Be Aware
Shocking revelations, especially in such tough times.
http://www.activeresponse.org/chronic-stress-and-a-life-how-stress-almost-killed-me/
2023 update with this new GAS figure:
Chronic Stress and a Life: How Stress Almost Killed Me
by SERGIO CALTAGIRONE, April 11, 2019
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by SERGIO CALTAGIRONE, April 11, 2019
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I started getting sick two years ago: headaches, irritability, mood swings, poor sleep, and sinus congestion. I started a new job not too much earlier and working hard at a non-profit simultaneously. Several years earlier I began to get seasonal allergies.
It wasn’t constant. The symptoms would come and go; again, like allergies. I worked hard with long days and late nights on the equivalent of two tech start-ups. Stress is normal. You work hard at start-ups. You hustle day and night. If you’re not stressed, you’re not working hard enough. The joy of a start-up is a struggle. Right?
I worked in high stress environments before, in national cyber operations centers at the National Security Agency dealing with major national crises. I had worked 18-hour days regularly simultaneously dealing with high stress and constant fatigue while also thriving. So, I thought I knew I could handle stress. I thought this was a bad allergic episode.
For six months the symptoms worsened. Headaches constantly. I couldn’t focus for long. It was harder to breathe through my nose and I diagnosed myself with worsening allergies. I went to the doctor. They suspected a sinus infection and proscribed a light steroid, nasal drops, and antibiotics. I was on increasing doses of antibiotics for two months. I had several international trips with long hours in the plane – a nauseating and painful experience with inflamed sinuses. Nothing changed – it got worse. Now, I was unable to focus on any task for more than 15 minutes.
I visited an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist. After a 15-minute consultation they saw it was bad enough to order a CT scan to examine my sinuses immediately. My sinuses were filled by inflamed sinus tissue – an extreme case of sinusitis. That explained all my symptoms. A question I asked the doctor: why? Why was this happening? His answer: they don’t really understand sinusitis and it could be caused by many factors. But it wasn’t an infection being addressed by antibiotics; so, either it was a strain of resistant bacteria or something else. Either way we needed to reduce the inflammation to get the sinuses to drain so they can heal. They put me on lots and lots of steroids.
The steroid treatment was terrible. Absolutely terrible. It helped the inflammation but caused horrendous mood swings. I didn’t like the person I was anymore. After 30 days on steroids without improvement I opted for surgery as there were no other options. I would have stents placed in my sinuses to force them to drain. I would have my septum straightened and turbinates reduced to widen the nasal passages. It was hell. I lived and slept for a week in a reclining chair sipping apple juice only for 3-4 days unable to lay down and feeling too poor to do much else. I couldn’t breathe through my nose and my entire face swollen and in pain.
After the post-surgery removal of the stints, packing, and everything else and weeks of follow-up appointments to clean out my sinuses with a small vacuum, it seemed to have worked. I was feeling better. I was breathing better than ever before. My headaches were gone, and I was feeling more normal. Case closed.
Fast forward 3 months. I began feeling depressed. The mood swings appeared again. I was getting seriously anxious. I would get angry at my family for little things. I would wake up angry and anxious – I could feel my blood pressure rise within the first five minutes of being awake. I channeled all that excess energy into cleaning – constantly cleaning the house and then being angry at everyone else when it wasn’t clean enough. I was a complete wreck. Interestingly, I also began to feel my sinuses again. I could tell my stress level by how well I could feel their inflammation. I would tell my wife, “I feel my sinuses” when I was getting anxious or stressed.
Luckily, I have the most intelligent and caring spouse, partner, and friend in Sherrie. She was clear with me that I needed to get help. Things were not good. I was a different person. I was ruining my relationship with my children. I was ruining our relationship. So, eventually I went back to the doctor.
This time, I went specifically to discuss depression, stress, and anxiety. They increased my antidepressants which worked much better and helped manage generalized anxiety. I also stayed away from Benadryl which I was using as a sleep aid because one of its side effects is anxiety. I cut back on caffeine to reduce stimulants. I also got out of the house more often which was a constant trigger.
Eventually I learned that what my sickness had a name: Chronic Stress. I was dealing with an insidious demon. One normalized and even encouraged by society. After decades of working in high stress situations and environments my body was caught in a vicious cycle. It was destroying itself. The actual physiological components are complex and still not fully understood so I won’t explain them here but there are resources linked at the end which explain stress better.
I never knew this. Of course, I heard about the risk and damage of stress in the abstract. People saying “take care of yourself” or such. But, hell, I worked in computer security. I hunted hackers and human traffickers from my desk. I wasn’t taking bullets in my job. My job wasn’t the usual work associated with high stress or PTSD. But, unknowingly, that’s what it was leading to. What was a manageable amount of stress earlier in my career had slowly destroyed me over time and now made me unable to handle normal situations.
I was likely terminally ill and didn’t know it. My cognitive function was declining. My blood pressure was out of control. I stopped sleeping well. I was very depressed. Left uncontrolled I would have likely lost my family and even my life.
I battled chronic stress. Not just stress – that makes it seem like a weekend off would have made things better. I now battled metabolic syndrome and likely long-term cognitive damage caused by stress. I had physical surgery on my sinuses because of stress. I had more common depressive episodes. I had a reduced attention span. I was more irritable. Likely, permanently. You see, stress is something that hurts you permanently and physically over time if left unmanaged. There are thousands of studies that support this. Importantly, chronic stress destroys brain synapses possibly permanently. What was easy before becomes more difficult.
I’m doing better now. I’m not “well.” Chronic stress is now like an addiction recovery. The effects are something I’ll now live with forever. I’ll always be managing it. I’ve permanently changed who I am neurologically and psychologically. It may get easier over time if I can control it, but nobody knows.
So, I now take more time off. I try to sleep longer going to bed earlier. I spend more time outside in the sun. I keep taking my prescriptions which help. I am open with my coworkers and family about how I’m feeling and let people help me. I tell people what I need more. I take more time to contemplate and meditate.
Don’t let this happen to you. Occasional stress is normal, but constant stress will destroy you. Not tomorrow but, like a silent killer, over time changing who you are and what you can do. If you see these or any similar symptoms – DO SOMETHING NOW. Because you too may get caught in a vicious cycle caused by your own body before you recognize it.
Yes, I risk a lot by saying all of this. It’s true that mental health is stigmatized. We send cards to people who break their legs but never to those who struggle with mental illness. It’s true that a future employer could find this post and hold it against me. But if I can help at least one person recognize their symptoms and save a life from being ruined or ended then it will have been worth it. The only way we make the world better is through empathy and positive action – not only with others, but with ourselves as well.
Resources which have helped me:
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