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Apurva: Hello everybody, welcome to another Office Hours. My name is Apurva Ashok, I use she, her, hers pronouns and I am joining you all today from Toronto, which is actually on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Chippewa, the Anishnabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I am very grateful to be living out the last days of summer or what it feels like on this beautiful land.
And I just want to welcome you all to add your own territorial acknowledgements to the chat, this is just one small part of my practice and of Rebus’ to support decolonization, reconciliation work in Canada. And I look forward to doing more in my role at Rebus and in my personal role where I live. A little bit about Rebus, we are a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and in open education in general through professional development.
And we’re excited to have partnered with the Open Education Network for the past five years to offer these Office Hours sessions. Karen will tell you a little bit more about Office Hours, about the OEN, and our fabulous line up for today. So over to you, Karen.
Karen: Thank you very much, Apurva, it is great as always to be here with you and Caitlin and the Rebus team. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network. We’re based at the University of Minnesota. And as many of you are part, we are a community of professionals working to make higher education more open and equitable. Office Hours as Apurva mentioned has been a five-year partnership with the Rebus Community.
We talk informally on a monthly basis about things that are on our mind. But of course it really helps to know what’s on your mind, so please always feel free to offer suggestions for future topics. Today’s topic was inspired by the reality of our lives, particularly over the last couple of years and what we’ve heard from the community about burnout and fatigue. And the desire to try and lean on and support one another to keep going.
So we have four guests joining us today, I will introduce them briefly in a moment. After we hear from them, we will really turn to you for your questions and for you to start the conversation. Before we do that, I will let you know that I am joining you from central California, on the coast and this is the traditional and ancestral home of the Chumash. And recently, I learned about a very cool project they are currently working on with other community members and elected leaders here in California.
And that is to establish the first marine sanctuary. They started this campaign in 2013, and the nomination has just been accepted by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. So this is something that the Chumash have been working very closely with our community on recently, and I’ll just drop a link in the chat in case you’re interested in learning more.
So without further ado I will let you know who’s here with us today in terms of our guests. We are joined by Jess Mitchell, who is Senior Manager in Research & Design at IDRC. Lisa Petrides, who is the CEO & Founder of ISKME. Angelique Carson, who is Shared Collections Librarian at the Washington Research Library Consortium. And Doug Kennedy, who is Assistant Professor Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program at the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of Minnesota.
Now, I know I introduced some of you using acronyms, so please feel free to elaborate on those acronyms. And with that, I will hand things over to Jess.
Jess: Hey everybody, thanks, Karen. Thanks, Apurva, thanks for having this event. I think it’s a great way to bring people together. You mentioned being part of a community, Karen, I’m kind of thinking that that is the way we move so much of the work forward that needs to happen. I am on Anishnabeg, Haudenosaunee and Wendat territory here in southern Ontario. I’m just down the road from the Six Nations, the Grand River Reserve.
And I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this little Turtle Island we’ve got here. And as I spend the time thinking about decolonization and equity, the more I read, the most recent thing that I was reading Patriarchy Blues, Frederick Joseph, a fine, fine read. He makes a wonderful point which is when we do this work, we have to look to the most marginalized. It’s back to that if any of us isn’t free, none of us is free.
And the most marginalized that he’s talking about, and I think that I’ve been thinking about lately are Black CIS women and Black transgender women, also indigenous women. The most precarious, the most diminished, the most leaned upon, the ones who are doing all the lifting. So I spend a lot of time thinking and trying to use whatever voice I have as an awkward ally, a White person, to try to carve a space out there.
I was involved in a project earlier this year, and I feel uneasy when people talk about projects that were passion projects or you know, these sort of projects of the heart because I don’t want it to seem like some projects aren’t passion projects or projects of the heart. And also, sometimes it seems to diminish the legitimacy of the project if you align yourself too closely with it using something like your big organ, your heart.
We did something around humanizing learning and we thought of that quite broadly, brought a group of people together and really wanted to create that community of practice. One where people could come and figure out what it meant to bring their whole selves, not in that way where it usually happens, where the wrong people hear it. But that way where marginalized voices can be heard.
The project brought a lot of leaders together, in some cases, some might say the usual suspects together in Ontario higher ed institutions. And those folks used that platform to bring in fellows, so we brought in again, thinking who are those who are most precarious? Who are those who are experiencing the most difficulty in general? But also specifically during the time that we were in, which was Covid year one and a half, two.
And we reached out to sessional adjunct precariously employed faculty, graduate students, those people who are again, doing the lifting, doing the work and aren’t resting with a safety net underneath them. And we brought them together and did some co-design sessions where we talked through a number of topics and themes that we thought were important to this work of humanizing. I will say when we started the project there was very much this project mentality. What are our milestones? What are our deliverables?
What are our due dates? And actually, even got a little nudge from one of the participants who described himself as a nervous squirrel and wanted to know what we were doing. I resisted and pushed back as much as I possibly could because I don’t like having a defined path in what we’re doing. It’s very tightrope walk between having a purpose and leading the purpose rather than letting others lead it or contribute to it.
So long story short, something happened in our weekly meetings. At first the group didn’t want to meet weekly, they thought it was too much. We’re still meeting weekly the project has long ended, and what we did is we created a community and that community really came together with our whole selves. In the outcome of the project, that is the Pressbook that we created, we have a reference to the musical Rent, and we ask, "How do you measure a year?"
And in that year that we all spent together, a lot happened. We had deaths. We didn’t have any births, but we had a couple of attempts at potty training that didn’t go so well. We had brain surgeries; we had citizenship ceremonies. We had kids going through pandemic quarantines, parents juggling their own schedules and their own workspaces. And it’s that stuff that we so quickly forget.
We had somebody with a self-described elite level sleep apnea. So we were entangled, folks; we were situated. We were in our contexts; we were being human together. And we had some interesting outcomes from that, that I think moved this work forward. We talked about pedagogy of care, pedagogy of trauma, trauma informed pedagogy. And I’m at this point now I think where I want very much to approach everybody with an expectation that you’ve lived a life.
You’ve got trauma, how can we do this thing together? And how can we help lift each other up? How can we make our experiences with each other positive? And how can we do this without this kind of zero sum approach where I lift somebody else up, and somebody else doesn’t feel lifted up. I think that there’s enough to go around.
I want to focus on the most precarious because I think for hundreds of years there has been a deep injustice. There are scars, there are wounds. I’ll stop there for now, I hope I haven’t killed the mood. And I’m going to pass it on to Lisa.
Lisa: All right, thank you, Jess, for really setting that context of kind of where we’re all starting today, right? This is what we’ve been through in the last couple of years. And I want to speak a little bit in my role as CEO and Founder of ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management and Education. Our work is about making learning and knowledge sharing participatory, equitable and open.
Because we in fact believe that the development of equitable and inclusive learning environments contribute to the creation of a more just society. So we embed that in our mission, you might know one of our key initiatives which is around the digital public library OER commons. And we have several communities of practice, of people who we do basically we help them stand up their own libraries and do their work and we help train them to do their professional development and whatnot.
So we’ve been all remote since March 2020. And not only really with all of these partners helping them grapple with this move to remote learning, all this work with how do we focus on the people that we serve? To how are we doing as an organization? Are we okay? I liked your, not I liked it, but your list, Jess, of things, just rang true. Let me add in California, add fires to that, we had several people displaced because of fires and it’s been a rough time.
So really when I saw this topic, I was like yeah, this do more with less kind of attitude basically it’s a scarcity model and we need to just kind of toss it. Maybe you can do more with less for a hot minute, you know, when you’re I don’t know, you’ve had some staff changes or there’s a new project and you haven’t ramped up yet. But the idea that we seem to sort of resist that and say, “No, that’s not possible, we can’t do that.”
So what does that mean? It means first of all that we have to just change that narrative of doing more with less and say is it about prioritizing? How do we help each other prioritize what’s most important? How do we educate to be human? What does that look like? It’s interesting, even in our team meetings, of course, which changed dramatically when we were all remote, we were about half remote before the pandemic and now fully.
And part of it is just being there and showing up. I would say to people, “You don’t have to blur the background of your screen unless you want to. You don’t need to put up some nice cheery background. Have your kid who’s sick, or your dogs who are providing comfort.” Or I live with my mother who’s 88 years old and has dementia, who can just wander into screen and ask me how to brush her teeth. Right?
It's modeling that, as a manager, and saying, “It’s okay, let’s just be here, it doesn’t matter.” How many people have you seen someone grabs a cat and says, “I’m sorry. The cat ran in front of the screen.” Like, how do we just be here and be human and do our work? I think that’s been such an important part of what I’ve tried to model as a manager. And I’ve certainly seen it really have an impact in the way we can sort of relax into the work.
Understand that work is important, it has a strong mission, but we can’t get into the sort of deadly downward spiral of doing more with less and just thinking we have to keep doing, doing, doing and for what? Now, part of it specifically I think most of us here and those of you who are in the room with us today, we’re working in this space of open education. And while it’s relatively new field in some ways, I know that it can be very discouraging.
Maybe you’ve been at this for a couple of years, and you’ve seen something take hold, and then it’s not working and you’re trying and you’re trying and you’re trying, and you’re just burning out. You’re saying, “Ah.” And we’ve seen some amazing people, I think, leave the field for things that are maybe not as I don’t want to say meaningful but don’t have such a passion involved in it or a value of social justice and change and transformation in it, because it takes too much to maintain that.
I think what I’ve lived, and you know, we’ve been doing this for my organization and me of course, for almost 20 years in open education. And I’ve seen so many things kind of come and I’ve seen a lot of negativity. I’ve seen bad things happen. I’ve seen amazing things happen. I’ve seen transformation happen. When you start to see all of the different lifecycles of the change I think there’s not so much of this impetus to say, “It has to change now and if it doesn’t, I’m leaving.”
And that causes us to want to just burnout, burn ourselves out, because we think we have to give it all every day. And actually, what we have to do is sort of give to ourselves every day, and then just show up and do the work. And it doesn’t mean that you do it with any less care or intensity, there’s just a sense of how you can do it. I like to say that I’m a really good plodder, and that’s with a D, D-D-E-R.
But you just kind of keep going and doing the next right thing and that’s really what has kept me and I think our organization going and actually thriving. And we’ve seen also too with the great resignation, we’ve had people cycle out of our organization and amazing people cycle in. And there is something to be said for time and age and wiseness, and all that good stuff.
That you do just kind of sit back and say, “This is the work. Are we adjusting appropriately? Are we making the kinds of changes we need? Are we reflecting? Are we self-reflective? Are we critical of our own work and trying to do it better?” As long as you’re doing a little bit of those every day, that’s how you show up. That’s how you show up for your work. That’s how you show up for life. That’s how you show up for change, whether it’s personal or professional.
So I’m going to stop here, and I am going to pass it over to Angelique.
Angelique: Thank you, thank you so much. I got some chills there, especially there is something to be said for wisdom and age. And I’ll tell you what, I’m ready to hand it over. These Gen Z kids, I love them. They’re not having it, and I applaud it. Take it, please. Again, I also was really enthused about the topic for today. I and everyone has been having these conversations, the Washington Research Library Consortium really had its annual meeting.
And our plenary speaker spoke about morale and the ambiguity of our lives, and what this means for us now two years later. And she spoke about several items, one item I walked away with, which I was surprised I’d never heard of was professional awe. And so much of that informs what we do. And if you haven’t heard of it either, it means like your work is so noble and so good, that you will over service at the risk of your own health because the work needs to get done.
And I think in a service industry, with the service community that we have, we have professional awe or we are likely to have it. And one of my colleagues was like, “Well, I’ve never had professional awe.” And I was like, “Well, good for you, because that is exactly how I entered into this field, as a BIPOC librarian my first institution was an HBCU, historically black college and university.”
And I’m not wearing any wings, but if you’re a librarian at a school that has historically serviced our most vulnerable populations, teaching someone how to do the most minor task will transform their academic career in an afternoon. And you have that with you, it is a unique sense of responsibility. And I don’t want to sound dramatic, but you’re not just here to get a job done, you’re here to get a job done for your people.
And this is never not important. I love their faces in front of me, and I want to do everything for them I can on every given day, knowing how much it took them to get there. When I was a young student myself, and I was like well, everyone’s getting back to school now, of course, and I’ve been watching the students come back to the University of Virginia, Jefferson’s university, that was my undergrad as well.
When I came to UVA, I was a BIPOC student, first generation, low income. And for my first English 101 class, there was a draft we had to turn in, and I turned in my draft handwritten on paper. My high school did not have a computer lab. I had never written a paper out, I did not know that when you turned in a paper, it was typed. I remember, bless her to this day, I wish I remembered her name, the TA just graciously took my work.
I think they were still spirals on the end of it, where I’d torn it out of my notebook, and I remember I think a student saying something, “Wow, I didn’t know we could do that.” And not having any idea what they meant. So how can we take care of ourselves, when we are who we are in the service that expects that? And the professional awe is just is our standard, we are not hedge fund managers, there’s a reason we’re in this room together.
And when I first entered into librarianship, I was at the Southern University of New Orleans. And at the time, 40% of Louisiana State residents did not have internet access. That was about 10 years ago, I promise you, it’s not better right now, and I could tell you why. But that’s another topic (laughs) I don’t want to get upset. But so, that kind of vulnerability on that campus where you already are told routinely in small ways and digs that you don’t belong there.
I recognize that, and it has informed a lot of my work. I want to be able to show up for my students, even if they weren’t in exactly the same position as a BIPOC student at a predominantly White institution. And of course, I don’t want to take away that you also have those experiences, you do not have to be a woman of color to have these experiences. We know that poverty is not unique in this country.
But there is something very unique to the experience of students of color on these campuses with the history of academia as it is, it is not open. We all understand that it’s history that depends on knowledge gatekeeping. So I wanted to say that BIPOC librarians carry this with them in a unique manner. And I know that other librarians who come from marginalized communities, vulnerable communities carry this with them as well.
So it has been since that plenary presentation, four months ago, professional awe has been on my mind and how it’s informed my work and what are we going to do to take care of ourselves so that we can ease it or give ourselves some grace? Which is going to be so necessary to give others grace. And when you’re talking about just showing up the best we can, showing up as we are, we’re really talking about vulnerability, right?
Now, vulnerability is not how I got here, being vulnerable in spaces is not a good idea for me. It hasn’t been when I was in school, it wasn’t in high school, it wasn’t when I was looking for work, and it isn’t now. Women of color do not walk into spaces and say that they don’t know how to do something or that they need help. That does not serve us, and I do not operate that way.
So that is my struggle. And I don’t come here with an answer, I just come here really with food for thought. And something that I am working through myself and maybe it resonates with you also. I can say this, you know, I was speaking, I was listening to a fellow colleague the other day and she was like, “You know what? There are those who will consider themselves allies.” And she goes, “Well, says who?”
Who said you’re an ally? Who says that you’re doing the work? Who else did you check with? Are you simply depending on your own assessment? So in order to make spaces where we can have meaningful, uncomfortable conversations that will lead to areas where we can be vulnerable, I will have to take a risk to be vulnerable in some spaces. And we will all have to take a risk to be vulnerable to say, “I don’t know. I’m wrong. Teach me this.”
And reduce our defenses so that we can listen. Every day this week you could call me an ally to my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, but a year ago when I was learning and understanding what it meant to add the pronouns I was right, I’m on. Tell me what I need to do so that I can do better. But I had to be taught and I had to be self-educated, and I had to ask others if you think that you are a safe space for all of us to learn more and do better together, we’re also going to have to question are we actively doing that?
You mentioned a moment we just need to show up every day, there’s a saying in Louisiana on the bayou called stick and move. Literally putting your big stick, they don’t call it that, I’m clearly not from the bayou, although I lived there for many years, into the water to move your pallet along. Stick and move, and it’s the everyday work. Being anti-racist is not being a good person, being anti-racist is challenging yourself every day.
So I’m just here to say that it’s been on my mind a lot, I’m very grateful for this discussion. I want to learn how to allow myself to be vulnerable in spaces and I want to figure out how we can create spaces as well. So it’s going to take vulnerability on both sides, it really is. And that’s hard for everyone and that to recognize us as well. But there’s a lot of defense, we’re good people, of course we’re good people, we’re librarians, we’re the best people.
But being a good person is not going to get us there. Being good is not what’s needed, challenging yourself and being uncomfortable and I know that I’m saying things that we all know. But that’s also something I’m realizing for myself how I’ve had my shoulders and my shackles up, my hackles, I think the word is, they’ve been up. And I’m going to have to reduce, I’m going to have to lean back a bit.
So I can give myself some grace and maybe make room for others. It’s hard to make a shift like that when it has been so successful for you and so necessary. But I don’t know of an alternative, and so when we talk about like having uncomfortable conversations to make space, to be vulnerable, I think the question is going to have to be that just being good is not going to cut it.
And we’re going to have to be vulnerable and that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last four months. And so I’m going to pass it along, and thank you so much for your thoughts, that was just simply tremendous, thank you for sharing.
Doug: Okay, so I think I’m batting. There’s always a real virtue in being able to go last because I’m really moved and also it helps me get a gauge of the room. I’m not a librarian. I’m a human scientist on a clinical trials team and I spend a lot of time in my teaching talking about the two taboo topics of bodies and emotions. So this topic of burnout and how we work in higher ed is really relevant.
Before we get into that, and even with the topics that are resonating, I just want to say I’m coming from Minneapolis, I’m from the University of Minnesota and close to the shores of the Bde Maka Ska. And we acknowledge that as a land grant university, that we are built on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people. And especially as land grant university it is vitally important to acknowledge the people whose lands that we live on, learn, and work as we seek to improve and strengthen our relationships with tribal nations.
So thank you for the invitation and for letting me speak today. I’m excited about this conversation. And before I tell you a little bit about some of this work and about what I’ve been thinking about it, the themes that really just sort of stood out for me, and I guess this is why I’m excited is I’m hearing things about how we show up. The impact that we have on our students, that it is deep that we choose this work, focusing on what’s important
The passion that we have for working with young people, again, not to be like a hedge fund manager, we are working with living human beings and all their complexity that they show up with in our classrooms, in our offices. Decoding schooling and helping students really understand that it’s a culture and that I would say too in a lot of my work, working with other professors, helping them understand how they’re teaching, the institutions they inhabit may not be a language that their students speak.
In fact, Angelique, when you were talking about there’s a gentleman who works with our YMC equity innovation center that I have lunch with, we used to do it every two weeks before the pandemic and we’ve kept it virtually. And he’s done a lot of our work or helped with our community engagement work. And that was his experience, too, going into University of Wisconsin and turning in a paper and never, ever having anyone say, “You know what? This is the way we do it.”
And that experience is not uncommon for the students that in a large university of 60,000 students that’s not uncommon. And so then, it begs the question of what is our role within it? And I would say as instructors, as faculty or as people that are working with students in student facing positions that it is us. It is our responsibility to take it up, it’s an act of disruption and equity and transformation that needs to happen.
And then, the last two things I’ll say that have been really, really resonant were that in these positions we have, we’re kind of like a bucket. And it was Ajahn Chah, a meditation teacher some of you may be familiar with that had said, “In these professions where we work with other human beings, especially when we take on whether it’s their pain, their trauma, their troubles, their struggles, we become like a bucket and we get filled up with that.”
But we have to make sure that there’s a hole in that bucket, too, right? And it’s that, how we have that hole in that bucket and how we can recharge because the students will be there again and again and again, and we have to show up. How we show up matters is vitally important and that that work is active, it’s not passive. It’s not an app on your phone that’s like oh, I got another meditation app like no, it’s really about doing the work day in and day out.
And I think sometimes with some of the pop culture buzz around this work it seems that you can just do it. But it doesn’t tell you what happens after it. It’s like when you say you’re sorry, and you realize that okay, there’s still that hurt that is there and having to work through that. I think this is really, really important. So why I’m bringing this up is that the work that I do is really asking questions around the how, how do we operationalize this?
How do we do the work? And for me, with my work in community engagement and my clinical trials team, it’s about helping researchers do the internal and intrapersonal work to then show up better. That it’s okay. That the work that you’re doing inside and how you show up, so it’s again it’s getting at that being able to notice it’s facilitating awareness that’s really important.
So just to give you where that’s going and some of the thoughts around it, is that when we’ve seen even the New York Times had an article on the difference between burnout and depression and how do you tell the difference. I’m really excited to see that there’s more attention on this. You hosting this conversation today, there’s an excellent book by Amelia and Emily Nagowski on burnout, it’s fantastic if you haven’t checked it out, it’s wonderful.
Sites like the Mayo Clinic have lots about what burnout is, great podcasts like 10% happier. Because it’s countering that sort of mentality that I think we see both in the private sector where my partner works, and then in higher ed that you can just grit through it. Toughen up, and if you’re not tough enough to do 80 hours a week as an NH funded scientist, then you really have no business being here.
And for those of us that have been in these positions or that we attained this level of education and being able to do it, yet we can grit through. We may have a big enough engine, if you will. But just because our engine can continue to move forward doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s doing it efficiently or optimally. So you could maybe have just a couple of cylinders firing, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good for you.
And we need to ask some questions about it. And the other piece too that just raises some interesting questions too is that we maybe in environments, teams, departments, things like that that are toxic for a whole host of reasons. And some of the life hacks and things like this that come out assume a lot of privilege that we could just leave, right? And if you have means and maybe if you’re like in my case you’re almost 50 and you’ve got a bunch of academic degrees and some financial stability, sure, you can do that.
But that is not afforded to many. And then, the other piece too is around that sometimes our environments we may be doing deeply impactful work, and it’s tending not to be all toxic or all happiness and unicorns. So how do we learn how to surf those waves? And so amidst all the pop culture pieces around well just do this hack, just do this piece, we really need to start to think about well then how do you do it?
Because inevitably those things, well just for a jog or just take a walk or find meditation whatever that means really become another rock in our knapsack that is just weighing us down. And I think for those of us that in especially in these student positions that starts to mean as we get more and more burned out that we’re not showing up well for people in front of us or that we start to see people as numbers or units or grades, assignments, things like that.
So what I hope we can start to talk about a little bit today and what I’ve found pretty useful in some of the work that I’ve been doing is getting at the reframing piece. That we know a lot about the body, we know a lot about how exercise or meditation can affect the brain, can affect our parasympathetic nervous system, things like that. But a lot of times the structures that we have in place are well, exercise happens at the gym, for example.
Or meditation has to take place in a certain way of doing this or that. So being able to restructure that and finding those minutes. And then also getting very, very clear about what’s important versus not. There is a lot that’s there, I will confess to being a high functioning trainer for the majority of my life, and these are hard lessons learned that have been complemented by my academic work.
But when we think about this reframing, especially with students, and we’ve had jump in enrolment numbers as administrators made different decisions around things, for good or bad. When we’re with the students, understanding well what’s important right now, as the student is in front of me talking about a topic, talking about a need that they have, talking about a struggle and being able to show up in ways that are important, that that student feels heard, listened to, valued and that they can continue to learn.
So there’s a lot here that I’ve been thinking about with the topics and I would be more than happy to engage for a long time about this, because I love my research, but I really love my students. And I’m looking forward to questions. So lots to talk about this and we can get into specifics around stumbling your way through. So thank you for inviting me, I look forward to this discussion.
Apurva: Well, thank you Doug, Angelique, Lisa and Jess. I know Karen has put an invitation for comments and questions. But first, I wanted to just thank all four of you for your vulnerability and for sharing your stories and sharing your perspectives on this topic. Jess, you talked about bringing your whole self to work and not having a zero sum approach to all of this. I have four pages of notes, so this is what I’m looking down at, as you’ve been chatting.
Lisa, you talked about the importance of modeling and being human, I think that’s what I’ve taken away. Angelique, you flagged the importance of how good just won’t cut it, how vulnerability is really the beginning for us to work through this as a community. And Doug, for you, as you were chatting, again, I’m walking away with the challenge that we might have around determining what is important and what is the place to start and what isn’t.
I have a lot of thoughts and personal experience with this particular topic, but I will pause, and send an invitation back out to everybody who’s in the virtual room with us. If you have questions or comments or thoughts or scenarios, please feel free to post them in the chat, Karen and I will read out your questions. You’re also more than welcome to unmute your microphone and join in on this discussion and the conversation.
And that extends to all four of our guests, too, so please feel free to continue this conversation with one another instead of just having Karen and me direct and lead. And I’ll give us a pause, hopefully a comfortable pause, where you can reflect and take a moment to say anything you might immediately want to.
Lisa: There is something that comes to mind for me, it’s sort of the juxtaposition of what both what Angelique and Doug talked about. I’ve left a toxic workplace before and some others did too. And I had a certain amount of privilege that enabled me to do that, but I watched others who didn’t and still left. And of course had consequences because of that. So I just want to paint that picture for a minute and say sometimes you have to leave a toxic situation in our workplace.
It's there, there’s many examples of it. And it’ll make you sick, literally, from a health perspective. And I think part of what Doug, kind of what I got what you’re saying, especially when we think about the privileges, how do we help others who we see need to do that? Right? And what kind of how do we, you can’t see my hands, but you know, like how do you hold somebody who needs to step out of that and help them across?
What can we do to assist? I think we do need to encourage each other to walk out of a toxic environment. And on the opposite side of that is the being vulnerable, right? Which as a trained academic and I’m a former professor, too, it’s like that was not something that you were ever encouraged to do. And you were penalized for it, being a woman in the workplace or being a person of color or anybody else from a marginalized group.
Yet at the same time, if we stop being vulnerable even in those environments, that’s toxic to ourselves, too. So there are kind of these strange, as you were talking, it seems maybe it’s the same side of the same coin. I was thinking it was opposite, but there’s something there that is again the essence of what it does mean to be human, right? That is something that we bring that is part of the make-up of who we are.
Apurva: Please jump in, Doug.
Doug: Yeah, so Lisa just maybe as a way of kicking this conversation at least in one direction and this doesn’t answer everything but there is this really important skill that we do with our students. Or at least in the courses I teach and I teach courses on meditation intersection with culture and knowledge, where they’re competing, where they complement each other and also the mindfulness based stress reduction.
I teach an academic version of it, so if we’ve got more time we can go more into the research. And as we’re talking about working both with students and then also with other researchers, my earlier work on teachers and burnout and then educators and their cultural capabilities, it’s that somatic awareness, that body awareness, right? That when we’ve probably been in higher ed, it’s like you’re in the swirl, that maelstrom of minutia that kills us.
Or pressing deadlines, and we can see ourselves being less and less effective or maybe starting to dehumanize our colleagues or all the things that we see in burnout. But being able to detect that as almost like that early warning system, to be okay, exhaustion is here. Impatience is here. Noting that in the body. And then using that as that early warning system to say, “Okay, I can take a break here.”
That means I can walk for my lunch, or I can go to the furthest coffee shop or even the furthest restroom just to get up and move and come back can be really, really valuable. Or being able to in those meetings knowing where our vulnerability can have a very strong back, but it can have a soft front as well, to know okay, I’m absorbing it but I am not moving from my position here.
Or I’m absorbing another person’s misconceptions, misinformation. But that bodily awareness can then be really useful in terms of giving us those internal cues as we start to face outward, as well as for greater self-care.
Jess: It’s funny because there’s so much of this work that is in direct opposition. Everything you say and its opposite. So we want to create safe spaces, but we know that we can’t create safe spaces for everyone. The best we can do is create brave spaces, and that takes work. That takes some good work, some good facilitation, some awareness of self and body and space and coming into a space in a certain way.
But we also know that some of the biggest personal growth happens when we step outside of our comfort zone. So we’re in conflict in a lot of ways, everything we say and its opposite, I think is true. And I made a new year’s resolution to my wife this year that I was only going to deeply collaborate with people who understood nuance. And didn’t think of the world as this black and white, yes or no, you’re either a good person or a bad person because we’re all both.
And we all need to really spend some time sinking into context and understanding context. As you said, Angelique, making yourself vulnerable in certain situations is a very bad idea, detrimental to you. So now you’ve got this world of bumper stickers coming at you, you’ve got to be vulnerable to do this work, you’ve got to be… I’ll tell you some bumper stickers. This stuff travels at the speed of trust.
And that was one of the things that I just really firmly believe that if you come in and the other bumper sticker I would put on my car is it’s sniff-able. I can tell you’re just full of shit. I can tell when you’re not being authentic and when you really don’t care about people, when your policies don’t line up with the words that are coming out of your mouth. You tell me you’re really all about equitable education, but you also tell me you’ve got a policy about late assignments.
Which is it? You tell me that you’re all about humanizing students, but if I come to you and tell you my third grandparent has died, you’re going to judge me. Well, which is it? And how are we sitting and understanding our own role in these spaces and whether we make them brave or not? It’s very self-satisfying work when it’s done in that smelly way, but when it’s done in an authentic way as so many of you pointed out, it means discomfort, it means continuation of the work, it never ends.
It's not like check that off, I did my deep thinking on Thursday at 4:00, now I can go back to being patriarchal, White supremacist, fill in the blank, not care about the planet, just care about profit. And I think that we wind up creating these zones of further bifurcation. And just this space, this gulf between people who want to talk about these things in a deep way and those who just aren’t aware of them at all.
I’ve been doing this work for years now, and I’m struck by just how many of these 101 conversations that I keep having about diversity, about equity and about inclusion and how so few of the communities that I am working with are ready for those advanced conversations and the really deep stuff. Digging into the ethics of it and the practice of it, and that’s what we tried to do with this project is not skirt away from the really gnarly, very difficult situations.
You’ve got one Black student in your class. You’ve got a person with a complex disability in your class. What are you going to do? So instead of saying words in a syllabus and then maybe not holding them up in the policies that are in the very same syllabus, how do you walk that talk? How do you stay consistent? How do you continue to ask questions, not just give answers to things that nobody’s asked?
How do you listen and how do you show up in this way that isn’t so predetermined and so reinforcing of the power dynamics that we so quickly assume? When I walk into a classroom and I put my bag on the desk, there’s a lot that goes on in that millisecond. All of a sudden, I’m supposed to be the knower. So one of the things that I love about these kinds of conversations is they fundamentally should change the way we think of pedagogy.
And fundamentally change the way we think of ourselves as educators and who we’re educating. And whether or not we know who the heck we’re educating, have you ever educated somebody who’s been a refugee? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who’s grown in generational poverty? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who didn’t have money to pay the bills for their utilities that month? And would you know?
Apurva: That takes me back to Doug, when you said that quote around this is the way we do it. So much of our work is about challenging specifically that statement. And really coming up as Jess and Angelique, you and Lisa were describing adaptable modular constantly changing ways of doing it. I’m going to be mindful of time, so I don’t want to keep chatting, so I will pause again to see if others who are in this room want to jump in on the conversation.
Angelique: I don’t know if anyone, I can’t see, but I wanted to comment really as a follow up to what was just made. Even when we are here collectively doing the best work, and I feel that in my heart, this work is my professional pleasure, and it’s the most meaningful part of the work I do. And even in this environment, amongst fellow information providers and librarians.
When you talk about how long we’ve been having these diversity 101 conversations, how long is the conversation about diversifying this profession been going on? Decades. Decades, at least 40 years, probably more, like at least maybe 40 to 50 years of literature review we provide information on diversifying the profession and how to court, how to recruit, how to make them stay.
And our numbers aren’t any better. 40, 50 years later the numbers aren’t any better. And if I was not in an HBCU and I’m not now, I am as isolated as I ever was, the day I stepped on the campus of University of Virginia and even amongst the best people. There are assumptions that I have to counter to assure everyone that I am capable of the work that needs to be done.
And so, I think just constantly holding ourselves accountable is really going to be the only way forward. And when I tell you that I’m trying to imagine how to make my work better, easier, more enjoyable for myself, I am still actively trying to figure out how to be vulnerable professionally. How to stop and say, “I don’t know this. I need help.” I don’t say I need help. I say, “Can I have an extension?”
I say, “Can I do it later?” Or I say, “Can someone assist me?” I have never turned on a project, are you kidding me? You don’t do that, not if you want acknowledgement and success and confidence in the work that you can produce. So I really appreciate this discussion. I have been learning a lot about how I operate since our own primary discussion and again, no solutions to offer, just musings and observations.
But thank you for the comment, and it does directly involve how we’re going to consider and couch pedagogy as well. The conversation is just so much bigger. But I don’t even know if we are even prepared yet to even really have these conversations. Is anyone really having meaningful uncomfortable conversations? Has anyone actually watched that happen? I haven’t.
Jess: Well, we are.
Angelique: Well, we are, yes. But outside of us. And I’m glad that we are.
Jess: I do every day because it’s sort of like you said, it’s the privilege that I have of doing this work. And I mean, you probably know what this is. I regret wearing this now. I was wearing this because my hair was very floppy. I think I’m going to go for just floppy hair. Because it perpetuates so many things, I try really hard not to wear branded things when I come on a call.
I just took off a hat that had a big "T" on it, with a wave running through it. I went to Tulane University in New Orleans and it’s very different from SUNO as an institution, it’s very different from the other institutions in New Orleans. It is a university that has a town gown issue, I would say, a pretty substantial one. A history, like so many of the private universities. I had troubles there, I had troubles.
I still have troubles. We should critique our institutions. And when I come in wearing something like that, it’s worse than the bad hair that I’m carrying with me. But I think that it’s these conversations and the willingness to step into that. You mentioned so many schools in New Orleans, I could have gone through this call and not said a damned thing about that hat.
But this is what we’ve found in the project is that this stuff is here, folks. You walk into this room with a backpack on your back, every single one of you. Your ancestors, your experiences, the scars, the discrimination, the positive experiences, the negative experiences, the person who cuts you down and said, “You don’t belong here.” And the person who rose, held you up and said, “I really like the way you read. I love that you love books.”
I mean, and those are those moments where we get an opportunity to call out those elephants in the room and the things. I’m mixing metaphors here, I’ve got backpacks and elephants. But the point is we’re carrying stuff, folks. And if we don’t see each other fully, if we can’t have those conversations fully, then we’re not doing much more than that 101 conversation. And I don’t mean to say 101 isn’t important, it is.
But I had a really big lesson a couple of years ago where I was in yet another 101 conversation and a Black woman stood up and she said, “I am so sick and tired of having to have these 101 conversations with you all. It’s time. Do it. It’s your time, you’ve got to do the work. I can’t be the only one here lifting.” And I think about her every time I think about having the 101 conversation again.
And so, I want to push, I want to push further and feel more uncomfortable, I want to take off my green hat. So thank you for that, Angelique. I see you. I see your bayou self.
Angelique: I see you, too.
Doug: So, Jess, I think that point is really important and Angelique too, the 101 conversations that happen a lot. And that becomes that check a box, to get back to that authenticity spot. And our community partners smell it out and I remember being able to step into it, so like I’m not saying our team has done it well. But the uphill battle to have three years where we putting money towards sustained professional development for our team ongoing with community partners to push that, it is a long slog.
A lot of times departments are going, “Well, it’s not important.” But it can be done, but it takes just ballparking that, you’re looking at years of sustained thoughtful development if we’re going to move it. And then, the vulnerability, the trust, how your team is interacting with each other to build that, it’s multifaceted, it’s messy, it’s hard. And it takes a lot, a lot of time.
Karen: Well, thank you all for a very valuable hour together. It went by quickly and as always we really appreciate you joining us and being as frank and vulnerable as reflective as you can be in this moment. I’d especially like to thank Jess, Angelique, Doug and Lisa for talking with us today and sharing their reflections based on their roles and their contexts. And we will be in touch soon about Office Hours and in the meantime, wish you all the very best. So thank you again, and farewell.
Angelique: Thank you for having me.
Apurva: Thank you everybody, look after yourselves.
Lisa: Bye, thank you.
Doug: Thank you everyone.
END OF VIDEO
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Watch the video recording of this Office Hours session, or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Speakers:
- Apurva Ashok (Director of Open Education, The Rebus Foundation)
- Karen Lauritsen (Publishing Director, Open Education Network)
- Jess Mitchell (Senior Manager, Research + Design, IDRC)
- Lisa Petrides (CEO + Founder, ISKME)
- Angelique Carson (Shared Collections Librarian, Washington Research Library Consortium)
- Doug Kennedy (Assistant Professor, Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program, Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, University of Minnesota)
Apurva: Hello everybody, welcome to another Office Hours. My name is Apurva Ashok, I use she, her, hers pronouns and I am joining you all today from Toronto, which is actually on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the First Credit, the Chippewa, the Anishnabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. I am very grateful to be living out the last days of summer or what it feels like on this beautiful land.
And I just want to welcome you all to add your own territorial acknowledgements to the chat, this is just one small part of my practice and of Rebus’ to support decolonization, reconciliation work in Canada. And I look forward to doing more in my role at Rebus and in my personal role where I live. A little bit about Rebus, we are a Canadian charity that helps educational institutions build human capacity in OER publishing and in open education in general through professional development.
And we’re excited to have partnered with the Open Education Network for the past five years to offer these Office Hours sessions. Karen will tell you a little bit more about Office Hours, about the OEN, and our fabulous line up for today. So over to you, Karen.
Karen: Thank you very much, Apurva, it is great as always to be here with you and Caitlin and the Rebus team. I am Karen Lauritsen, I am publishing director with the Open Education Network. We’re based at the University of Minnesota. And as many of you are part, we are a community of professionals working to make higher education more open and equitable. Office Hours as Apurva mentioned has been a five-year partnership with the Rebus Community.
We talk informally on a monthly basis about things that are on our mind. But of course it really helps to know what’s on your mind, so please always feel free to offer suggestions for future topics. Today’s topic was inspired by the reality of our lives, particularly over the last couple of years and what we’ve heard from the community about burnout and fatigue. And the desire to try and lean on and support one another to keep going.
So we have four guests joining us today, I will introduce them briefly in a moment. After we hear from them, we will really turn to you for your questions and for you to start the conversation. Before we do that, I will let you know that I am joining you from central California, on the coast and this is the traditional and ancestral home of the Chumash. And recently, I learned about a very cool project they are currently working on with other community members and elected leaders here in California.
And that is to establish the first marine sanctuary. They started this campaign in 2013, and the nomination has just been accepted by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. So this is something that the Chumash have been working very closely with our community on recently, and I’ll just drop a link in the chat in case you’re interested in learning more.
So without further ado I will let you know who’s here with us today in terms of our guests. We are joined by Jess Mitchell, who is Senior Manager in Research & Design at IDRC. Lisa Petrides, who is the CEO & Founder of ISKME. Angelique Carson, who is Shared Collections Librarian at the Washington Research Library Consortium. And Doug Kennedy, who is Assistant Professor Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program at the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of Minnesota.
Now, I know I introduced some of you using acronyms, so please feel free to elaborate on those acronyms. And with that, I will hand things over to Jess.
Jess: Hey everybody, thanks, Karen. Thanks, Apurva, thanks for having this event. I think it’s a great way to bring people together. You mentioned being part of a community, Karen, I’m kind of thinking that that is the way we move so much of the work forward that needs to happen. I am on Anishnabeg, Haudenosaunee and Wendat territory here in southern Ontario. I’m just down the road from the Six Nations, the Grand River Reserve.
And I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this little Turtle Island we’ve got here. And as I spend the time thinking about decolonization and equity, the more I read, the most recent thing that I was reading Patriarchy Blues, Frederick Joseph, a fine, fine read. He makes a wonderful point which is when we do this work, we have to look to the most marginalized. It’s back to that if any of us isn’t free, none of us is free.
And the most marginalized that he’s talking about, and I think that I’ve been thinking about lately are Black CIS women and Black transgender women, also indigenous women. The most precarious, the most diminished, the most leaned upon, the ones who are doing all the lifting. So I spend a lot of time thinking and trying to use whatever voice I have as an awkward ally, a White person, to try to carve a space out there.
I was involved in a project earlier this year, and I feel uneasy when people talk about projects that were passion projects or you know, these sort of projects of the heart because I don’t want it to seem like some projects aren’t passion projects or projects of the heart. And also, sometimes it seems to diminish the legitimacy of the project if you align yourself too closely with it using something like your big organ, your heart.
We did something around humanizing learning and we thought of that quite broadly, brought a group of people together and really wanted to create that community of practice. One where people could come and figure out what it meant to bring their whole selves, not in that way where it usually happens, where the wrong people hear it. But that way where marginalized voices can be heard.
The project brought a lot of leaders together, in some cases, some might say the usual suspects together in Ontario higher ed institutions. And those folks used that platform to bring in fellows, so we brought in again, thinking who are those who are most precarious? Who are those who are experiencing the most difficulty in general? But also specifically during the time that we were in, which was Covid year one and a half, two.
And we reached out to sessional adjunct precariously employed faculty, graduate students, those people who are again, doing the lifting, doing the work and aren’t resting with a safety net underneath them. And we brought them together and did some co-design sessions where we talked through a number of topics and themes that we thought were important to this work of humanizing. I will say when we started the project there was very much this project mentality. What are our milestones? What are our deliverables?
What are our due dates? And actually, even got a little nudge from one of the participants who described himself as a nervous squirrel and wanted to know what we were doing. I resisted and pushed back as much as I possibly could because I don’t like having a defined path in what we’re doing. It’s very tightrope walk between having a purpose and leading the purpose rather than letting others lead it or contribute to it.
So long story short, something happened in our weekly meetings. At first the group didn’t want to meet weekly, they thought it was too much. We’re still meeting weekly the project has long ended, and what we did is we created a community and that community really came together with our whole selves. In the outcome of the project, that is the Pressbook that we created, we have a reference to the musical Rent, and we ask, "How do you measure a year?"
And in that year that we all spent together, a lot happened. We had deaths. We didn’t have any births, but we had a couple of attempts at potty training that didn’t go so well. We had brain surgeries; we had citizenship ceremonies. We had kids going through pandemic quarantines, parents juggling their own schedules and their own workspaces. And it’s that stuff that we so quickly forget.
We had somebody with a self-described elite level sleep apnea. So we were entangled, folks; we were situated. We were in our contexts; we were being human together. And we had some interesting outcomes from that, that I think moved this work forward. We talked about pedagogy of care, pedagogy of trauma, trauma informed pedagogy. And I’m at this point now I think where I want very much to approach everybody with an expectation that you’ve lived a life.
You’ve got trauma, how can we do this thing together? And how can we help lift each other up? How can we make our experiences with each other positive? And how can we do this without this kind of zero sum approach where I lift somebody else up, and somebody else doesn’t feel lifted up. I think that there’s enough to go around.
I want to focus on the most precarious because I think for hundreds of years there has been a deep injustice. There are scars, there are wounds. I’ll stop there for now, I hope I haven’t killed the mood. And I’m going to pass it on to Lisa.
Lisa: All right, thank you, Jess, for really setting that context of kind of where we’re all starting today, right? This is what we’ve been through in the last couple of years. And I want to speak a little bit in my role as CEO and Founder of ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management and Education. Our work is about making learning and knowledge sharing participatory, equitable and open.
Because we in fact believe that the development of equitable and inclusive learning environments contribute to the creation of a more just society. So we embed that in our mission, you might know one of our key initiatives which is around the digital public library OER commons. And we have several communities of practice, of people who we do basically we help them stand up their own libraries and do their work and we help train them to do their professional development and whatnot.
So we’ve been all remote since March 2020. And not only really with all of these partners helping them grapple with this move to remote learning, all this work with how do we focus on the people that we serve? To how are we doing as an organization? Are we okay? I liked your, not I liked it, but your list, Jess, of things, just rang true. Let me add in California, add fires to that, we had several people displaced because of fires and it’s been a rough time.
So really when I saw this topic, I was like yeah, this do more with less kind of attitude basically it’s a scarcity model and we need to just kind of toss it. Maybe you can do more with less for a hot minute, you know, when you’re I don’t know, you’ve had some staff changes or there’s a new project and you haven’t ramped up yet. But the idea that we seem to sort of resist that and say, “No, that’s not possible, we can’t do that.”
So what does that mean? It means first of all that we have to just change that narrative of doing more with less and say is it about prioritizing? How do we help each other prioritize what’s most important? How do we educate to be human? What does that look like? It’s interesting, even in our team meetings, of course, which changed dramatically when we were all remote, we were about half remote before the pandemic and now fully.
And part of it is just being there and showing up. I would say to people, “You don’t have to blur the background of your screen unless you want to. You don’t need to put up some nice cheery background. Have your kid who’s sick, or your dogs who are providing comfort.” Or I live with my mother who’s 88 years old and has dementia, who can just wander into screen and ask me how to brush her teeth. Right?
It's modeling that, as a manager, and saying, “It’s okay, let’s just be here, it doesn’t matter.” How many people have you seen someone grabs a cat and says, “I’m sorry. The cat ran in front of the screen.” Like, how do we just be here and be human and do our work? I think that’s been such an important part of what I’ve tried to model as a manager. And I’ve certainly seen it really have an impact in the way we can sort of relax into the work.
Understand that work is important, it has a strong mission, but we can’t get into the sort of deadly downward spiral of doing more with less and just thinking we have to keep doing, doing, doing and for what? Now, part of it specifically I think most of us here and those of you who are in the room with us today, we’re working in this space of open education. And while it’s relatively new field in some ways, I know that it can be very discouraging.
Maybe you’ve been at this for a couple of years, and you’ve seen something take hold, and then it’s not working and you’re trying and you’re trying and you’re trying, and you’re just burning out. You’re saying, “Ah.” And we’ve seen some amazing people, I think, leave the field for things that are maybe not as I don’t want to say meaningful but don’t have such a passion involved in it or a value of social justice and change and transformation in it, because it takes too much to maintain that.
I think what I’ve lived, and you know, we’ve been doing this for my organization and me of course, for almost 20 years in open education. And I’ve seen so many things kind of come and I’ve seen a lot of negativity. I’ve seen bad things happen. I’ve seen amazing things happen. I’ve seen transformation happen. When you start to see all of the different lifecycles of the change I think there’s not so much of this impetus to say, “It has to change now and if it doesn’t, I’m leaving.”
And that causes us to want to just burnout, burn ourselves out, because we think we have to give it all every day. And actually, what we have to do is sort of give to ourselves every day, and then just show up and do the work. And it doesn’t mean that you do it with any less care or intensity, there’s just a sense of how you can do it. I like to say that I’m a really good plodder, and that’s with a D, D-D-E-R.
But you just kind of keep going and doing the next right thing and that’s really what has kept me and I think our organization going and actually thriving. And we’ve seen also too with the great resignation, we’ve had people cycle out of our organization and amazing people cycle in. And there is something to be said for time and age and wiseness, and all that good stuff.
That you do just kind of sit back and say, “This is the work. Are we adjusting appropriately? Are we making the kinds of changes we need? Are we reflecting? Are we self-reflective? Are we critical of our own work and trying to do it better?” As long as you’re doing a little bit of those every day, that’s how you show up. That’s how you show up for your work. That’s how you show up for life. That’s how you show up for change, whether it’s personal or professional.
So I’m going to stop here, and I am going to pass it over to Angelique.
Angelique: Thank you, thank you so much. I got some chills there, especially there is something to be said for wisdom and age. And I’ll tell you what, I’m ready to hand it over. These Gen Z kids, I love them. They’re not having it, and I applaud it. Take it, please. Again, I also was really enthused about the topic for today. I and everyone has been having these conversations, the Washington Research Library Consortium really had its annual meeting.
And our plenary speaker spoke about morale and the ambiguity of our lives, and what this means for us now two years later. And she spoke about several items, one item I walked away with, which I was surprised I’d never heard of was professional awe. And so much of that informs what we do. And if you haven’t heard of it either, it means like your work is so noble and so good, that you will over service at the risk of your own health because the work needs to get done.
And I think in a service industry, with the service community that we have, we have professional awe or we are likely to have it. And one of my colleagues was like, “Well, I’ve never had professional awe.” And I was like, “Well, good for you, because that is exactly how I entered into this field, as a BIPOC librarian my first institution was an HBCU, historically black college and university.”
And I’m not wearing any wings, but if you’re a librarian at a school that has historically serviced our most vulnerable populations, teaching someone how to do the most minor task will transform their academic career in an afternoon. And you have that with you, it is a unique sense of responsibility. And I don’t want to sound dramatic, but you’re not just here to get a job done, you’re here to get a job done for your people.
And this is never not important. I love their faces in front of me, and I want to do everything for them I can on every given day, knowing how much it took them to get there. When I was a young student myself, and I was like well, everyone’s getting back to school now, of course, and I’ve been watching the students come back to the University of Virginia, Jefferson’s university, that was my undergrad as well.
When I came to UVA, I was a BIPOC student, first generation, low income. And for my first English 101 class, there was a draft we had to turn in, and I turned in my draft handwritten on paper. My high school did not have a computer lab. I had never written a paper out, I did not know that when you turned in a paper, it was typed. I remember, bless her to this day, I wish I remembered her name, the TA just graciously took my work.
I think they were still spirals on the end of it, where I’d torn it out of my notebook, and I remember I think a student saying something, “Wow, I didn’t know we could do that.” And not having any idea what they meant. So how can we take care of ourselves, when we are who we are in the service that expects that? And the professional awe is just is our standard, we are not hedge fund managers, there’s a reason we’re in this room together.
And when I first entered into librarianship, I was at the Southern University of New Orleans. And at the time, 40% of Louisiana State residents did not have internet access. That was about 10 years ago, I promise you, it’s not better right now, and I could tell you why. But that’s another topic (laughs) I don’t want to get upset. But so, that kind of vulnerability on that campus where you already are told routinely in small ways and digs that you don’t belong there.
I recognize that, and it has informed a lot of my work. I want to be able to show up for my students, even if they weren’t in exactly the same position as a BIPOC student at a predominantly White institution. And of course, I don’t want to take away that you also have those experiences, you do not have to be a woman of color to have these experiences. We know that poverty is not unique in this country.
But there is something very unique to the experience of students of color on these campuses with the history of academia as it is, it is not open. We all understand that it’s history that depends on knowledge gatekeeping. So I wanted to say that BIPOC librarians carry this with them in a unique manner. And I know that other librarians who come from marginalized communities, vulnerable communities carry this with them as well.
So it has been since that plenary presentation, four months ago, professional awe has been on my mind and how it’s informed my work and what are we going to do to take care of ourselves so that we can ease it or give ourselves some grace? Which is going to be so necessary to give others grace. And when you’re talking about just showing up the best we can, showing up as we are, we’re really talking about vulnerability, right?
Now, vulnerability is not how I got here, being vulnerable in spaces is not a good idea for me. It hasn’t been when I was in school, it wasn’t in high school, it wasn’t when I was looking for work, and it isn’t now. Women of color do not walk into spaces and say that they don’t know how to do something or that they need help. That does not serve us, and I do not operate that way.
So that is my struggle. And I don’t come here with an answer, I just come here really with food for thought. And something that I am working through myself and maybe it resonates with you also. I can say this, you know, I was speaking, I was listening to a fellow colleague the other day and she was like, “You know what? There are those who will consider themselves allies.” And she goes, “Well, says who?”
Who said you’re an ally? Who says that you’re doing the work? Who else did you check with? Are you simply depending on your own assessment? So in order to make spaces where we can have meaningful, uncomfortable conversations that will lead to areas where we can be vulnerable, I will have to take a risk to be vulnerable in some spaces. And we will all have to take a risk to be vulnerable to say, “I don’t know. I’m wrong. Teach me this.”
And reduce our defenses so that we can listen. Every day this week you could call me an ally to my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, but a year ago when I was learning and understanding what it meant to add the pronouns I was right, I’m on. Tell me what I need to do so that I can do better. But I had to be taught and I had to be self-educated, and I had to ask others if you think that you are a safe space for all of us to learn more and do better together, we’re also going to have to question are we actively doing that?
You mentioned a moment we just need to show up every day, there’s a saying in Louisiana on the bayou called stick and move. Literally putting your big stick, they don’t call it that, I’m clearly not from the bayou, although I lived there for many years, into the water to move your pallet along. Stick and move, and it’s the everyday work. Being anti-racist is not being a good person, being anti-racist is challenging yourself every day.
So I’m just here to say that it’s been on my mind a lot, I’m very grateful for this discussion. I want to learn how to allow myself to be vulnerable in spaces and I want to figure out how we can create spaces as well. So it’s going to take vulnerability on both sides, it really is. And that’s hard for everyone and that to recognize us as well. But there’s a lot of defense, we’re good people, of course we’re good people, we’re librarians, we’re the best people.
But being a good person is not going to get us there. Being good is not what’s needed, challenging yourself and being uncomfortable and I know that I’m saying things that we all know. But that’s also something I’m realizing for myself how I’ve had my shoulders and my shackles up, my hackles, I think the word is, they’ve been up. And I’m going to have to reduce, I’m going to have to lean back a bit.
So I can give myself some grace and maybe make room for others. It’s hard to make a shift like that when it has been so successful for you and so necessary. But I don’t know of an alternative, and so when we talk about like having uncomfortable conversations to make space, to be vulnerable, I think the question is going to have to be that just being good is not going to cut it.
And we’re going to have to be vulnerable and that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last four months. And so I’m going to pass it along, and thank you so much for your thoughts, that was just simply tremendous, thank you for sharing.
Doug: Okay, so I think I’m batting. There’s always a real virtue in being able to go last because I’m really moved and also it helps me get a gauge of the room. I’m not a librarian. I’m a human scientist on a clinical trials team and I spend a lot of time in my teaching talking about the two taboo topics of bodies and emotions. So this topic of burnout and how we work in higher ed is really relevant.
Before we get into that, and even with the topics that are resonating, I just want to say I’m coming from Minneapolis, I’m from the University of Minnesota and close to the shores of the Bde Maka Ska. And we acknowledge that as a land grant university, that we are built on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people. And especially as land grant university it is vitally important to acknowledge the people whose lands that we live on, learn, and work as we seek to improve and strengthen our relationships with tribal nations.
So thank you for the invitation and for letting me speak today. I’m excited about this conversation. And before I tell you a little bit about some of this work and about what I’ve been thinking about it, the themes that really just sort of stood out for me, and I guess this is why I’m excited is I’m hearing things about how we show up. The impact that we have on our students, that it is deep that we choose this work, focusing on what’s important
The passion that we have for working with young people, again, not to be like a hedge fund manager, we are working with living human beings and all their complexity that they show up with in our classrooms, in our offices. Decoding schooling and helping students really understand that it’s a culture and that I would say too in a lot of my work, working with other professors, helping them understand how they’re teaching, the institutions they inhabit may not be a language that their students speak.
In fact, Angelique, when you were talking about there’s a gentleman who works with our YMC equity innovation center that I have lunch with, we used to do it every two weeks before the pandemic and we’ve kept it virtually. And he’s done a lot of our work or helped with our community engagement work. And that was his experience, too, going into University of Wisconsin and turning in a paper and never, ever having anyone say, “You know what? This is the way we do it.”
And that experience is not uncommon for the students that in a large university of 60,000 students that’s not uncommon. And so then, it begs the question of what is our role within it? And I would say as instructors, as faculty or as people that are working with students in student facing positions that it is us. It is our responsibility to take it up, it’s an act of disruption and equity and transformation that needs to happen.
And then, the last two things I’ll say that have been really, really resonant were that in these positions we have, we’re kind of like a bucket. And it was Ajahn Chah, a meditation teacher some of you may be familiar with that had said, “In these professions where we work with other human beings, especially when we take on whether it’s their pain, their trauma, their troubles, their struggles, we become like a bucket and we get filled up with that.”
But we have to make sure that there’s a hole in that bucket, too, right? And it’s that, how we have that hole in that bucket and how we can recharge because the students will be there again and again and again, and we have to show up. How we show up matters is vitally important and that that work is active, it’s not passive. It’s not an app on your phone that’s like oh, I got another meditation app like no, it’s really about doing the work day in and day out.
And I think sometimes with some of the pop culture buzz around this work it seems that you can just do it. But it doesn’t tell you what happens after it. It’s like when you say you’re sorry, and you realize that okay, there’s still that hurt that is there and having to work through that. I think this is really, really important. So why I’m bringing this up is that the work that I do is really asking questions around the how, how do we operationalize this?
How do we do the work? And for me, with my work in community engagement and my clinical trials team, it’s about helping researchers do the internal and intrapersonal work to then show up better. That it’s okay. That the work that you’re doing inside and how you show up, so it’s again it’s getting at that being able to notice it’s facilitating awareness that’s really important.
So just to give you where that’s going and some of the thoughts around it, is that when we’ve seen even the New York Times had an article on the difference between burnout and depression and how do you tell the difference. I’m really excited to see that there’s more attention on this. You hosting this conversation today, there’s an excellent book by Amelia and Emily Nagowski on burnout, it’s fantastic if you haven’t checked it out, it’s wonderful.
Sites like the Mayo Clinic have lots about what burnout is, great podcasts like 10% happier. Because it’s countering that sort of mentality that I think we see both in the private sector where my partner works, and then in higher ed that you can just grit through it. Toughen up, and if you’re not tough enough to do 80 hours a week as an NH funded scientist, then you really have no business being here.
And for those of us that have been in these positions or that we attained this level of education and being able to do it, yet we can grit through. We may have a big enough engine, if you will. But just because our engine can continue to move forward doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s doing it efficiently or optimally. So you could maybe have just a couple of cylinders firing, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good for you.
And we need to ask some questions about it. And the other piece too that just raises some interesting questions too is that we maybe in environments, teams, departments, things like that that are toxic for a whole host of reasons. And some of the life hacks and things like this that come out assume a lot of privilege that we could just leave, right? And if you have means and maybe if you’re like in my case you’re almost 50 and you’ve got a bunch of academic degrees and some financial stability, sure, you can do that.
But that is not afforded to many. And then, the other piece too is around that sometimes our environments we may be doing deeply impactful work, and it’s tending not to be all toxic or all happiness and unicorns. So how do we learn how to surf those waves? And so amidst all the pop culture pieces around well just do this hack, just do this piece, we really need to start to think about well then how do you do it?
Because inevitably those things, well just for a jog or just take a walk or find meditation whatever that means really become another rock in our knapsack that is just weighing us down. And I think for those of us that in especially in these student positions that starts to mean as we get more and more burned out that we’re not showing up well for people in front of us or that we start to see people as numbers or units or grades, assignments, things like that.
So what I hope we can start to talk about a little bit today and what I’ve found pretty useful in some of the work that I’ve been doing is getting at the reframing piece. That we know a lot about the body, we know a lot about how exercise or meditation can affect the brain, can affect our parasympathetic nervous system, things like that. But a lot of times the structures that we have in place are well, exercise happens at the gym, for example.
Or meditation has to take place in a certain way of doing this or that. So being able to restructure that and finding those minutes. And then also getting very, very clear about what’s important versus not. There is a lot that’s there, I will confess to being a high functioning trainer for the majority of my life, and these are hard lessons learned that have been complemented by my academic work.
But when we think about this reframing, especially with students, and we’ve had jump in enrolment numbers as administrators made different decisions around things, for good or bad. When we’re with the students, understanding well what’s important right now, as the student is in front of me talking about a topic, talking about a need that they have, talking about a struggle and being able to show up in ways that are important, that that student feels heard, listened to, valued and that they can continue to learn.
So there’s a lot here that I’ve been thinking about with the topics and I would be more than happy to engage for a long time about this, because I love my research, but I really love my students. And I’m looking forward to questions. So lots to talk about this and we can get into specifics around stumbling your way through. So thank you for inviting me, I look forward to this discussion.
Apurva: Well, thank you Doug, Angelique, Lisa and Jess. I know Karen has put an invitation for comments and questions. But first, I wanted to just thank all four of you for your vulnerability and for sharing your stories and sharing your perspectives on this topic. Jess, you talked about bringing your whole self to work and not having a zero sum approach to all of this. I have four pages of notes, so this is what I’m looking down at, as you’ve been chatting.
Lisa, you talked about the importance of modeling and being human, I think that’s what I’ve taken away. Angelique, you flagged the importance of how good just won’t cut it, how vulnerability is really the beginning for us to work through this as a community. And Doug, for you, as you were chatting, again, I’m walking away with the challenge that we might have around determining what is important and what is the place to start and what isn’t.
I have a lot of thoughts and personal experience with this particular topic, but I will pause, and send an invitation back out to everybody who’s in the virtual room with us. If you have questions or comments or thoughts or scenarios, please feel free to post them in the chat, Karen and I will read out your questions. You’re also more than welcome to unmute your microphone and join in on this discussion and the conversation.
And that extends to all four of our guests, too, so please feel free to continue this conversation with one another instead of just having Karen and me direct and lead. And I’ll give us a pause, hopefully a comfortable pause, where you can reflect and take a moment to say anything you might immediately want to.
Lisa: There is something that comes to mind for me, it’s sort of the juxtaposition of what both what Angelique and Doug talked about. I’ve left a toxic workplace before and some others did too. And I had a certain amount of privilege that enabled me to do that, but I watched others who didn’t and still left. And of course had consequences because of that. So I just want to paint that picture for a minute and say sometimes you have to leave a toxic situation in our workplace.
It's there, there’s many examples of it. And it’ll make you sick, literally, from a health perspective. And I think part of what Doug, kind of what I got what you’re saying, especially when we think about the privileges, how do we help others who we see need to do that? Right? And what kind of how do we, you can’t see my hands, but you know, like how do you hold somebody who needs to step out of that and help them across?
What can we do to assist? I think we do need to encourage each other to walk out of a toxic environment. And on the opposite side of that is the being vulnerable, right? Which as a trained academic and I’m a former professor, too, it’s like that was not something that you were ever encouraged to do. And you were penalized for it, being a woman in the workplace or being a person of color or anybody else from a marginalized group.
Yet at the same time, if we stop being vulnerable even in those environments, that’s toxic to ourselves, too. So there are kind of these strange, as you were talking, it seems maybe it’s the same side of the same coin. I was thinking it was opposite, but there’s something there that is again the essence of what it does mean to be human, right? That is something that we bring that is part of the make-up of who we are.
Apurva: Please jump in, Doug.
Doug: Yeah, so Lisa just maybe as a way of kicking this conversation at least in one direction and this doesn’t answer everything but there is this really important skill that we do with our students. Or at least in the courses I teach and I teach courses on meditation intersection with culture and knowledge, where they’re competing, where they complement each other and also the mindfulness based stress reduction.
I teach an academic version of it, so if we’ve got more time we can go more into the research. And as we’re talking about working both with students and then also with other researchers, my earlier work on teachers and burnout and then educators and their cultural capabilities, it’s that somatic awareness, that body awareness, right? That when we’ve probably been in higher ed, it’s like you’re in the swirl, that maelstrom of minutia that kills us.
Or pressing deadlines, and we can see ourselves being less and less effective or maybe starting to dehumanize our colleagues or all the things that we see in burnout. But being able to detect that as almost like that early warning system, to be okay, exhaustion is here. Impatience is here. Noting that in the body. And then using that as that early warning system to say, “Okay, I can take a break here.”
That means I can walk for my lunch, or I can go to the furthest coffee shop or even the furthest restroom just to get up and move and come back can be really, really valuable. Or being able to in those meetings knowing where our vulnerability can have a very strong back, but it can have a soft front as well, to know okay, I’m absorbing it but I am not moving from my position here.
Or I’m absorbing another person’s misconceptions, misinformation. But that bodily awareness can then be really useful in terms of giving us those internal cues as we start to face outward, as well as for greater self-care.
Jess: It’s funny because there’s so much of this work that is in direct opposition. Everything you say and its opposite. So we want to create safe spaces, but we know that we can’t create safe spaces for everyone. The best we can do is create brave spaces, and that takes work. That takes some good work, some good facilitation, some awareness of self and body and space and coming into a space in a certain way.
But we also know that some of the biggest personal growth happens when we step outside of our comfort zone. So we’re in conflict in a lot of ways, everything we say and its opposite, I think is true. And I made a new year’s resolution to my wife this year that I was only going to deeply collaborate with people who understood nuance. And didn’t think of the world as this black and white, yes or no, you’re either a good person or a bad person because we’re all both.
And we all need to really spend some time sinking into context and understanding context. As you said, Angelique, making yourself vulnerable in certain situations is a very bad idea, detrimental to you. So now you’ve got this world of bumper stickers coming at you, you’ve got to be vulnerable to do this work, you’ve got to be… I’ll tell you some bumper stickers. This stuff travels at the speed of trust.
And that was one of the things that I just really firmly believe that if you come in and the other bumper sticker I would put on my car is it’s sniff-able. I can tell you’re just full of shit. I can tell when you’re not being authentic and when you really don’t care about people, when your policies don’t line up with the words that are coming out of your mouth. You tell me you’re really all about equitable education, but you also tell me you’ve got a policy about late assignments.
Which is it? You tell me that you’re all about humanizing students, but if I come to you and tell you my third grandparent has died, you’re going to judge me. Well, which is it? And how are we sitting and understanding our own role in these spaces and whether we make them brave or not? It’s very self-satisfying work when it’s done in that smelly way, but when it’s done in an authentic way as so many of you pointed out, it means discomfort, it means continuation of the work, it never ends.
It's not like check that off, I did my deep thinking on Thursday at 4:00, now I can go back to being patriarchal, White supremacist, fill in the blank, not care about the planet, just care about profit. And I think that we wind up creating these zones of further bifurcation. And just this space, this gulf between people who want to talk about these things in a deep way and those who just aren’t aware of them at all.
I’ve been doing this work for years now, and I’m struck by just how many of these 101 conversations that I keep having about diversity, about equity and about inclusion and how so few of the communities that I am working with are ready for those advanced conversations and the really deep stuff. Digging into the ethics of it and the practice of it, and that’s what we tried to do with this project is not skirt away from the really gnarly, very difficult situations.
You’ve got one Black student in your class. You’ve got a person with a complex disability in your class. What are you going to do? So instead of saying words in a syllabus and then maybe not holding them up in the policies that are in the very same syllabus, how do you walk that talk? How do you stay consistent? How do you continue to ask questions, not just give answers to things that nobody’s asked?
How do you listen and how do you show up in this way that isn’t so predetermined and so reinforcing of the power dynamics that we so quickly assume? When I walk into a classroom and I put my bag on the desk, there’s a lot that goes on in that millisecond. All of a sudden, I’m supposed to be the knower. So one of the things that I love about these kinds of conversations is they fundamentally should change the way we think of pedagogy.
And fundamentally change the way we think of ourselves as educators and who we’re educating. And whether or not we know who the heck we’re educating, have you ever educated somebody who’s been a refugee? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who’s grown in generational poverty? Would you know? Have you ever educated somebody who didn’t have money to pay the bills for their utilities that month? And would you know?
Apurva: That takes me back to Doug, when you said that quote around this is the way we do it. So much of our work is about challenging specifically that statement. And really coming up as Jess and Angelique, you and Lisa were describing adaptable modular constantly changing ways of doing it. I’m going to be mindful of time, so I don’t want to keep chatting, so I will pause again to see if others who are in this room want to jump in on the conversation.
Angelique: I don’t know if anyone, I can’t see, but I wanted to comment really as a follow up to what was just made. Even when we are here collectively doing the best work, and I feel that in my heart, this work is my professional pleasure, and it’s the most meaningful part of the work I do. And even in this environment, amongst fellow information providers and librarians.
When you talk about how long we’ve been having these diversity 101 conversations, how long is the conversation about diversifying this profession been going on? Decades. Decades, at least 40 years, probably more, like at least maybe 40 to 50 years of literature review we provide information on diversifying the profession and how to court, how to recruit, how to make them stay.
And our numbers aren’t any better. 40, 50 years later the numbers aren’t any better. And if I was not in an HBCU and I’m not now, I am as isolated as I ever was, the day I stepped on the campus of University of Virginia and even amongst the best people. There are assumptions that I have to counter to assure everyone that I am capable of the work that needs to be done.
And so, I think just constantly holding ourselves accountable is really going to be the only way forward. And when I tell you that I’m trying to imagine how to make my work better, easier, more enjoyable for myself, I am still actively trying to figure out how to be vulnerable professionally. How to stop and say, “I don’t know this. I need help.” I don’t say I need help. I say, “Can I have an extension?”
I say, “Can I do it later?” Or I say, “Can someone assist me?” I have never turned on a project, are you kidding me? You don’t do that, not if you want acknowledgement and success and confidence in the work that you can produce. So I really appreciate this discussion. I have been learning a lot about how I operate since our own primary discussion and again, no solutions to offer, just musings and observations.
But thank you for the comment, and it does directly involve how we’re going to consider and couch pedagogy as well. The conversation is just so much bigger. But I don’t even know if we are even prepared yet to even really have these conversations. Is anyone really having meaningful uncomfortable conversations? Has anyone actually watched that happen? I haven’t.
Jess: Well, we are.
Angelique: Well, we are, yes. But outside of us. And I’m glad that we are.
Jess: I do every day because it’s sort of like you said, it’s the privilege that I have of doing this work. And I mean, you probably know what this is. I regret wearing this now. I was wearing this because my hair was very floppy. I think I’m going to go for just floppy hair. Because it perpetuates so many things, I try really hard not to wear branded things when I come on a call.
I just took off a hat that had a big "T" on it, with a wave running through it. I went to Tulane University in New Orleans and it’s very different from SUNO as an institution, it’s very different from the other institutions in New Orleans. It is a university that has a town gown issue, I would say, a pretty substantial one. A history, like so many of the private universities. I had troubles there, I had troubles.
I still have troubles. We should critique our institutions. And when I come in wearing something like that, it’s worse than the bad hair that I’m carrying with me. But I think that it’s these conversations and the willingness to step into that. You mentioned so many schools in New Orleans, I could have gone through this call and not said a damned thing about that hat.
But this is what we’ve found in the project is that this stuff is here, folks. You walk into this room with a backpack on your back, every single one of you. Your ancestors, your experiences, the scars, the discrimination, the positive experiences, the negative experiences, the person who cuts you down and said, “You don’t belong here.” And the person who rose, held you up and said, “I really like the way you read. I love that you love books.”
I mean, and those are those moments where we get an opportunity to call out those elephants in the room and the things. I’m mixing metaphors here, I’ve got backpacks and elephants. But the point is we’re carrying stuff, folks. And if we don’t see each other fully, if we can’t have those conversations fully, then we’re not doing much more than that 101 conversation. And I don’t mean to say 101 isn’t important, it is.
But I had a really big lesson a couple of years ago where I was in yet another 101 conversation and a Black woman stood up and she said, “I am so sick and tired of having to have these 101 conversations with you all. It’s time. Do it. It’s your time, you’ve got to do the work. I can’t be the only one here lifting.” And I think about her every time I think about having the 101 conversation again.
And so, I want to push, I want to push further and feel more uncomfortable, I want to take off my green hat. So thank you for that, Angelique. I see you. I see your bayou self.
Angelique: I see you, too.
Doug: So, Jess, I think that point is really important and Angelique too, the 101 conversations that happen a lot. And that becomes that check a box, to get back to that authenticity spot. And our community partners smell it out and I remember being able to step into it, so like I’m not saying our team has done it well. But the uphill battle to have three years where we putting money towards sustained professional development for our team ongoing with community partners to push that, it is a long slog.
A lot of times departments are going, “Well, it’s not important.” But it can be done, but it takes just ballparking that, you’re looking at years of sustained thoughtful development if we’re going to move it. And then, the vulnerability, the trust, how your team is interacting with each other to build that, it’s multifaceted, it’s messy, it’s hard. And it takes a lot, a lot of time.
Karen: Well, thank you all for a very valuable hour together. It went by quickly and as always we really appreciate you joining us and being as frank and vulnerable as reflective as you can be in this moment. I’d especially like to thank Jess, Angelique, Doug and Lisa for talking with us today and sharing their reflections based on their roles and their contexts. And we will be in touch soon about Office Hours and in the meantime, wish you all the very best. So thank you again, and farewell.
Angelique: Thank you for having me.
Apurva: Thank you everybody, look after yourselves.
Lisa: Bye, thank you.
Doug: Thank you everyone.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:21:15 Douglas P Kennedy: Dakota and Anishinabe
00:21:29 Kaitlin Schilling: grateful to be joining you all today from the lands traditionally known as Win-nipi (in the Cree language meaning ‘muddy waters’), now known as Winnipeg, Manitoba, the shared traditional lands and waters of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate (oh-yah-day), and Ininiwak (In in o wak), on the homeland of the Red River Métis and Treaty 1 territory.
00:22:09 Kim Carter she/her: Grateful to join you from the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral peoples.
00:23:28 Karen Lauritsen: https://chumashsanctuary.org/about/
00:29:17 Karen Lauritsen: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/onhumanlearn/
00:31:39 Apurva Ashok: The mood is hopeful, for me, at least!
00:31:53 Angelique Carson: Same here!
00:40:31 Cheryl Gerken: a great article: https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
00:52:39 Karen Lauritsen: Now that we’re hearing from Doug, our fourth and final guest sharing thoughts on the topic, please consider what you’d like to ask one another and talk about together.
00:54:06 Karen Lauritsen: I think this is the book Doug just mentioned: https://www.burnoutbook.net/
00:54:44 Apurva Ashok: And the one Jess mentioned earlier: https://frederickjoseph.com/patriarchy-blues
01:05:22 Douglas P Kennedy: So key—speed of trust
01:06:27 Douglas P Kennedy: Education happens in the contact zones; ability to stand in the angry gaze of another
01:15:54 Cheryl Gerken: I appreciate and benefit from these powerful conversations and everyone's ability to express struggles and perspectives. Constantly learning from open sharing and frankness.
01:16:08 Apurva Ashok: As we near the end of our hour, and folx may need to step away, I want to say thank you for being here! We are always listening for suggestions about ways to continue this conversation, other topics, or speakers to hear from. Please let us know: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
01:17:38 Kaitlin Schilling: This has been great! Miigwech (thank you) for you all being so open and vulnerable with us. I hope to be able to continue these conversations with y'all :)
01:17:47 Kim Carter she/her: Thank you for the conversations. This was my first time joining and I am walking away with a lot to think about.
01:17:55 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!
01:18:01 Nicole Swanson, CARLI (she, her): Thank you for this amazing conversation today
00:21:29 Kaitlin Schilling: grateful to be joining you all today from the lands traditionally known as Win-nipi (in the Cree language meaning ‘muddy waters’), now known as Winnipeg, Manitoba, the shared traditional lands and waters of the Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate (oh-yah-day), and Ininiwak (In in o wak), on the homeland of the Red River Métis and Treaty 1 territory.
00:22:09 Kim Carter she/her: Grateful to join you from the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral peoples.
00:23:28 Karen Lauritsen: https://chumashsanctuary.org/about/
00:29:17 Karen Lauritsen: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/onhumanlearn/
00:31:39 Apurva Ashok: The mood is hopeful, for me, at least!
00:31:53 Angelique Carson: Same here!
00:40:31 Cheryl Gerken: a great article: https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
00:52:39 Karen Lauritsen: Now that we’re hearing from Doug, our fourth and final guest sharing thoughts on the topic, please consider what you’d like to ask one another and talk about together.
00:54:06 Karen Lauritsen: I think this is the book Doug just mentioned: https://www.burnoutbook.net/
00:54:44 Apurva Ashok: And the one Jess mentioned earlier: https://frederickjoseph.com/patriarchy-blues
01:05:22 Douglas P Kennedy: So key—speed of trust
01:06:27 Douglas P Kennedy: Education happens in the contact zones; ability to stand in the angry gaze of another
01:15:54 Cheryl Gerken: I appreciate and benefit from these powerful conversations and everyone's ability to express struggles and perspectives. Constantly learning from open sharing and frankness.
01:16:08 Apurva Ashok: As we near the end of our hour, and folx may need to step away, I want to say thank you for being here! We are always listening for suggestions about ways to continue this conversation, other topics, or speakers to hear from. Please let us know: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaGr1NCvVnk1C6uKiwkfYWvJcK0QDfwJIZJJV-ckmGK19Wpg/viewform
01:17:38 Kaitlin Schilling: This has been great! Miigwech (thank you) for you all being so open and vulnerable with us. I hope to be able to continue these conversations with y'all :)
01:17:47 Kim Carter she/her: Thank you for the conversations. This was my first time joining and I am walking away with a lot to think about.
01:17:55 Mélanie Brunet: Thank you!
01:18:01 Nicole Swanson, CARLI (she, her): Thank you for this amazing conversation today
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