Leslie:
Hi there, writers. We’re back with another amazing interview! This time I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Loleen Berdahl, professor and author of the popular online newsletter Academia Made Easier. I’m a really big fan of her newsletter, so I invited Loleen on to talk about things like goal setting and getting through the semester in one piece. I am so happy to have you on the podcast.
Loleen:
Well, thank you so much for having me, Leslie.
Leslie:
Before we get to some questions, let me first tell listeners a bit about you and your background. So Loleen Berdahl, Ph.D., is an award-winning university instructor, the executive director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan and Regina, and professor and former head of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Since 2016, Loleen has spoken about students’ skills training and academic professional development at conferences and university campuses across Canada and internationally.
Her research on these topics is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant Program, and she’s the author of University Affairs The Skills Agenda Column. Loleen is also the author of the popular Academia Made Easier newsletter, which provides easy tips for teaching productivity and work-life balance in academia. And she lives in Saskatchewan with her husband, twin adult daughters, and two cats. Welcome again.
Loleen:
Well, thank you.
Leslie:
Can you start by telling listeners a bit about your research and teaching interests?
Loleen:
Great. Yeah. So I’m a clinical scientist and my research really focuses on Canadian politics, intergovernmental relations, Canadian federalism, and on issues of regionalism here in Canada. And then also since I became a full professor, you get a bit of leeway at that level, so I moved my research into looking at graduate professional development in careers as well. So my next book, which is coming out in March of 2024, looks at graduate education in the liberal arts, social sciences and humanities in Canada and things that could be done on that front. So my research and teaching really focuses on the areas of Canadian politics, public policy, intergovernmental relations, and federalism.
Leslie:
How many books have you published?
Loleen:
Oh, now I have to count. So I’ve done two research methods textbook, which is in its fourth edition. So I guess we could count that as either one or four. I have written a book called Work Your Career, which is for graduate students in the social sciences and humanities and early Ph.D. students. And then I believe, three books on Western Canada and then an edited volume. I never know how to count edited volumes, so I’m not sure how we count those. I used to be much more of a journal article person and in my discipline that can be really good for getting yourself through tenure and promotion and things like that. Books are a bit longer, but now I’m at the stage where I like the book-length and so I see value in both.
Leslie:
So a lot of the folks that I work with are coming from article fields, and so they’re making that big leap into books.
Are there certain things that you had to learn how to do or change around so that you could fit that longer model of writing?
Loleen:
Books are interesting in that it requires a level of patience and an ability to really work over a longer period. And like I find with journal articles, they take longer than you think, books take longer than you think, and at a different magnitude. And the thing about books is that by the time they come out, you’ve sort of forgotten the energy that went into them if that makes any sense.
So right now, I’ve got a book coming out, so we’re talking right now in February, books coming out at the end of March. And, you know, we’re still doing some final touches with it back and forth and tables and things like that. And by the time it comes out, like you need to do a lot of self-promotion for a book, even when it’s published with the university press, you know, the rule of authors is much more than it used to be.
And I think reminding yourself, why do I you know, we started this project years ago and it’s coming out now and it’s like there’s a pacing momentum for it that’s a little bit different than journal articles. So, yeah, I’d say one thing to keep in mind is if you’re someone that likes things that are much more immediate, the book is not your format.
Leslie:
So what inspired you to get involved in academic professional development?
Loleen:
I would say what inspired me to get involved in this area is my own frustration and steep learning curve on this front. So when I finished my Ph.D., I was a bit fed up with academia. I wasn’t willing to move around for two-year stints here and there, which was the case with academic hiring at the time. And so I left academia for a ten-year period, and when I came back, I was used to a different pace and I was working in the thinktank community, which is a very fast-moving, immediate, you know, a lot of access to government, that type of thing.
And when I came back, relearning academic culture was a challenge for me. I also didn’t necessarily find things easy and I wanted to help people not have the same challenges I had. And so I started getting involved in the area of graduate professional development. Also, I’ve got a column, as you mentioned, called The Skills Agenda that really is much more focused on undergraduate teaching.
But I just sort of saw a lot of potential for us to do a little bit better in academia, in preparing students, be they undergraduate students or graduate students for careers, but also within academia, preparing ourselves and each other for, you know, the realities of our careers. So a lot of it is I often say I’m sort of doing things for my past self and, you know, what would I wish I’d had? What did I wish people told me? What are some of the things that I didn’t understand?
So a lot of it is really hidden curriculum stuff. A lot of it is trying to normalize the fact that these things are challenging, even though nobody talks about how challenging these things are. The other thing I’ll add is that right now my husband and I have twin daughters and they’re in their second year of university, and I get to see university through a new set of eyes. And I can sort of say, “well, here are some things that the next generation is struggling with.” And I look at that and say, “well, what can we do to make things a little bit better for people?” So sort of comes from a sense of personal frustration and empathy.
And I think we make things a lot harder than they need to be. And I want to try to break that down a little bit.
Leslie:
I love that so much. I mean, that’s why I really like your newsletter is because it is about making things easier and it embraces the idea that things can be easier. They don’t have to be more complicated. They don’t have to be harder.
I’m curious, though, as someone who took a detour away from academia and came back, what were the things that you found the most challenging or frustrating when you came back?
Loleen:
Oh, there’s so many! So one thing I found just on the research side was I had a level of access to people when I worked in the thinktank community that I ceased to have in academia. I don’t know how to describe that.
But in terms of academic culture, quite often the definition of success is vague. So, you know, it’s often joked that, well, you know, what do you need for tenure? You know, you need one publication more than the number you have right now, so you’re always a little bit short. The pace of peer review can be very slow. The tone of peer review can be harsh, unnecessarily harsh.
And I think there can be a tendency to have things be very individual. It’s not really a team sport, Whereas I was used to working in the thinktank community as an organization. We worked on projects and sort of who was the author was secondary, things like that. So I found that a bit challenging. I found it challenging in terms of teaching, having that sense of what was enough.
So I guess for all of it, there was always a sense that you could do more. You could always be working more. The lack of boundaries was something that was a real challenge and sense of frustration. And so I found with academia you could always be doing more. You can always be working more. And rarely are we gifted with somebody who says to us, “You know, you’re doing fine, you’re doing enough.” And so there’s always the sense that you’re coming up short.
Leslie:
Right? Yeah. And that having boundaries can be seen as taboo or anti-productivity and that rest is not part of the package of maintaining yourself as a worker. I think all of those things are true.
Loleen:
Well, I think the university sector–and I’m speaking from a Canadian perspective, so your listeners in other countries might have a different experience–but there’s this increasing emphasis on research intensity and rankings and all of these things. And at the same time, there needs to be service engagement. We really want collegially-run processes and collegially-run universities so that, you know, the service load remains there and teaching, often class sizes are increased and the demands of students increase over time.
And all of these things, you know, it just seems like there’s this constant ratcheting up of all the things we could be doing and maybe should be doing. And where exactly does it give?
I come at this sort of from a number of different halves because I myself work in an administrative role. And so I understand the pressures that our universities and units are under. And I also see the pressures that our faculty are under. And, it’s a challenging sector.
I don’t think we’re unique. My husband works in the private sector and that’s a challenging sector. And I look at people who are working in public education like the K-to-12 system, and that’s a challenging sector. And you know, with healthcare, I feel like we’re at this interesting point in society where it’s like everybody’s running full stop all the time and it concerns me. But I work in academia, so that’s where I focus my efforts.
But yeah, it just feels like a lot all the time for everybody. And it’s something that concerns me. And so in my own work, I’m trying to say, Well, where do we have agency within this pressure pot or whatever we might put it to a cooker…
Leslie:
Pressure cooker?
Loleen:
Yeah. To make things a little bit better for ourselves, recognizing that it’s a challenging context.
And I think part of just recognizing the challenges can be helpful to say, “well, it’s not me, this is systemic, this is going on broadly. And within that, how can I create some space for myself? How can I sort of put my elbows out and make room to think and to breathe and to live?”
Leslie:
Absolutely. I mean, sustainability is the name of the game and I feel like people, they work so hard during the semesters that they pretty much burn out. And then they spend their breaks trying to recover from the burnout and then it starts all over again. Versus trying to create some processes I can put in place that really work for me so that I can have a life that matches my values and my priorities and helps me develop as a person, develop my relationships all year long.
So your newsletter talks a lot about feasible goal setting, which I really like, and breaking things into smaller chunks and manageable pieces.
Since you’ve written a number of different books and articles, what is your best advice for achieving these big kinds of writing goals, especially when there’s so much other stuff that’s on your plate?
Loleen:
Yeah, well, I think there’s a few things. One is, whatever your timeline is, generally, it’s a good idea to add a lot of cushion because things happen and it’s guaranteed something will happen. We can never figure out what exactly that will be. Sometimes it’s some kind of student crisis or sometimes it’s that a family member has a different health issue or, you know, whatever it is, something will happen. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when and what.
And one of the things– a piece of advice I heard when I was a lot younger that I remembered, it’s not very reassuring, but it’s true–is that there’s no point worrying about things because whatever you worry about won’t happen. Something else is going to blindside you.
And I find that to be true. And all you can do is make sure that you have space for whenever whatever happens happens, that you can still continue to move forward.
So I also find really breaking things down matters a lot. You know, a lot of people have these five-year goals and I think that’s great. And if that works for people, wonderful. I find, you know, having a plan for the next few months is something that’s really sustainable. I know what I need to get done until the end of June, and then after that I’ll figure it out.
But I’ve got a very full calendar until June, and I know what my priorities are and just sort of keeping moving on that front. One of the things I try to remind myself about is just keep moving forward. Sometimes you get these windows of opportunity where you can have like a big burst of getting things done, but there’s also times where you just get little things done, but you just keep moving forward, and keeping that type of momentum can be really helpful.
One other thing I find helpful for me is to remember that motivation comes once you’re moving, not before you start moving, if that makes any sense.
So quite often with things like writing or getting working on a project or grading or whatever it may be, but ideally, I often think I want to feel like doing it. No, it doesn’t work that way. You know, quite often it’s that I start doing something and then it’s like, okay, well then I find the motivation to work on it.
So just continuing to move forward I think is very important, but small, really achievable goals. Sometimes goals that are so small that they seem really mundane, they can get that sort of momentum going. So aiming for momentum and forward progress rather than big things, I think can be very helpful.
Leslie:
Yeah. I mean, I always used to grade on planes. It was just this time where I had nothing else to do and I would just get through it. And I was super engaged by it because there were literally no distractions. And so part of it is like actually sitting down and doing it.
And then I work with a lot of folks where they’ll be writing. They’ve set aside the time, they’re actually in their document, but they are having a hard time knowing when they’re done, when is it good enough, and then they kind of start going in circles and then they feel like they’re wasting their time and it becomes this mental kind of spiral downward spiral. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Loleen:
Yeah, well, I’m lucky in that I work with co-authors for a lot of my work and so that can be a bit of a reality check. I find the other people can be helpful in that you can share something with them and say, “Hey, can you look at this and tell me if you think this is done or if you think this is good enough?”
I’m also at the stage where I’ve had a lot of things rejected so it’s not a hard thing. Like having a rejection is not the blow that it might have been earlier on. So having that sort of leap of faith of saying, “well, if I send this out and it’s rejected, well, it’s rejected.” And I realize that that’s a life stage and a career stage. That’s a bit of a privilege as well, that when somebody earlier on in their career, the stakes feel a lot higher.
So one thing I find helpful is writing for a particular journal, but having these backup journals in mind that if they don’t like it, I turn around and send it here or send it there, that can be helpful as well.
But nothing’s ever done. You know, you can always make things better. So knowing what the purpose is, sometimes the purpose of something is–why I need to get a certain number of articles published to achieve tenure, in which case there’s a timeline and I need to get something out by June or whatever the case may be.
I had a colleague, he’s since retired and he worked on a book for years and it was never good enough. And he retired without ever getting the book out. And I find that to be a real tragedy because I know a lot of people would love to read that book.
And so I think sometimes having in mind, “well, I don’t want to be someone who holds onto my work for so long that it never gets out to the world can be something to be mindful of as well.” Part of it is just being willing to rip off the Band-Aid and say, “Well, this is good enough.”
And, you know, in qualitative research, we often talk about the idea of saturation, where you get to the point where you’re not hearing anything new and in interviews. And I think we can sort of reach a point of saturation of I can keep editing this until the end of time, and it’s not going to get any more insightful.
Leslie:
Yeah, I think that’s great. And I think it’s partly about being able to differentiate between done and perfect.
Loleen:
Yeah, nothing will ever be perfect. You need to move on yourself in life. Sometimes holding on to something and not getting out there is a way of not moving on to the next project and perhaps something that can be motivating as well. I need to get this thing out so I can start the next project.
What some people will do is they’ll start the next project before that one thing is done and that can be a bit of a, you know, all these things that are 50, 60% done, just get them off the plate. Create that psychological space to move on can be a helpful approach.
Leslie:
Absolutely. Burnout is such a big topic on campuses. Well, everywhere, but especially on campuses, right.
And so, how do you advise people on how to pace themselves through the semester so they don’t just absolutely collapse at the end of it?
Loleen:
I’m a big believer in having work hours and keeping to them. For me at my particular career stage, that means that I don’t work evenings and weekends. But when my daughters were young, I would chunk out my day a bit more in that I’d end earlier, but then they would have piano lessons and it was a two-hour block of time and I’d be, you know, working on things during that time.
But it’s being mindful of what your 40 hours a week or whatever the amount of time is, and trying not to engage beyond that. I think as well that sleep is a big deal and getting rest. And for me, movement, I’m a runner and, you know, being able to get outside and exercise is a big deal. So all those kinds of personal well-being things, they matter and they’re not a reward for work. They’re actually a precursor to being productive.
You know, that kind of mindset of, “oh, well, if I want to be productive next week, I need to take a break. I need to have downtime and make sure that I’m being taken care of, that I’m taking care of myself.”
Sometimes that means that some of the household stuff, you know. A lot of the people that I’m engaging with that are part of my own readership. You know, a lot of them are women with children and they have a lot of care responsibilities. And despite the fact that we’re in 2024, we still have that second shift that when you get home that there’s all this work that needs to be done on the household side and accepting the fact that a household standard is perhaps lower than you might want, all of these kinds of things I think are really important.
I think as well that allowing service work or, it sounds terrible, but I won’t say lowering your standards, but just allowing things to be less than perfect can be very helpful.
You can’t be a 100% teacher and 100% service and 100% research and 100% on the home for all of these things. It’s not sustainable. So allowing everything to be dialed back and giving yourself some grace, just saying, “well, you know, I’m a human being doing the best I can.”
Leslie:
Yeah. I mean, I talk a lot about what I call the 85% rule. Yeah, just shooting for 85 or lower if lower’s a number that is motivating. Like for some people it’ll be 50, 60, 70. But 85 at the very least brings it down from 100.
Loleen:
Absolutely. Yeah. And there’s some things that you can say, “well, you know, I’m on this particular committee and I’m there because they need quorum.” You know, understanding your role in things, and some things require less effort than we give them. Some things require a bit more effort. And so trying to calibrate those things can be important.
One of the things I– a great lesson for me, I had a class that I was teaching and I was teaching something that’s very important to me. And I had a very busy semester. I was teaching a class that I knew I was unlikely to teach again. It was that I was sort of filling in for somebody because they were on a sabbatical and I just had so much going on that I decided for this particular class, I deliberately chose not to meet my own personal sort of standard.
I was willing to sort of say, okay, well, students would ask a question. I’d be like, “Well, I don’t know, I’ll get back to you in the next class” and things like that. And I was just willing to be a little less perfect in that class, and I got some of the best student evaluations I’ve ever gotten, which was a stunner to me.
But I was really human in that class. I was like, “Oh, I don’t know, I’ll get back to you. That’s an interesting question. What does everybody else think?” And, you know, it was uncomfortable for me. And at the same time, the students really responded to it. I mean, it could have gone the other way entirely. But there was a lesson for me that sort of was, you don’t need to be as perfect as you think you need.
Leslie:
Yeah. And so lots of folks are in departments where the chair is a workaholic. Nothing is being modeled in terms of work-life balance.
So how do junior scholars, in particular those who have young kids in particular, how do they know what they can take off their plate?
Loleen:
I think it’s really valuable to have a bit of a mentorship team. This is something that I try to set up for my junior faculty. But I’ve got a newsletter that if people are interested in looking at my Substack. They can look at it, you know, for how to set it up for yourself because it can be valuable to have a sounding board or a team of sounding board people in your department, in your discipline that you can say, “Hey, this is what I’m seeing. Is this reasonable? What can be some different strategies?”
Because it can be really hard to know. And I was going to say every university’s different or even every department is different. One thing I’m struck by in working within my institution is like when I talk to people in different units, their experience of the institution is different. Just because different departments have different cultures, even though we’re all within this larger context.
And so having people that you can talk to to say, “is this reasonable or what can I expect? What can I cut back on that can be really helpful?”
Leslie:
I’ll definitely try to find that episode and link to it on the podcast episode page. And then I wanted to ask you a question about networking, because I know that this is something that you give a lot of guidance on and a lot of academics say that they hate it.
A lot of folks are introverts or they might have some social anxiety. So what do you advise folks when they ask you how they can build relationships that will be useful to their careers?
Loleen:
Well, I hate networking, too. Absolutely! So whenever I go to a conference and it says networking event, I’m like, “oh, that’s when I can get my run in!” Networking is incredibly awkward and difficult.
And so what I encourage people to do is to think about their networks in terms of relationship building and relationship maintaining.
And I often think of concentric circles. You know, there’s the people you kind of know, and then there’s the people you don’t know. And quite often when people think about networking, they’re thinking about that third circle of those people that you don’t know. I actually encourage people to dial it back and say, “Well, how do you take the people that you kind of know but don’t know well and pull them in a little bit more to the people you know?”
And so a lot of networking is strengthening relationships with people that you have already met, more so than trying to expand out.
You’ll naturally meet a few more people on that sort of outer loop. But getting the people that you’ve met a few times to know you a little bit better, to remember your name, to know what you’re doing and build those connections, and then they’ll build your network for you.
There’s people that you might know through your research. There are people you might know through people you’ve published with or editors, that can be a much more comfortable zone. Like I’ve had a lot of people where I’ve met them and I’ve forgotten that I’ve known them. But then or they forgot they know me, but then sort of reinforce, “hey, you know. Hi, we met” and to sort of strengthen connections and make that an emphasis much more than building new connections, because you’re just going to naturally build new connections over time.
But strengthening relationships that you’ve had. If you’ve met somebody, you want to remind them that you’ve met before in a way that is positive rather than, “Hey, you’ve met me, you should remember,” but much more along the lines of “Hi, you know, we’ve met before. You know, in this context, my research is on this or my teachings on that. So great to reconnect that type of thing.” It’s also a little less intimidating to strengthen relationships than it is to build brand-new relationships.
Leslie:
I think replacing the word network with relationship building could be useful. Yeah. And really seeing it as like, this is just conversations that you’re having with other human beings. Yeah, does it have to be strategic?
Loleen:
Well, yeah. And I think what bothers a lot of people about the idea of networking is it seems very focused on utility. How is this person going to be useful to me, and that feels icky because it is icky. It’s sort of how is somebody going to serve some kind of functional purpose?
Whereas if you focus on relationships and connections, then you’ve got that network for the future when you need it and you’re available to that person in the future when they might need you, but you don’t know yet how this relationship might be useful. So it’s just a matter of connecting and getting to know each other before some purpose shows up.
Leslie:
I think this has all been such great and fantastic advice. And so thank you again for sharing your wisdom with my listeners.
So what’s the best way for people to connect with you?
Loleen:
So I have a Substack newsletter and it’s just under my name. So it’s Loleen.Substack.com. Or if, if you just google Academia Made Easier, you should come up with the Substack newsletter. It’s a free newsletter. It comes out when I have time to write it. So it’s usually once or twice a month and I invite anybody to subscribe to it.
I also have a column called The Skills Agenda at University Affairs, which is an online university magazine. And that’s just available online. That’s a great way to connect with me. I’d say find me on LinkedIn, but to be honest, I can’t make sense of the LinkedIn space. It keeps changing and I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on here.” I’m still on what used to be Twitter, but I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be there. So I’d say Substack is the best way to find me, and I welcome anybody to join my readership there.
Leslie:
Yes, everyone please go out and do that. I’m a big fan. I have several of your posts just saved in my email. Thank you again, Loleen, for being on. And everyone out there have a great couple of weeks and I will talk to you again soon.
