Reflecting on 2023

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas, and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. Welcome to this short episode at the end of 2023. And in this. I just would like to reflect on. What's happened in 2023. Both for the podcast to myself, as well as to provide some prompt questions that you might find useful. To help you reflect on 20 23 as well. And what I particularly be wanting to encourage us all to do is to. Stop and take some time. To reflect on the year and in particular, just to celebrate. What we've done, we've been able to achieve what we've been able to get through and that we got here. We often don't take the time. To just sit with and recognize what we've done, because especially in academia, there's always the next thing. And. Yeah, so end of years, always. It's nice transition points for just taking that time. So with the podcast. I did an end of season reflections and transitions piece in July this year. So just reflecting on the episode since then. We've produced 13 episodes. At. Up to this point, this'll be the 14th for the year. Some of them have been interviews with people. Some have been more my reflections bouncing off something that was said in one of the episodes. Doing a quick recap, we had Karen Stroobants Talking about how we can change research culture and reform research assessment, and particularly talking to us about what's happening at the European level in terms of the CoARA initiative. Which is really exciting in terms of just seeing some of these shifts taking place. Suzanne Bødker talked about yeah, similar issues around culture. Importance of research culture. And also what I thought was particularly interesting was the making of choices. That aren't just about advancing career, but bringing in other values that are important in life around family and connections. We had Irina Shklovski also talking to us very honestly and openly. About her burnout experiences and the process of coming back to work. And again, just through that we heard about the value of having a supportive, collegial research culture, because her colleagues were really key in helping her being able to. Take the time off that she needed to heal and recover. And then the process of coming back and just learning how to do enough and be enough and saying no appropriately. And continuing this theme. We also had Mark Reed talking about the challenges of mental health and burnout. And the importance of self compassion and self reflection and self care in that process. And he also talked about being driven by a desire to make a difference and what having an impact means. In academia, sort of pointing to some of the work that he's producing and putting out into the world. I often find myself since then asking the question that he poses. Which is what would love do. And it's been an interesting and valuable exercise. So thanks mark for sharing that one. And the laSt episode in terms of conversation was with Katta Spiel and part two will be something to look forward to in the new year and In part one Katta talked about the precarities that were discussed particularly by Sarah Davies in, in a previous episode. And what that means, the tensions there and also Katta, engaging with issues around gender identity and health all through this process. And the reward of the ERC grant that's starting soon. And as I said, my in-betweeners were often just reflecting on some issue that was raised in a previous interview. So in this new season, I had tried moving to a weekly program. I also was in the process of moving to a new platform, both in terms of the. Tools for recording the interviews as well as for processing the audio and producing the transcripts. And also revamping the website. So there'll be a new website launched in the new year. I think I'll be moving back to fortnightly or giving myself permission to do release episodes, flexibly between weekly or fortnightly, depending upon what else is going on. It was in hindsight or on reflection. A little too ambitious, given everything else that's happening to aim for weekly, given that it's a team of me basically. And one of the reasons for it being a little ambitious was it has been quite a turbulent or not turbulent, but a year of transitions for me. And. Part of that was dealing with a lot of uncertainties as well. So we talked previously about having mandatory retirement at our university. So that happened for me at end of September. And that was interesting. Just the whole. Emotional journey around that, as well as the practical journey of just cleaning at your office and years of things that you've kept there filtering through books to decide what you keep and what you take away. In some ways there's shedding of identities and then the opportunity to reform reshape identities. And I'm hoping to do that more. With some more consulting and development and training work. Cause I think I can still contribute and help towards making a difference in creating more collegial, collaborative research cultures and enabling researchers to find their version of what a good academic is as well. So if I look back on my 2023, it's been a big year and I'm proud to be standing here today. Having gone through all that. And I. Would like to encourage us all to think about what. When we look back on our 23, that we've enjoyed. Achieved survived. Learned. And to take a little bit of time to pat ourselves on the back. And just sit with these achievements. Just for a little bit of time. I can give some particular prompts that may be useful for you. If you want to gift yourself five or 10 minutes, just to sit maybe with a piece of paper and pencil, or maybe just to sit and think, and you may want to take note of these questions, or you may want to pause the recording and just reflect on each one as I go through them. So I just offer these questions for whatever they're worth. They may or may not connect for you or be relevant, but let's see how you go. And here are the questions. What three words would you use to describe your last year? What are you proud of? What went well? And it could be the usual sort of achievements that we often celebrate, like publications or grants or collaborations or so on. It could also just be things like we made it to the end of the year, met the challenges we faced. Or how we were able to look after ourselves and others. And then when you reflect on, when you've been at your best. This year, when you felt most alive, most energized, most engaged when you've been most in love with what you've been doing. How do you reflect on that in terms of what it says to you about what's important for you? Not for anyone else. What your strengths are What your values are When and where and how is it that you're able to have most impact. Because if we can reflect on these things and identify those patterns, We could start being more deliberate, maybe about making choices in the next year, that enable us to connect more to our values. Use more of our strengths, do more of the things where we. We're at our best and have most impact. We can also reflect on what maybe didn't go so well. Not in terms of blame but really through that. What do we learn from it What do we learn about ourselves? Or what do we learn about the issues that we were trying to address? And what might we take away from these experiences? That we might take forward into 2024 to try to do differently next time. And then we can ask. What are we grateful for? And who are we grateful for? I guess there's so much in our day-to-day life that we can take for granted. And whether that just be the everyday social connections at work or family, whether it's our health the relative. Peace and safety of where we live. Having enough to eat. What are we grateful for? And who are we grateful for? The people who've been important to us. So just encouraging you to take some time to stop and reflect. And to celebrate and savor. What you've achieved and think about. What you want to take forward into next year? What you might want to leave behind. And what you might want to be doing differently. So thank you for listening with me for this year. And for the feedback that you send in, it really makes a difference and makes the work that goes into this worthwhile, knowing that it does connect for people in different ways. Because I am really committed to how we can change academic life for the better. And that's a collective endeavor and I also often talk about it. And so do other people indeed about it? Being both a top down and a bottom up process and we can all contribute right where we are right now Wishing you all the very best for your holiday season. However you celebrate it. May you have time to, with to spend with people you care about. To take time for yourself to rest and relax May it be filled with laughter and joy. And see you back in 2024 and we'll have part two of the conversation with Katta Spiel. You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this podcast on www. changingacademiclife. com. You can also subscribe to Changing Academic Life on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts. And you can follow ChangeAcadLife on Twitter. And I'm really hoping that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently. And you can contribute to this by rating the podcast and also giving feedback. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues. Together, we can make change happen.