Your LP Reflections – Looking back, Looking forward (CAL115 S6E9)

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. A pop quiz question for you. Do you remember the LP? Or do you even know what an LP is for those of you who maybe aren't old enough? Well, an LP is a long play vinyl record. And it used to be our source of music when I was a teenager. This was clearly a long time before online music streaming services. Though, I believe LPs are making a bit of a comeback. I can still hear a song from, I don't know, John Denver's back home again, album. Or Susie Quattros Quatro album. And I'm immediately taken back to 1974. And I can even remember particular occasions when we played these or who I was with and what we were doing. In this episode, I want to play with LP as a template for reflecting on and celebrating what will be our long play mix or compilation of 2024. And also as we look forward to what might be our next long play album for 2025. I'll explain how I'm playing with L and P as I go along. And you'll also be able to find a template that you can download and use for yourself. And you can find this on the episode, webpage that you can access via www.changingacademiclife.com. I'm going to first walk through the template and explain the L's and the P's. And then I'm going to go on and use that as a template for myself to reflect on my past year. And to look forward to next year. I've set it up for myself as a table. And the labels on the columns reflect the PS. And the Ps are personal, people, play and projects. And for myself, I've added in podcasts, and the L's reflect the rows. And I've got different Ls for reflecting upon the past year. And for thinking about the next year. So the L's for reflecting upon this last year on those P areas are land, love, labor and learn. And for thinking about what we want for 2025. The Ls are look forward to, let go, let grow, and let be. Now I've been playing with these just for fun. So you could create column labels to reflect whatever areas are important for you. And if those Ls provide questions that don't connect for you create your own questions or your own labels. So let's start reflecting on this past year. And to give you a little bit more of an explanation of the P's and the L's are the L's and the P's. For the Ps. Personal is about where you're currently at in your life and career and, and how you look after yourself. Thinking about what makes you, you. People is pretty obvious. And that's both people who support you, who make life fun and worthwhile, and people that you've been able to support and serve. Both directly and indirectly. And we're thinking about friends, family, colleagues, peers, here. Play is about doing things that aren't work, that are fun, that are hobbies or passion projects, or just hanging out or things that just don't have any direct, functional purpose. And projects is my catch-all for all things work. What you're paid to do or projects that you've chosen to take on for yourself that contribute in some work-like way. And the L's just by expanding a bit more. Land is about what have you landed this year? And we could think about that in terms of what have you done? What went well? What are you proud of? Love is standing back and reflecting on what you've landed and looking at: what are the high points? When were you at your real best? What did you particularly love doing? When did you feel particularly energized in the flow and what patterns do you see across those moments? And similarly labor is reflecting on when did feel a little bit like hard work or, you know, going through treacle. What didn't you enjoy doing so much? And what patterns do you see here? And learn is pretty self-explanatory. It's what did you learn? And that could be, what did you learn from what didn't work so well? Or what did you learn from your mistakes or failures? And what are those lessons for next time or what would you do differently? And in particular, what did you learn about yourself? I found it really useful before embarking on this. Just to spend some time. Going back and looking at my photos and looking across my calendar entries. And skimming across the journal that I've been keeping, surprisingly. Because I haven't usually been a journal keeper, but I found it really useful that. Just to have a commitment to myself though. At least write a phrase or a sentence every day. So, how do I reflect on my own 2024? I won't go into all the details. Just pull out a couple of illustrative points. On a personal level. I finally finished my employment contract end of September, this year. And it really is then the finish of that transition period between my formal academic position. And now. Being more freelance and being able to explore. Being in so-called retirement and also working. So that has been a big deal because it really represents stepping into a new phase of my life. Another big deal for me was running my first half marathon in April. And really being surprised too. That I could do that, that I could take on that challenge and do it and, and enjoyed it. And that's been part of a commitment to try to keep up regular exercise and take better care of sleeping well and eating well. Because, especially as I get older, I'm aware that my health is really critically important and can make all the difference to quality of life. And I've also been able to enjoy lots of learning experiences. I love learning. And apart from informal learning, in terms of reading books or listening to various podcasts, I've also undertaken particular trainings and certifications that will go towards supporting the work that I want to continue doing. And so I'm now a certified strength scope coach practitioner for individuals and teams and leaders. And that's about working with people to help them understand what their particular strengths are and how they can work with them and use them to craft their good life. And their impactful life. And also undertaking courses around creating better cultures. And also facilitating peer learning experiences and action learning sets. We could also talk about that as peer coaching group coaching. Moving on to people where. Where do I start? When I look across the photos, they're just packed full of wonderful people, wonderful relationships, lots of people visiting. Um, people in various courses, amazing people I've had the privilege to work with my own work group. And there are also some sad memories there of having lost people. You will have heard some of those discussions in the podcast. And also recognizing that for many of the people that I care about, they've also been dealing with various hardships and losses this year. But people have been really important in just getting through collaborators, friends, my partner. So I'm really appreciative of people's friendships. I won't go through the play, but there's been lots of opportunities for playful explorations, which was one of my themes for 2024 in being able to do some interesting travels. And again, many of those travels were with friends that really enhanced the experience. I'm also really proud of the work that I've been able to do under the projects umbrella. Some of that has been ongoing peer service roles. But I'm also deliberately cutting back on a lot of other peer service roles so that I can focus on where I think I can make more unique contributions. And that's been focusing more of my work time on the consulting, training, speaking, and coaching work that I offer. For example with my co-facilitator Austin Rainer we've run some long form academic leadership development courses, both as an online course, over a number of months and as a residential course, over a few days. I've also run various courses for PhD students. Many of which are also longer form that go towards course credits. And then there's a whole myriad of other different workshops and courses and facilitated sessions. That can run for anything from half a day to two days. When I look back and count these up, there were 22 of those last year. And these have been across a range of countries. In alphabetical order, like Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and Wales. And have been delivered to various groups from senior leadership teams to people in general leadership positions to early career researchers to PhD students. We've covered topics from how to create an inclusive meeting culture. And more general issues around inclusion and diversity. To leadership development issues specifically around how to ask for feedback as a leader. Or how to bring a coaching mindset to your leadership toolkit. There also been courses about how to better know and understand yourself and then use that understanding to lead yourself. And how to craft your own good academic life and make good decisions. And that has been around saying yes and no. As well as around managing all areas of your life and promoting wellbeing. And they've also been courses that have connected to issues around emotional intelligence and understanding emotions as data and working with the voices in your head, like the procrastinator and the perfectionist and the imposter. And there've been topics around women at work as well. And I've run sessions on mentoring mentors and helping to establish a mentoring culture in a department. I've also facilitated a number of events. These include the launch of a women's network. And also a strategic planning workshop for leadership team in a faculty. And I did six different keynote or invited talks this year. Covering issues ranging from leadership to creating collegial research cultures. To diversity and inclusion. To mentoring. And these have all been such a pleasure to do. I love facilitating groups. I love engaging with people in these sorts of discussions and shared learning experiences where I learned just as much as they may learn. And I guess one of the big projects I've taken on together with Austin is writing a book. And this is in response to many people saying to us over the last couple of years, about when are we going to write a book, reflecting what we teach in our leadership development courses. So we're starting to work on that. This isn't particularly my happy place. I'm much happier standing up speaking and facilitating. And I also recognize that we want to write the book. Because there is lots that we've learnt from doing the courses that we do and that we want to share. Because we know it can be impactful from the feedback that we get from our courses and workshops. And now onto my podcast column. And there's lots to be celebrated here as well. This, that I'm recording now is the 16th episode for the year. And that includes taking a break between June and August. It also includes the hundredth episode that I've recorded since I started the podcast in 2016, which was a big milestone. These have been a mix of interviews and also exploring more with some solo episodes. A lot of themes have come out of the interviews and the solo episodes. Reflecting topics around how to create better, more collegial and supportive research cultures, the value of values and recognizing what's important. And how to connect to what's meaningful work. Because that's when we're at our best and can make the biggest difference. The episodes were really poignant with me. were connected to people, good peers and colleagues that we lost this year. It was reading Volkmar Pipek's final reflections and advice to other researchers. It was also my interviews with Liam Bannon. And I know it was particularly important for him to share his experiences and insights, despite the difficulties of the final interview context. And that he really did want to urge us to pay attention to what's important and who's important. So when I look across all these areas and think about what did I really love? Like when did I really feel alive in that? I can see how I really love taking on challenges and I love learning and developing. Also, I love just being with people and I love listening to people's stories. I love being outdoors and being active. When I think about my play areas. And when I think about my project areas, I love speaking. And standing up in front and working with groups and facilitating shared learning experiences and shared exchanges. In contrast to what I've loved, I can also recognize some of the areas that feel more like labor, feel more like hard work. And this was clearly some of the bureaucratic work that we had to go through to navigate the pension systems in different countries and in different schemes. Really complex. And I also recognize I'm not so strong on structure and processes. And so the administrative work around the courses and workshops like scheduling calls and writing up proposals and following up on people and getting contracts drawn up and doing the invoicing and working out pricing schedules and so on. Not particularly what I love doing, but I know I need to do them in order to do the work that I care about. And then there's the promotion and business development work. And here, I can't even say it's been hard work because I'd sort of been dragging my feet and putting my head in the sand really. Um, Don't feel so comfortable on social media. And I also recognize that part of it is I'm not quite sure how much work I want to do relative to other opportunities at this new phase of life. And I can also reflect on similar labor experiences around the podcast. Scheduling has ended up being a real challenge this year. I've had many people that I've been trying to line up and we've had trouble finding dates or had dates agreed. And then one of us gets sick and so on. And then the enormous amount of time and effort it takes to process the recording and to get it out as a podcast episode So I love the conversations and the talking with people, but the work to actually get the podcast out is. Yeah, it's work for me. Again, though I know that it's work that needs to be done in order to get the podcast out. I'm also dragging my feet on the work to get the new podcast website opened. Another story for another day. Because I want to move on and reflect on the many things that I learned this last year. Just as an example is from a mistake I made. And we'd been at a friend's birthday party and we ended up having a really late night. And the next day I was feeling really tired and out of sorts, I felt low energy and I struggled to string two thoughts together. And ironically, the course I was facilitating that day was on issues of wellbeing and the importance of things like eating well and sleeping well and moving and looking after your relationships. So I was walking the talk in so far as I was illustrating directly, what are the consequences of not having good sleep. That was a big learning to really take more deliberate care, intentional care. Of looking after the basics, especially in advance of being able to stand up and do my best for the people I want to serve. Another learning was about how important my everyday interactions with people are to me. And it was because I noticed that I really missed the people that I'd had the pleasure and the privilege of interacting with every day when I was going into the office. And I'm not doing that anymore. So one of my learnings here is that I'm going to need to be much more deliberate now in making an effort to connect to people. And I think in terms of the work as well, one of my big learnings. Is to trust myself a little bit more. Because one of my love of learning is I genuinely do love learning. And part of it though is also feeling like I'm a bit of an imposter and I need to have all these formal certifications and degrees to underpin or justify my right to stand up and speak. And. This last year has helped me gain much more confidence in what I already know, the foundation that I already have on what I've experienced myself and what I know from all my formal and informal studies. And to trust myself. I've been reflecting lately on the fact that a lot of this work feels like when I was a midwife in a previous career. Being a midwife is all about being with. Where it's women and birthing it's about you being there to support and encourage and to scaffold the process. And to also have provided them with information and resources so that they could work with their bodies to birth their own babies. And I feel like I'm doing that a lot with the development and consulting and training and coaching work that I do. And that is also helping equip people with the knowledge, concepts, tools, and resources that they need. So that they can find their own ways to develop their own potential and to take control of their choices, to develop a life that they care about. And that is about finding who they are at their best. And it's such a privilege to witness. And be with someone as they go through this process. I'm also learning more practical, pragmatic things like, Appropriate pricing, which I'm never comfortable with. And I know that I will need to learn more about engaging with social media. That's one of my actions for next year. So there's much more I could talk about here because there's much more that I've written into my own review of the last year. But that was just to give a flavor. What I want to do now is encourage us all. Once you've done this. Just to stop. And take a moment to stand back and reflect on how much you've done. And how much you've achieved. How much you've learned. And to celebrate that. Because it's pretty impressive. It's pretty impressive. And we're so quick to focus on what we haven't done. Or what still to do or what we got wrong. That we forget to take that precious moment to actually stop and celebrate what we have done. And it can also be useful to take a moment to think about. What are we particularly grateful for? And who might we be particularly grateful for? It could also be useful to step back and think about. What if you were your own best friend? And you were looking at the review that you've just captured. What would that friend say to you? And they're likely to be pretty blown away. Aren't they. So I think we should just take a moment to pat ourselves on the back and say, well done, you. And also recognize the fact that we're human and that we're on a learning journey for the whole of our life. And that we're never perfect. So we can celebrate still what we have done and what we have learned and the impact that we have been able to have. And towards this, I want to take this moment to express my gratitude to you. The many listeners who've taken the time to give feedback on the podcast. Because that has really encouraged me. I said before that it takes a lot of work to do this. Every time, I would start to think about maybe stopping the podcast. I would get an email or a contact from someone, or I'd run into someone and they'd share some of the ways in which the podcast has helped them. So I'd like to share some of the particular feedback. To also encourage you. I haven't got explicit permission from people to use their name. So I will just do these as anonymous for the moment, but just to give some examples of the feedback. Someone who discovered the podcast late. So they've gone back and been listening to some of the last seasons. And just say, "I must say that this is such a valuable contribution to the academic community. I've got so many insights and Eureka moments from other people's stories. It is really a needed discourse in our field and probably in many other fields that we all have our vulnerabilities in addition to our successes and that we have to be more merciful to ourselves as well to others." Isn't that wonderful. And I'm so grateful to all the people who've shared their stories. Who've shared their vulnerabilities in addition to their successes. That have enabled this sort of connection with someone who's listened. And that starts to normalize those conversations. One of the episodes that was particularly. Impactful for people where the episodes talking with Liam Bannon. And someone who's been going through some of their own career struggles and personal life struggles at the moment wrote and said, "I'm at an age where you start to reflect more on bigger issues in life. So your interview and Liam's words. I really struck a chord with me. I just wanted to say a big thank you for delivering this podcast. Because it's so important to hear from experienced academics when you struggle with your own career. But now it feels even more important. After listening to your interview with Liam. Because this goes way beyond working life issues. I was really touched by it. Thank you." And someone else reflecting on Liam's episodes. And I did a solo afterwards about how what he said made me think about the importance of how we connect to other people. And so they write. "This is a note of appreciation. I'm so enjoying your podcast. I'm so sorry to hear that. Liam Bannon passed what a wonderful interview to memorialize him. Your reflection on networking through the lens of that interview was very touching. I find your podcast really helpful for learning about different academic careers and trajectories. It energizes my imagination for other ways of being." And the other episode that particularly seemed to resonate and get lots of feedback was a solo episode I did back in January called research identity, meaningful work and funding. And some of the comments were things like "thank you for another insightful episode that really touched me. If you're also a recovering academic and interested in reclaiming your research identity, follow these nine simple steps to get a clear insight into what lights you up." And this post, I actually will put this in the notes, on the podcast episode, because it's a LinkedIn post. And rachel here did a great job in summarizing the nine key points that I made in that episode. And someone else similarly reflected on that episode and sent a message to say. "I had to pause their morning run because they just finished the episode on research identity, meaningful work and funding, and it hits so close to home. Thank you so much. Every example, every tension I was like, yes. Been there felt that. Thank you also for normalizing, not only this but often the favorite projects we have are the ones that are not even funded that are side projects with passionate colleagues. 'cause I always feel kind of bad putting non-funded time into that. Now I don't, because these are the ones that give meaning to my work and make me happy." Thank you so much for that comment. Another comment from someone around that episode. "I've been listening to your podcast for a while now. And as a woman in academia and a social science researcher, find it really valuable. I particularly enjoyed today's episode on research, identity, meaningful work and funding. What you said on this aligns with where I tend to land on these things, following your passion and values. Making decisions and playing the game. And figuring out why and how." As I reflect on the year and savor and celebrate. And do it via this podcast episode. I want to thank in particular all my guests who have shared so vulnerably and openly and honestly about their own journeys. And there've been some wonderful conversations and themes. And I want to thank all of you who've taken the time to write and reflect on where and how these connect. It helps me also think about who might be good guests. And if you have other ideas, please let me know or what might be good themes to talk about. And as a final, thank you. I want to thank Pawel Wazniak and the human computer interaction group at TU Wien who provided some financial support for the tools and platforms that I use for this podcast. That support really makes a difference. Thank you. So now we come to 2025. I've continued playing with the LP. So you might like to draw up another table. And you can put the usual Ps on the columns, whatever your column labels are. For me, they're personal people play and projects and also podcast. And the ELLs we're going to put for our rows are going to cover. Looking forward. What are you looking forward to? What are you going to let go of? What are you going to let grow and develop? And what are you going to let be? So again, I'm not going to go through all these in detail. But I can just talk through those Ls a little bit more to help give some questions that might frame your own reflections. Looking forward to 2025. And for each of those Ls, you can consider them again across each of your P areas or whatever your columns are labeled. The first L is looking forward. So, what do you already know is on the horizon? And what would you like to make happen and what are the opportunities and potentials? The second L is let go. And I think letting go is a really important one to consider. And that's about what do you want to leave behind or stop doing. That isn't serving you well, what do you want to do less of. So that you can do more of something else. What isn't the best use of your time and attention and energy. For the difference you can make when you are at your best. For me, some of that is uh, need to let go of feeling inadequate. Measuring myself against others and recognizing that they're in different situations and stop doing that. Also need to let go of trying to do it all. There are so many things on my list that I would love to do or try out, especially in the project consulting space. And I can't do it all. Moving on the third, L is let grow. What do you want to let grow? What do you want to take forward? What do you want to develop more? What do you want to do more of. How do you want to show up for yourself? And what will help you do that in the best way? So for me, I want to start being more intentional about the structure of my day and the rhythm of work and play and rest. And building in time for intentional connections. And do of reflecting on decisions. Cause I get asked to do a lot still. I want to do more of asking myself. What am I saying no to if I say yes to this. And our final L is let be. What are the things that you just need to be comfortable with? And that can be about not knowing or not having all the answers. And that also may be not ever having all the answers or it could even just be not just yet having the answers or not just yet knowing. So can you just let it be okay that things are open and uncertain for while. What do you need to give space and time for them to work out. And what do you need just to accept that there are some things that you can't change and have absolutely no control over. So for me in particular, at this time, it's letting it be okay with not knowing exactly what the future will hold. And that comes down to what mix of work and play I want to do. And it even comes down to where we might end up living. So there's lots that you could think about for each of your P areas. And along those Ls, like what. What are you looking forward to? What are you letting go of? What are you going to let grow and develop? What are you going to let be? So wrapping up now. What I've tried to share here is a little bit of a template for reflecting on your long play record that was 2024. And give some questions to think about moving forward into this new year. To summarize, we talked about the P's in terms of personal people play and projects. And for reflecting on the past year. I offered the L's of land, love, labor, and learn. And looking forward to the next year across those same areas, it's, as I said, what to look forward to let, go of let grow, let be. You could also play with the whole LP record metaphor, if you wanted to and think about if you're doing a mixed music pop compilation for your last year or for this coming year. What would that be comprised of? So, as I said at the beginning, There's a template that you can download by going to www.changingacademiclife.com. And I'll also link to some of the other past podcast episodes that I've mentioned there. And whether you use this template or not, I just offer it in case it's useful. I think it is really good just to take some time at these transition points, artificial as they are in lots of ways, just to put our head above all the details and the messiness of work and life, and just think about where have we come. And to take the time, as I said to celebrate. And then to think about where are we going and how can we be a little bit more intentional about that? So that we can better connect to who we are at our best and to what's important to us. Because that's when we're going to make our biggest and best contributions by doing that. And this may be a reflection that you do just on your own, or it could be something that you do with colleagues. Or if you're in some sort of supervisory or leadership relationship, it could also frame a discussion that you have setting up the new year. So I'm curious to hear from you if this works for you at all, and thank you at this end for being with me on the journey this past year. And I'm really looking forward to what the next year brings us all. As we work together to change academic life for the better, both our own academic life. And the collective academic life that we all co-create together. And if you will allow me to end with a little bit of blatant self promotion. We have our next academic leadership development course, our online course scheduled for May, 2025. The early bird registration for that closes on 2nd of March and places are limited. The information about the courses under the events tab on the informatics, your website. Which is www.informatics-europe.org. And I'll put a link to that on the web page. And if you're interested in exploring more about any of the offerings that I have through my consulting, training, speaking, coaching work. You can go to www.geraldinefitzpatrick.com, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, all one word. And I would also ask a final favor of you. That you share this podcast with at least one other person. Thank you. Have a great 2025! 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 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.