Exploring Mindfulness Methods for Thriving in Uncertainty in Academia by Sarah-Jane Potts

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Over my last decade in academia, I have been given many opportunities to work on cutting edge science and engineering projects in a field that brings me great excitement and joy. However, despite the interesting projects and great colleagues, it can be hard to truly thrive and work at your best when you are left with uncertainty. During my doctorate, this often took the form of a lack of clarity on what I was trying to achieve. Particularly towards the start of the project, I felt lost, confused and unsure of whether I truly belonged in academia. Over my five years of being a postdoctoral researcher, I adored the opportunity to work in a fantastic team on work I was passionate about, but this was continuously shrouded by the precarity of the short, fixed term contracts. This brought a great source of stress and anxiety from the lack of stability and constant search for the next few months of funding.

In recent months, I have been appointed onto a Lectureship. This has been my aspiration for as long as I can remember, providing me with an opportunity to combine my passions for teaching and research, as well as offering a more secure future. However, each role comes with its own challenges. In this current financial environment, no job is truly secure and the unending challenge of completing every task to a high standard within the timeframe can be exhausting. However, I have found that I can face these challenges with more calm, composure and courage when using mindfulness techniques during my day. This is my story of how I began using mindfulness to help me manage stress in academia.  

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Emerging from Burnout: A Scientist´s Yoga Story by Stéphanie Blockhuys

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Are you a stressed academic, feeling the weight of constant pressure and burnout looming over you? I understand—I’ve been there. My journey as a cancer scientist led me to a place of exhaustion until I discovered the transformative power of yoga.

In this blog, I invite you to join me as I recount my experiences in academia. My aim is to share my story and hopefully inspire you to prioritize your wellbeing. Take a step back, pause, and care for yourself. Through yoga, I found a path to rejuvenation and resilience, and I am eager to share these insights with you.

Let’s foster a culture of self-care and strength in academia – one where everyone can flourish and shine brightly in their pursuit of knowledge and innovation. In this blog, I use the metaphor of a caterpillar to describe my journey through burnout and recovery. Like a caterpillar weighed down by exhaustion, I entered a cocoon of recovery during my sick leave, where I discovered yoga and began to heal. Emerging as a butterfly, I transformed my experience into a meaningful career, combining cancer research and yoga therapy.

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Breaking Barriers: My Higher Education Journey as a Disabled and Neurodivergent Student by Alexandra Wilson-Newman 

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Navigating higher education (HE) is difficult for any student, but for those who don’t fit the traditional mould – whether due to neurodivergence, disability, other protected characteristics or any combination of the above – the journey is fraught with additional obstacles. These obstacles shape our academic and personal lives in ways that are often hard to fully grasp if you don’t share some of those characteristics.

My own story, complete with an autism diagnosis just before adulthood, and the onset of a debilitating chronic pain condition, has been one of resilience, discovery and advocacy. As I’ve moved through the world of HE, I’ve seen first-hand how systemic barriers can hinder progress and damage wellbeing. That said, I’ve seen how these challenges can be a catalyst to drive change for those too stubborn to accept systemic barriers preventing people from reaching their full potential. This is not just a recounting of my story so far, but a call-to-action for a more inclusive and compassionate educational environment for all. 

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Returning to Your PhD studies Following a Bereavement by Hema Chaplin

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TW: Death and family bereavement

My father was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer, just as I was completing my Health Psychology Masters, and just before I found out I had been successful in being awarded PhD funding. It is well known that doing a PhD can be challenging for mental health, but this diagnosis meant that things were going to be even harder for me. For the next five years, I experienced a mix of extremely stressful life experiences at the same time: undertaking a PhD, being a caregiver for Dad, his death, and the grief that followed. 

I hope that by sharing the good and the bad parts of my experience in this blog, including suggestions about how to make the process easier, it might help others get through the process of returning to their PhD and experience the joy that this finally brings. 

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Doing a PhD with OCD by Isabelle Berrow 

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Write a sentence. Delete it. Write a sentence. Delete it. Why isn’t it good enough? What am I missing? Maybe I need a break – go downstairs, get a drink. Turn the light off, check the door’s locked. Check it again. Sit down to try and write again, delete it. Try again. 

The constant cycle that occupied my mind, every second of every day. 

I have had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) my whole life, even if I refused to admit it. I had to have two of all my stationery, had to always check I locked the door twice, had to submit my academic work at an even time. I can trace habits and routines from my OCD into every aspect of my life since I was a little girl. 

I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to hide and ignore my compulsive routines, especially when I went into higher education, naively thinking and praying that one day my OCD would go away on its own. 

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It’s Also Okay Not to Talk About Your Mental Health by Anonymous

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The open conversations around mental health in society today represent huge progress in comparison to even ten or twenty years ago. I am especially in awe of the academics who present their struggles publicly (such as in blog posts here) and find this absolutely crucial for the health of our field. Reading their stories has made a difference to me and helped me feel less alone.

In this blog post though, I want to offer some support for those who can’t or don’t want to talk about their mental health. An important message should be: That’s okay too. As long as we’re talking to someone, we don’t have to talk to everyone. Based on my personal experience, this is an even more important message for people trying to support someone who is struggling. Public health initiatives encourage us to ask “Are you okay?”. The idea is to give people an opening to talk, but for a person in distress, it can feel like the burden is being put on them to reassure others. This was my experience during an event I wasn’t able to talk about and instead of helping me, it forced me into isolation. Sometimes, asking others if they are okay can be problematic—even unhelpful—and we need to be aware that we might have to adjust our strategy if someone is not responding.

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Mistakes Were Made: My Experience of Adult ADHD by Brian Spurlock

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In late 2011, I was woken from a deep sleep by a call letting me know the lab where I was doing undergraduate research in organic chemistry had flooded. I rushed to campus along with two or three graduate students and through our combined efforts, the mess was cleaned up and the damage mitigated. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t the whole truth. 

To be specific: One night during my junior year at Ole Miss, my mentor called me to let me know that I flooded his lab, and, still half asleep and in pajama bottoms, I ran to campus and helped three exhausted people who hadn’t flooded the lab fix my colossal fuckup.

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Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder and Academic Research – An Incompatible Pairing? by Dr Jenny Lange

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TW: Eating disorder; suicidal ideation

Since I started my journey in academia, completing a BSc in Psychology in 2008, increasing focus has been placed on wellbeing and raising awareness of mental health conditions in students and academic staff. Unfortunately, that usually focuses on common mental health conditions deemed more ‘palatable’, and rarely provides additional support to those entering academia with a pre-existing mental health condition. Employee Assistance Programmes typically offer limited counselling, that is barely sufficient for providing the minimum support for struggling students or staff.

But before I go off on my favourite rant about how ‘wellness walks’ for mental health awareness week are extremely ineffective in raising awareness or reducing stigma, I should mention that I have been diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, EUPD, formerly known as Borderline Personality disorder. After years of never quite fitting a diagnosis, this almost came as a relief but in a sense was also overwhelming. Given I am already trying to navigate a notoriously challenging career field, to be told now there’s something inherently wrong with me and my personality? This was a blow, and in a way felt like it was my fault rather than a consequence of the trauma I experienced.

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Challenges as a First-Generation Student: Studying Abroad by L. América Chi

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Imagine winning a Ferrari in a lottery—sounds thrilling, right? The rules are that you cannot sell it or transfer it. Once you are over the joy of winning it, a small predicament arises, as  you find yourself unable to afford the exorbitant expenses associated with maintaining such a luxurious vehicle. Adding to the challenge, you lack the knowledge and experience required to operate it, and no one in your small town possesses this expertise either, thus requiring you to relocate to effectively leverage it. Then there’s your friends, family, and local community who do not really understand why you might want the Ferrari in the first place.  

Then, let’s envision a scenario where you relocate to a distant city where residents are accustomed to utilizing such vehicles. In this new environment, people are so familiar with these cars that they struggle to comprehend why you find it challenging to adapt. Meanwhile, individuals from your hometown fail to understand your decision to leave, perplexed by your pursuit of learning. The individuals who donated the Ferrari and were present for the photo on the day you won have all but vanished. So yes, you won a Ferrari, but in reality, it hasn’t brought you happiness necessarily. You can hardly make use of it, unable to share it with your family, and you find no joy in owning it. Furthermore, the burden of maintaining it has plunged you into significant debt, affecting your mental health. 

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You Can’t Outwork Your ADHD by Anonymous

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When in doubt, just work harder – until you no longer can. 

I always thought that work ethic is one thing nobody could take away from me. In graduate school, I admired people – especially women, particularly mothers – who could work reasonable hours and somehow finish their bench work, keep up with current literature, and submit grant applications on time. Meanwhile, I never stopped working, yet everything would be done at the very last minute. Yes, I was bad at time management, constantly making mistakes that forced me to second-guess experimental results. I could, nonetheless, work anyone under the table with my ability to keep going at all hours, all days, with no vacations, no weekends. Academia certainly encouraged it. Senior academics would praise my hard work, marvel at my multitasking skills, at my cheerful spirit. However, those very efficient women whom I admired would frequently ask, “How are you not burned out? How are you holding up?” I would deflect, laugh it off, make a self-deprecating joke. In my own mind, I knew that it was not a sustainable work style. However, the discovery of new data – that moment when you turn on the microscope at the end of a long experiment and see the confirmation of your hypothesis in glorious multicolor – got me through many periods of disinterest and boredom caused by the relentless tedium of everyday bench work.

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