“I’ll Wait Until It Gets Better”

In today’s episode, I discuss why academics don’t get professional development or writing help because they wait for circumstances to change. When you say, “I’ll wait until it gets better,” you are really saying, “I’ll wait until it gets worse.” The “it” is stress, overwork, and obligations. 

It isn’t your circumstances that are the problem; it’s your approach to those circumstances. Getting tenure or lessening your teaching load will not change your decision-making process. You have the power now to shift from being reactive to being proactive in your career.

Saying, “I’ll wait until it gets better,” is a passive way to approach your career. You spend most of your time at work, so let’s make work 90% awesome. Tune in and get inspired to take action to improve your career experience right now.

I’ll Wait Until It Gets Better – What is “It”

When academics say, “I’ll wait until it gets better,” the “it” is stress, overwork, and serving others’ needs. Whether you see your problem as working on the weekends, saying yes to projects that don’t align with your academic mission statement, or taking on university roles outside your professorship, that pressure is caused by your inability to say no. Getting more funding or making tenure won’t change how you approach these circumstances. “It” will only get worse unless you take action to make it better.

Tenure is Not the Solution

Many academics consider tenure a milestone that will come with massive shifts to their workload, schedules, and stress. But your experiences follow you into promotions. No magical switch gets turned on when you make tenure that helps you manage time better, set boundaries, or write more. 

If you truly desire change,  you must learn to engage in proactive, not reactive, career development. This involves investing time, energy, thought, and reflection into your own growth and development. 

How to Take Back Control

Remember, you hold the power to transform your career experience. Here are some actionable ideas to help you take control and become more proactive in shaping your career.

1. Read a book that forces you to reflect on your practices and offers guidance to improve.
2. Participate in professional development activities like the Navigate Program, designed to improve your decision-making process. Acquire tools and build skills that help you create the career you want.

“I see writing and publishing as the entry point to remaking your career into what you want it to be. So many of us feel like we are bombarded by stress and putting out other people’s fires and the needs of our students and the needs of our colleagues and the needs of our families that we lose our own needs. We lose our own dreams and desires and our belief in our agency to create the careers that we want.” 

“All of this implies that the solution to things getting better in your career is outside of you. It’s your circumstances. It is something like tenure. And what I would like to propose in this podcast is that things will only get better by you making different choices to make it better for yourself. It isn’t the circumstances as it is your approach to the circumstances. Changing your circumstances without changing your approach to the circumstances won’t make anything better. ”

We’re receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®! Check out the program details and start your application process here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing, and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. Want to train with us for free on your campus? Now you can when you recommend our Scholar’s Voice™ Faculty Retreats to a decision-maker on your campus! Download the brochure with the retreat curriculum and both in-person and online retreat options here.
4. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

CONNECT WITH ME: 

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube