You Are Equipped To Meet This Moment

In this episode, I offer a grounded, honest, and empowering message for academics navigating today’s tumultuous social and political climate. This isn’t about toxic positivity—it’s about recognizing the real threats facing our institutions and careers while reclaiming our agency, skills, and purpose. I unpack how your past experiences, values, and professional expertise prepare you to move forward—deliberately, powerfully, and with integrity.

If you’re feeling stuck, discouraged, or unsure how to move forward, this episode is for you. Listen in to reconnect with your academic mission, clarify your values, and remember just how much strength you already carry.

Leaning on Past Experiences & Navigating Difficult Situations

We are all living with collective pain and upheaval. I encourage you to take a step back and reframe. You’ve navigated toxic systems, dehumanizing environments, and unjust gatekeeping for years. The same instincts and strategies you’ve used to survive and succeed before are the ones you’ll need now. You’ve pivoted under pressure, adapted to external chaos, and led through crisis (remember 2020?). You’ve done hard things. This is another one—but you are equipped to meet this moment.

Being Clear on Your Work in the World

Now more than ever, you need to get crystal clear on your purpose. Not just “I’m a professor” or “I study X”—but what specifically you’re here to contribute. What is your work in the world? What is the message, mission, or impact that guides you? When you know that, you can move through uncertainty with grounded clarity, even when the path is rocky.

Clarifying Your Values & Your University’s Values

You also need to reflect deeply on your values—and get honest about how they align (or don’t) with your institution’s. Misalignment won’t magically resolve, but identifying it empowers you to understand your frustration, make strategic choices, and preserve your energy and integrity. Universities often say one thing and do another—clarity helps you navigate that contradiction without losing yourself.

Leveraging Your Professional Skill Set

Finally, I ask you to stop shrinking your expertise. You are not just a researcher or teacher—you are a leader, a communicator, a project manager, and a strategist. You’ve built an expansive skill set through years in academia. You know how to collaborate, guide others, make tough decisions, and move things forward. Don’t underestimate your capabilities. Leverage your professional skill set.

“You are not unfamiliar with changing what you do inside of your research program because of external circumstances that are beyond your control. I want to offer to you that you have the skills to pivot in the way that you need to right now.”

“I believe with all my heart that inside of my Navigate program we hold the safest space possible to talk about these things. As we are also learning the material, we are together in community facing these challenges and disruption that is happening in higher ed.”

“You need to be clear on your values and you need to be clear on what your university values. Universities as institutions obscure their values. They say one thing in their strategic plan, and then they live out another set of values. This is probably true for most humans, but this is part of the work that you need to do right now.”

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. 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.

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