Episode #253

Your Relationship to Academia in 2025

Academia is evolving, and the upcoming administrative and political shifts in 2025 can lead to feelings of fear and uncertainty. While we don’t know the impact of these changes yet, it’s important to acknowledge that your relationship with academia and your career may look different over the next four years. Whether you’re a researcher, a professor, or in another academic role, how you relate to your work—and how you take care of yourself in the process—will be key to adapting to these changes.

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In today’s episode, I discuss the importance of understanding why you entered academia in the first place. As external pressures intensify and academia transforms, it’s essential to center yourself and define your purpose. This clarity can help you craft a sustainable, fulfilling career and navigate the potential challenges ahead. Whether you are worried about budget cuts, defunding, or other vulnerabilities, I encourage you to embrace your purpose and take control by designing the academic career you want.

We Must Take Care of Ourselves

Self-care isn’t just a luxury in academia; it’s essential. With everything going on in the academic world, it’s easy to put our health last, but taking care of ourselves physically and mentally should be a top priority. I talk about how regular exercise, eating well, and giving yourself the mental space to recharge are all essential for keeping your energy up and crafting a sustainable writing practice and academic career.

Discovering Your Why

I walk you through some questions to help you understand why you chose academia in the first place. What’s your deeper purpose? What do you hope to contribute or feel through your work? Understanding your “why” gives you a solid foundation for the ups and downs ahead. It helps you stay focused on what really matters, no matter what changes come to the field or academia as a whole.

Designing Your Career

I discuss how to actively shape your academic career instead of just following a set path. Academia doesn’t have to define you—you can decide how you want to fit into it. I share how you can craft a career that aligns with your goals, values, and passions. The Navigate program helps you put all this into practice and design a career that feels authentic and sustainable.

“I don’t want you to unnecessarily worry about things that haven’t happened yet. On the other hand, it’s not easy to turn off your brain and if your whole career is built on certain kinds of research that may not be funded anymore or may not have the value that it had eight years or ten years ago, that is something to be concerned about.”

“What I want to leave you with in terms of what is happening in academia in 2025 is that many things will change. Many of them will be scary and unfair and oppressive. But you get to decide what your relationship to academia in 2025 is going to be. You get to decide what you want from your life and what you want from your career and how you can go about making that happen for yourself.”

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

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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!
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!
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