I was a Twitter user for a decade. Like many people, I left a few months after Elon Musk bought it since it no longer seemed to connect me to the community I had formed there. I do miss it, but in hindsight, it was probably a good thing. One thing that annoyed me was the way academics seem to ‘pile-on’ each other for seemingly mediocre tweets.
Twitter as disciplining force
There are a bunch of things you can never say on academic Twitter because they show you are a dickhead. But there are also a bunch of things that you might say on academic Twitter that would result in a pile-on because you are well-balanced and thoughtful person. One of these is anything to do with how you maintain your own personal wellbeing. Once I witnessed a pile-on when an academic posted about how important sleep was to her. She reckoned if she got eight hours sleep, she could manage the workload better during the day, could think and write clearly, and was a better person than when she didn’t get enough sleep. Basically, she was sharing something she had learned about herself in the hope others might find it useful.
Boy, was she in for a surprise when she checked her feed the next day (hopefully the good night’s sleep helped moderate her emotional response). What could be offensive about posting you get enough sleep? Well, basically the pile-on was people saying what a privileged position she was in to get enough sleep, how they had such large workloads they had to work in to the night to cope, or they had children who didn’t sleep, or they had sleep disorders, and that enough sleep was just an example of how her privilege blinded her to the lives of others.
I witnessed this kind of encounter over, and over again. If anyone in academia had successfully managed to moderate or (even worse) overcome some of the difficult parts of the job, they better not tell anyone about it. Once I wrote about how I limited my service to a set number of things each year — two reviews for every article I submitted, one international trip a year, a certain number of talks and conference committees and service roles in the university or wider national and international scene I would take up. As it got retweeted, people started on comment on how they did way more than me, and frankly, what was my problem? I didn’t get a pile-on, but I started to worry that maybe I would. And even perhaps that trying to set some limits to the voluntary parts of my job was going to get me cancelled.
The social norm seemed to be to reward people for complaining about this all-encompassing job, but not celebrate or learn from anyone who found ways to reduce or manage the pressure. Obviously, we need system change not just individual change. But also, that doesn’t mean individual change is bad. On the one hand, these experiences gave me insights into other people’s lives (and frankly, a bit of horrified gasping at the work culture of the mainly US twitterati). But on the other hand, the pile-on whenever someone seems to do something well just perpetuates the feeling that everything is actually impossible to manage and it is not only pointless, but sort of bad to even try. Clearly, I’m not immune either — Cal Newport’s Deep Work annoyed me enough to merit a whole blog post on why it should be called Deep Work for Men. So what should we do? Build some self-awareness, and also the ability to let differences go.
Why academics should meditate
“It’s my opinion that some of this pile-on mentality comes from getting really caught up in frenetic pace of teaching, research, service and work without time for true rest.”
Kelly Dombroski
Claiming academics should meditate is a little bit tongue-in-cheek and inappropriate, but I am also quite serious. Although I’m no longer on Twitter, I have since noticed there is a more subtle version of the pile-on culture in the workplace when people begin to manage and organise their work in ways that a) promote their own wellbeing and that of the collective and b) enable them to do well in some aspects of the job such as teaching or research and writing. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this takes the form of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ — cutting down people who put their head up above the rest for whatever reason. It’s my opinion that some of this pile-on mentality comes from getting really caught up in frenetic pace of teaching, research, service and work without time for true rest.
Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely have to work together to change the structures that create this frenetic pace. But we also have to create space for ourselves as individuals to do that — and we have to give each other permission to take that space when its needed. One of the ways we can create space for ourselves is to develop a spiritual practice of rest. I’ve written about this before in terms of taking time off but I’d also like to add a meditation type practice into the mix.
We’ve all heard it: there are a lot of things in the world we cannot control, but we can work on our own responses. I don’t know if we can truly control our responses, but for me, using meditation (or the version of centering prayer I’ve also practiced) helps me exercise the muscle of letting some of my uncontrolled responses go. This actually can help us build collective responses to systemic issues because I/we are not reacting too quickly or externalising our stress on to others — and therefore we reduce the relational damage we might do in moments of stress.
“We absolutely have to work together to change the structures that create this frenetic pace. But we also have to create space for ourselves as individuals to do that — and we have to give each other permission to take that space when its needed.”
Kelly Dombroski
Externalising stress
I’m not a psychologist or any kind of expert, but I have noticed over my time in academia (10+ years now) that stress seems to flow through places and relationships. I notice the tendency in myself: when I get a stressful email or request or announcement, I want to respond angrily, or get up out of my chair and talk to someone immediately — or call or text someone. Thus the stress proliferates through my relationships. Sometimes, it turns out I got the wrong end of the stick and I spread stress around for no real reason. Usually, that happens when I haven’t had enough rest or time away from work. But I’ve also noticed if I keep up with one or two of my meditation practices (mainly long walks, yoga, and seated centering prayer or breath meditation), my responses are less reactive and more considered. This means I’m less likely to respond terribly to a stressful situation.
I’ve noticed it also with students in my previous role as postgraduate coordinator. Sometimes, the stress of a PhD pushes people to their fight or flight response. In many ways, both responses externalise stress. The fight response externalises stress: pushing back against feedback with fear and worry and blame, talking about supervisors to other students or staff, sometimes even taking it out on examiners or external advisors. But the flight response also externalises the stress: supervisors and people who care about the student might not know where they are or what is going on for weeks at a time, worrying about their wellbeing and even safety.
There are plenty more examples, and this is not to blame people at all but to make the point that all of us could do with slowing down, taking a breath, and perhaps, even meditating. Not because of wellness culture that individualises people’s collective trauma into individual methods for coping. But because without taking care of our reactiveness, we can’t maintain the good relationships required for collective action.
So what then?
So let’s support each other and celebrate when people do something to take care of themselves. It’s fantastic if someone is getting enough sleep! That’s true no matter how many times my toddler woke me last night. Sleep is an important human right! It’s fantastic if academics can take the time to meditate, even if I haven’t quite managed it recently. We all need to breathe! It’s fantastic someone took a long run in the weekend, or regularly practices yoga, or took a vacation with no email even if we can’t afford these things right now. Because in the end, it benefits all of us if our colleagues take responsibility for their own self-care.
Now, I know those of you who have read my previous posts on doing deep work collectively will know I’m not trying to say people should use self-care as an excuse to get out of important collective work. But what I’m saying is that we need to take care of each other by supporting the health and wellbeing attempts of our colleagues — including those we encounter only through social media. I’m going to give it a go.
Throwntogetherness 
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