Culmination of Part One: The First Draft of the Dream Book (1 of 2)

The Dream Book feels a little "Oprah Scrapbooky," but here is the first draft (you will need to click and follow the link), in which I collate and assemble what I have produced so far in this project, working through Susan Robison's Peak Performing Professor.  I need to work through the subpages in each Vision section yet (as of May 27, as I type this.)

Here is what Robison has to say about Dream Books:

Now you need a way to manage all of your goals so let?s put together your Dream Book. (About 1/6 of participants in my audiences prefer a Dream Wall in which they park all of their goals. All of the following suggestions can be translated from books and walls into electronic forms.) You need the following equipment: 8 ½ x 11 three ring notebook; several sheets each of 6-8 colors of 8 ½ x 11 copy paper and several pages of plain white paper; (optional) notebook dividers; (optional) plastic sleeves for overhead transparencies. Or poster board for your wall, enough to hold many sticky notes. Follow these steps: Three hole punch the white and colored paper and put the white paper into the front of the binder in this order:Page 1 - Purpose statement in large font - maybe in script Page 2 - Mission statement Page 3 - Table of Contents. Use the 6-8 Vision statements as chapter headings. You can write or type these. Here is the beginning of Sasha?s table of contents: Chapter 1 - Home: My home is clean, organized and aesthetically pleasing and supports me, my spirit, and my work. Chapter 2 - Hobbies: I learn, practice, and perform music with my flute in order to stay relaxed and refreshed for my work. Chapter 3 - Scholarly work: I develop creative ideas for research and submit three articles for peer reviewed journals a year, four conference presentations/poster sessions a year with my students, and author, edit, or co-author one book every five years. Add the colored paper.Following your table of contents insert the hole punched colored pages and organize them in the order of the chapter titles or Vision statements. Pages can be oriented portrait with the stickies facing you as you flip open a page, or lined up sideways into landscape so you can read them if you turn the notebook sideways. You can use section dividers or just punch holes in the colored sheets. For example if you use purple for your Vision statement, ?I stay in contact with my family and friends sharing joy, supporting each other, and connected around mutual activities? put several purple pages into the book and have separate pages for goals related to families, friends and your activities with them. Your Home section will be on different colored paper with a section for each room or a section for Maintenance, one for Redecorating, etc. There may be some logical way to group the goals perhaps by subcategories. For example, in the Friends and Family section, there might be a page of goals related to each family unit or perhaps to each person. You might have a separate page for each friend. Sasha used pink pages for the ?teaching? category represented by her vision statement: ?My classes are well-prepared, interesting, creative, and collegial in their atmosphere.? On these pages she parked all of her goals related to teaching. She had a page for goals for developing interesting material, one for creating learning activities, and another for promoting a collegial class atmosphere through warm-up and team building activities.

Establishing the Pyramid of Power: The Vision Statement (Part Two) and Goals

So, I am working from the last post toward four statements of formal Vision and Goals.

Professional Vision:
To be a member of a profession that is open to alternative voices in writing, research, teaching, and community service, a profession made that way (in part) by virtue of my work in writing, research, teaching, and service.

Goals:  

Research 

• To submit one scholarly work that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries per year.  In 2016, I would like that project to be a piece on medicine and games with ME.
• To complete the monograph project engaged with JWF with this Vision in mind.
• To edit one scholarly collection every three years (a special issue, a forum,  an anthology) that integrates new genres and new voices.  To complete such projects begun with LH, BB, and LW.
• To seek a sabbatical in 2017-2018 or 2018-2019 to allow me to pursue this work in a new way. 

Teaching

• To always teach in a way that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries.

Service

• To only accept administrative responsibilities in my university and discipline that advance alternative voices.  

Writing in the Profession

• To submit a minimum of four professional thinkpieces (for example, for Inside Higher Ed, for the Chronicle, for "middle state" online journals) a year, based in part on my experiences in research, teaching and service and my commitment to new voices.
• To write no less that four times a week for my blogs (that will help establish my own voice in the profession).

Overall Goal in my Profession 

• To recognize the powerful alchemy of this kind of intellectual intersection.  To recognize that connecting with other voices, other genres, other methodologies and perspectives creates opportunities.  To seize those opportunities as part of my professional vision, as a gift of serendipity and a blessing of being a tenured academic in the 21st century.

Community Vision:
To be a member of a community that is open to alternative voices in art and social justice, a community made that way (in part) by virtue of my work in art and social justice.

Goals:  

• To volunteer for three years of every six years with a local non-profit agency that advances issues in art and social justice.
• To not-volunteer for three years of every six, so that I can approach the work freshly and with enthusiasm. 
• To see this experience as a source of reflection for writing.

Creative Vision:
To be part of a world where by trusting others with the real expression of myself in writing, I create opportunities for them to recognize themselves and to consider their own self-expression.

Goals:  

• To write no less than five thoughtful, meditative Facebook posts a week.
• To submit an opinion piece once monthly for the Budgeteer.
• To submit a Saturday Essay four to six times a year for the website Perfect Duluth Day.
• To submit a work of creative nonfiction to a literary outlet once a year (e.g. Normal School, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre)
• To ensure, always, that the story I tell is mine, no one else's -- I have no right to tell someone else's story.  Rather, in telling my story, I want to inspire others to tell theirs.

Personal Vision:

To cultivate a personality (intellectually and emotionally intelligent, trustworthy, skilled in conversation, versed in a number of topics) capable of sharing the experience of theater, film, music and life with trusted friends and loved ones.

Goals:

• To continue regular journaling as a means of reflection on my life.
• To continue reading outside my field as a means of enhancing my intellectual versatility.
• To continue interacting with friends and loved ones in a way that enhances my skills in conversation, my emotional intelligence, and my ability to process life in a trustworthy way.
• To recognize relationship dynamics that do not enhance my skills in conversation, my emotional intelligence, and my ability to process life in a trustworthy way and to work to transform those dynamics.
• To develop the bravery or strength necessary to take the risks necessary to develop relationships unlike any I have had before.  

Establishing the Pyramid of Power: The Vision Statement (Part One: Three Phone Calls)

The Next Chapter of the Peak Performing Professor asks me to think about my vision statement.  

Purpose, Mission, Vision -- OMG, these are the tools that, in admin speak, have driven some of the worst workshops and strategic planning exercises I can imagine.  But trust, right?  Trust the process.  I will give this a try.  It will take me two posts -- this first one is preliminary.

What does Susan Robison mean by "vision"?

In an interview with Kim Pawlak, Robison talks about vision this way:

Vision Statement. Your vision statement is the outcome of your mission. Here’s a device to get at your vision, she said: “The phone rings five years from now. You’ve been waiting a long time for this very special call. Who is it and what do you want them to ask you? Is it the Nobel Committee asking you to come to Stockholm to accept your award? Is it yet another publisher chasing you down, offering you millions of dollars to write a book? What kind of call is it that you have hoped for and worked for your whole life and it’s finally coming together?”

(Ring Ring Ring)

Hello?

Professor Beard, we are preparing a conference on rethinking graduate education in the 21st century.  We think that you have innovated in your research, your advising and teaching, and in your program administration and advocacy in ways that could not only model other undergraduate and terminal MA programs, but reshape doctoral education.  Would you be willing to address our organization this year?

I would love it.

(Ring Ring Ring)

Hello?

It's Friday night, David.  The DSSO is playing tonight, and your friends Gwen and Adam are performing, right?  I'd love to get dinner in Canal Park, we can catch up on the day, then walk to the DECC for the performance.  Afterward, we can get some drinks and talk about the music, which, if it moves us, will open the door to talking about the other things that have moved us in the week.

(From here, we play "choose your own adventure")

A.  I'd love to.  Where can I meet you?  
B.  I'd love to.  Let's meet after work at home, we can decide where we eat then.  I need a shower, anyway.
C.  I'd love to.  Let me get a babysitter for our children.

I understand that I cannot control whether someone else loves me as a partner, nor can I control whether or not children are part of my life.  
So while B and C are part of my heart, I focus on what I can control:  that I can be the kind of personality, intellectually and emotionally adept, with whom a diversity of others will want to share the experience of music and art and the experience of their lives.

(No Ringing)

Someone, somewhere, is reading something I wrote.  

As they read it, they lean in toward their companion and say:
1.  Honey, what do you think about this passage I am about to read to you?
2.  Honey, in this essay, I have found what I needed for my next project.
3.  Honey, this essay reminds me of something.  May I tell you about it?
4.  Honey, this essay is horseshit.  I want to tell you about it?
5.  Sass that hoopy David Beard?  There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

I can't beat that last one.  More on this tomorrow -- converting these phone call stories to a vision.

Establishing the Pyramid of Power: The Mission

Chapter Four asks me to talk about my mission(s).

In her interview with Kim Pawlak, Robison tells us that:

Mission Statement. Your mission statement is more practical, and changes every three to five years for adults, and sooner for students. Your mission statement answers the question, “If I am here for this purpose, what shall I do about it? “To write your mission statement, you will need to know what your strengths are (three verbs), what your values are, and to whom you typically offer yourself to,” she said. “As a result, your mission statement will follow this formula: ‘My mission is to (verb, verb, verb), that are my strengths, for, to, or with (people, people, people), who want (value, value, value – your four to eight values). When you put your mission statement together, it’s really helpful to use information from the outside world, such as your students.”

Ghaaa.  I hate hate hate writing to fill in formulae.  But this process is about surrendering to something else, right -- to argue, to think critically about the book and what the book asks me to do, but to submit to the experience.

So here is the formula again:

My mission is to (verb, verb, verb),  -- and notably, the verbs here should be my strengths.

for, to, or with (people, people, people), 

who want (value, value, value). 

Robison suggests, or at least models, personal and professional missions, more than one mission yielding the same purpose.  I accept this the same way that astronauts head into low orbit with more than one mission on a flight.

...

Teaching and Service Mission
My mission is to develop rhetorical abilities in students (inside and outside the classroom) who want to express themselves as a means of bringing about change in their communities and in themselves.

Writing and Research Mission
My mission is to exercise my own rhetorical abilities for readers (inside and outside my discipline) in a way which uses my expression of myself and my ideas to model and to create an opening for their expression of themselves and their ideas.

Personal Mission
My mission is to cultivate relationships with friends, family, partner and possibly, someday, children that form a safe space for us to speak freely to both support and challenge each other to grow.

Self-Assessment Interlude: the R2 Self Assessment

In The Peak Performing Professor, Robison recommends the R2 Strengths Assessment.  It cost quite a bit more than I would normally spend, but I'm curious about where this is going.  (Here's hoping that the exchange rate between British Pounds and Dollars is not terrible.)

The R2 works in quadrants.  It promises, in the right hand, to tell me what are my "strengths" as opposed to my "learned behaviors."  (My learned behaviors still rock, but they require effort, concentration, to manifest, whereas my strengths are more organically part of my way of being in the world.)

What can I learn about these strengths, and how do I work within the horizons that they make possible for me?

Well...

This is how the R2 assessment both describes me and advises me to take the best advantage of these strengths.  It feels right to me.

My highest family of strengths is "Being" -- defined in the image below.

Again, this feels right to me.

Where am I weak?

This is my weakest family of strengths, "Motivating" --

Again, this seems consistent with my sense of myself.

And what are my weaknesses?

The report tries to encourage us to minimize the effect of our weaknesses.  While one could develop learned behaviors, I suppose, to overcome a weakness, it may be better to minimize the effect of weaknesses.

The report is long and complicated, and I'll be thinking about it for a while.  Robison suggests that I draw upon it to develop my "mission statement."  That work begins tomorrow.

Establishing the Pyramid of Power: The Purpose

The end of Chapter Two of Susan Robison's Peak Performing Professor establishes the Pyramid of Power.  I won't summarize it here (because I want to respect Robison's intellectual property), but I will point to places where Robison does that work, or her reviewers do that work.

First, the four parts of the pyramid:

Robison defines the parts of the pyramid in an interview with Kim Pawlak:

Purpose Statement. Your purpose statement is your philosophical belief. This doesn’t change much across your whole lifetime. “You may be able to come up with your purpose statement in minutes, or it may take you over a year,” she said. “The amount of time it takes is no reflection on your intelligence, your physical attractiveness, or your mental health. It is a phenomena all by itself. So if you’re struggling with your purpose statement, it’s something that’s going to be an ongoing take-home assignment for you. One woman I worked with spent half of her time teaching at a university and the other half of her time serving as a liaison between a diversity center on campus and the urban community in which she lived. We came up with a purpose statement for her that said: ‘I am a bridge connecting ideas and people for the greater good.'”
Mission Statement. Your mission statement is more practical, and changes every three to five years for adults, and sooner for students. Your mission statement answers the question, “If I am here for this purpose, what shall I do about it? “To write your mission statement, you will need to know what your strengths are (three verbs), what your values are, and to whom you typically offer yourself to,” she said. “As a result, your mission statement will follow this formula: ‘My mission is to (verb, verb, verb), that are my strengths, for, to, or with (people, people, people), who want (value, value, value – your four to eight values). When you put your mission statement together, it’s really helpful to use information from the outside world, such as your students.”
Vision Statement. Your vision statement is the outcome of your mission. Here’s a device to get at your vision, she said: “The phone rings five years from now. You’ve been waiting a long time for this very special call. Who is it and what do you want them to ask you? Is it the Nobel Committee asking you to come to Stockholm to accept your award? Is it yet another publisher chasing you down, offering you millions of dollars to write a book? What kind of call is it that you have hoped for and worked for your whole life and it’s finally coming together?”
Goals:  What things shall I do to make my vision come alive because I’m living my mission because I know what my purpose is? These things are your goals, which can be broken down into tasks. “Once your Pyramid of Power is in place, it motivates and energizes everything you do,” she said.

The goal of Chapter Three is to force reflection on purpose (summarized here):

Each of us needs to reflect upon and construct a 1 or 2 sentence explanation that answers the question: why am I here on this earth? What am I here to do? This may seem hard. We all have so many talents and passions, but if we really boil it all down, what essentially is our purpose? 

The purpose statement operates at a very high level of generality.  An example given here is "“I am a bridge connecting ideas and people for the greater good.”"

Note that phrased with that level of generality, the purpose statement applies to professional, family and community life.

So what is my purpose?

In speech, in writing, and in listening, I cultivate the free expression of ideas and the free expression of self in myself and in others.

2.2 (Part Two) Lifetime Achievement Award

Exercise 2.2 in The Peak Performing Professor asks me to talk about a lifetime achievement award.  If I got one, what would it be for?

Yesterday was such an exercise in dodging around real feelings by burying my thoughts in academic language. Today, I will simple and straight to the point, with the hope of coming back to this in an essay I might publish one day.

At my lifetime achievement award, or my funeral, since the way I tell this, there is a strangely eulogistic tone to it:

I want a room full of people assembled, and each of them should be able to say this thing: 

"I wanted to say something, I wanted to become something, and David played a part in making that possible." 

And I want to look down from the emptiness of death and say:  "And I was made better because you could say what you wanted to say, because you could become what you wanted to become."

Self-Assessment Interlude: The VIA Character Inventory

In The Peak Performing Professor, Robison suggests a number of strengths inventories.  I took the VIA Character Inventory.

Here are my results.  Remember, this is a self-assessment;  I answer based on my self-image.  I imagine others viewing me, my life, my actions, might see things differently.

About VIA:  Established as non-profit organization in 2001, the VIA Institute on Character is a global leader in the science and practice of character. We are proud to offer the VIA Survey, the only free, online, scientifically validated survey of character strengths. (VIA stands for Values in Action.)

Research shows that, within the US, there are trends to answers in VIA:  "Researchers found that, within the United States, the most commonly endorsed strengths are kindness, fairness, honesty, gratitude and judgment" (Wikipedia).

In order of importance as registered by VIA, my character strengths are:

1. Fairness
Treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance.
2. Kindness
Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them.
3. Judgment
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one's mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly.
4. Gratitude
Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.
5. Love of learning
Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.
6. Humor
Liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes.
7. Bravery
Not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what’s right even if there’s opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it.
8. Prudence
Being careful about one's choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted.
9. Creativity
Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it.
10. Forgiveness

Forgiving those who have done wrong; accepting others’ shortcomings; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful.

11. Honesty
Speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one's feelings and actions.
12. Curiosity
Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering.
13. Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.
14. Leadership
Encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same time maintain good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen.
15. Perspective
Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself/others.
16. Zest
Approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated.
17. Social intelligence
Being aware of the motives/feelings of others and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick.
18. Hope
Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.
19. Perseverance
Finishing what one starts; persevering in a course of action in spite of obstacles; “getting it

out the door”; taking pleasure in completing tasks.

20. Love
Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people.
21. Teamwork
Working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one's share.
22. Humility
Letting one's accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding oneself as more special than one is.
23. Self-Regulation
Regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one's appetites and emotions.
24. Spirituality
Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort. 

Exercise 2.2: What do “doing good” and "living well" mean to me?

\Exercise 2.2. is a four-part exercise, and I will answer two parts of the exercise here as a single essay.  I will answer the third part tomorrow.

1.  What does “doing good” mean to me?

&

2.  What does “living well” mean to me?

I am a vast proponent of virtue ethics -- the system of ethics derived from Aristotelian ethics by Alasdair Macintyre.  From that perspective, the answer to this question set can be answered as a single question, because if I live well, I will do good.  I will do good if I live by my values, and I will live well if, in living by my values, the world becomes a better place.

In Macintyre's formulation, vastly oversimplified, if I live by arête (excellence or virtue), I will achieve eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing). 

Doing Good (Living the Virtues)
Most of my decisions are about manifesting myself as a person of virtue.  I often tell people that my decisions are about the ethical self-constitution of myself as a subject (Foucault lingo).  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines virtue as:

arête (excellence or virtue)  a character trait—that is, a disposition... that “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker.

Virtue is not simple -- this is not George Washington and the Cherry Tree, being unable to tell a lie.

The disposition... is concerned with... emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. 

Damn if I am not a person with a certain complex mindset.  

Anyway, the kid who cannot tell a lie is different from someone who holds honesty as a virtue in the following way:

An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truth—but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on.

Macintyre's work begins with honesty as a paradigmatic example of a virtue.  While I did not pick Macintyre for this reason, I will admit:  recently, someone I loved claimed that I had an issue with honesty, a willingness to avoid being honest to avoid conflict.  Because I loved that person, I have reflected on their insight. 

Most of my decisions, in some ways or another, are about demonstrating what kind of person I am, the values and virtues that constitute me.  We have covered some of those -- I am a person who values the ability to self-express in myself and in others, creating a world where we are all richer because no voice is silenced.  I am a person who values critical questioning of institutions that would seem to silence voices through policy or through indirect institutional practice.  I value people feeling comfortable being who they are.  That is who I am, those are the ways tha t I live Macintyrean virtues (honesty and justice are the ones that stick out here).  That is the way that I hold that complex mindset with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities driven by my virtues.

Living Well (Living the World in which the Virtues are Practiced)

I enact the courage (one of the three Macintyrean virtues) to speak my values and to apply good, old fashioned work to make change happen.  That feels like a start.  If I live this way, I am both doing good and creating a world I want to live in, a world where I can be challenged and enriched.  I think this is where Macintyrean courage comes in.

As later works by Macintyre argue, we build social structures that enable our flourishing.

Collectively promoting the social structures we need in order to flourish as individuals enables us to escape from false dichotomies between self-interest and the common interest and between selfishness and altruism. In supporting the networks that are necessary if we are to flourish, I am promoting both my interest and everyone else's, and I am looking out for the common good as well as my own individual good. 

If I live in a way in which I know I am honest, but which does not cultivate a culture of honesty, I am not living my virtue and will not achieve happiness.  But if I live in a way that I am honest, that cultivates a world (or a town or a university) of honesty, I will live a happier life -- and so will others.  I am promoting both my interest and everyone else's, and I am looking out for the common good as well as my own individual good. 

...

I look back at this and think:  this is just a long way of saying, I will do good if I live by my values, and I will live well if, in living by my values, the world becomes a better place.

Exercise 1.2.b asks me to talk about a moment when I was going through the motions, dead to my work...

Exercise 1.2.b asks me to talk about a moment when I was going through the motions, dead to my work...

I think this moment hit me hard about six or seven years into my teaching career.  Students were dropping my class in the first week because I handed out a 27 page syllabus, with complete reading schedule and complete assignment sheets for the semester.

It was, at its core, an attempt to circumvent students complaints about my classes.  Every time they complained that something wasn't clear, I produced a document clarifying it.

The end result was threefold.

• Students were frightened and overwhelmed by what I was demanding in my classes.  
• I was losing enthusiasm for what was happening in my classes.  I had fallen under the sway of rubrics, but was finding that rubrics only told students what I wanted from them.  As a result, students gave me what I wanted before I met them.  There was no openness to what they brought to the class.
• So teaching became a process of learning more and more how to tell students what to do.

That third bit affronts me on so many levels, and it happened slowly, subtly.  I didn't really notice at the time.

...

When I write, only very, very rarely does someone hand me a rubric.  Most of my writing is an exercise in "applied psychology," in recognizing that there is another person (a reader), and that the reader has needs and expectations that shape what I can offer them.

In hyperdetailed assignment sheets, I robbed students of the possibility of being writers, instead turning them into imitators and direction followers.  And slowly, I stopped caring about the results of these directions.

That was several years ago.  I'm better now, I promise, though many, many students wish I gave out rubrics.  The best ones, though -- the best ones seize the opportunity to surprise, delight, impress me and themselves.

Interlude 1.1 Love in Light of My Great Life -- "Loving another for his own sake is integral to the exercise of self-love."

So one of the advantages of doing this reflective work publicly is that you get advice.  In this case, you get advice from a colleague about the nature of friendships.  This is a passage from a book by Simon May, Love: A History."

May's book looks to Aristotle to challenge some of the contemporary visions of love:  that love is "unconditional, spontaneous, selfless, affirming of the whole person, and, in its very nature, constant."  Love, in May's understanding of Aristotle, is no such thing.

I have lots of thoughts about this essay, but I want to push one here:  that Loving another for his own sake is integral to the exercise of self-love.  I have believed this for all of my adult life -- that the love of another person can be a form of my own flourishing.

 

The essay claims that "Everything we do, including in loving others, should be our own flourishing. Not in the sense that we look for a return from every good thing we do for another person. Rather in the sense that we flourish precisely by loving her for whom she is 'in herself'... Her flourishing is also my own flourishing. And so in caring for her life I care for mine."

I have lived long enough to know how impossible it is to live quite this way... That there are people who will need or want our care in ways that can be counter to our flourishing. That some people will want to care for others in a way that can be counter to their flourishing and our own.  The most obvious forms here are co-dependency, and May has particularly sharp things to say about avoiding co-dependency, in favor of self-dependency.

Love "flourishes only between two self-dependent individuals."   I love the fact that May avoids the use of "independent," which resonates with a particular myth about how people work.  May avoids the myth.  We need to be self-dependent (as opposed to co-dependent, needy, unable to stand on our own) as we enter into loving relationships.  And at the same time, those loving relationships are the basis of our individuality.  "Individuality is fundamentally relational."

May says:  "our idea of who we are is formed through intimate, sustained relations with other, based on a sense of deep affinity which has stood the test of time."

"Individuality is fundamentally relational."

This idea is worth more thought, and I will offer it...  Later.

The Peak Performing Professor reflections will be back tomorrow, but in the meantime, if you have something I should read, please let me know.

Exercise 1.2.a asks me to talk about a Peak Performance...

Exercise 1.2.a asks me to talk about a Peak Performance

A colleague of mine has suggested that the athletic metaphor at the core of this exercise is something I need to pay more attention to -- is athletics the right metaphor for this kind of work?  I will pick that critical question up later.

The best experience of a peak performance in my professional life was an event of about three years ago.  I had written a grant to plan an event to celebrate diversity in writing.  

• The keynote speaker was Terrance “Spider-Baby” Griep, a professional writer and a professional wrestler.  I found Terrance’s advice on writing and on establishing himself as a kind of border-crosser, a transgressor of norms, in both his professions to have been very helpful, and my interactions with Terrance framed my eventual publications on professional wrestling with John Heppen.  In this way, I cultivated my own work while I created an opportunity to celebrate Terrance's.

The event included a celebration of all of the writing of my friends and colleagues, and included a small presentation by and honorarium for local writer-editors I value:

• to the editors of Proof 
• and to the editors of Minerva.

These two local publications celebrate local creativity (and in Minerva’s case, feminism).  In this way, my work in this event celebrated a diversity of voices.

And, in a small way, it integrated my friends.  I mean this in my friends who were present among my UMD colleagues, and in Terrance, who would become a friend as well as the object of research, and in the presence of my friend E. and her two daughters.  I was sweet on E. at the time, though I probably wasn’t ready for a relationship (having been recently separated from my wife).  But she was present, and her daughters, usually quite shy around men, were very comfortable with Terrance -- something that made me very proud.  I bring the best people together.

I would later write a grant to bring several artist friends, including E., into a project on sustainability. music and art.  That grant has not yet been funded, but I will keep trying.  I want to bring those friends together.

That night, when it was all over, I was overwhelmed.  I was filled with what was as close to a runner' high as I could imagine.  Everything was clicking, and everything was clicking as I looked forward.

I created the space for a diverse array of people to tell their story and for their stories to be celebrated.  And I was at least setting the groundwork for my own storytelling, my own writing, in the future.  In creating a space to celebrate my friends the linguists, the journalists, the poets, the wrestler, the feminists, the musician, I was setting the groundwork for my own self-expression, because as we know from earlier posts, love of another is one of the foundational components of self-love.

Exercise 2.1: I entered the career of college teaching and research because…. and I now want to stay in the career of college teaching because…

Exercise 2.1:

I entered the career of college teaching and research because….

I was 22.  I wasn't entirely sure why I went to graduate school except:

1.  I was thoroughly disappointed by my taste of high school teaching.  I loved the students, but the other teachers were disconnected from the material, the students, or both.
2.  I was told by more than one faculty member in English at my undergraduate institution that the average GPA in the content area of English was 2.5 -- that I was "better" than an Education major.  I hated being told something like that, but I was (admittedly) frustrated by my Education classes.  This reaffirmed my desire for "something more."
3.  So, I went to graduate school, for the kind of colleagues (smart, engaged) I wanted in a teaching career.

I had no idea research was part of the gig in a professor, so that was not part of my choice.  I just knew I wanted to teach with the best possible colleagues.

I wasn't sure I liked research until, like, my second academic job. I intentionally avoided research-intensive jobs when I first went onto the market.  It wasn't until my second academic job that I realized that (a) being a good researcher makes me a better teacher and (b) I found writing rewarding.  "Research" (as a solitary library activity done to solve problems that only mattered to rarifed academics) wasn't all that thrilling to me, but writing -- the construction of arguments of use for readers -- that was rewarding.

I now want to stay in the career of college teaching because…

This career has the highest level of autonomy and security of any I can imagine short of independent wealth.  Every day, a significant portion of my work is self-directed.  (I am reading this book because I want that self-direction to be more effectively deployed.)

And I can use that autonomy to do good work for my students, for my community, and myself, through teaching, writing, and community work. 

 

Critical Discussion: Ego Depletion and the Peak Performing Professor

Critical Discussion:  Ego Depletion and the Peak Performing Professor

The Peak Performing Professor depends in part on research on “ego depletion,” a psychological construct that has recently been subject to intense criticism.  (See: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html)

So when Robison talks about “people [being unable to] push themselves to act disciplined even if they value such actions… less ability to match our actions to our true values and therefore to poorer performance on our jobs” (3), she is grounding her claims in research that has been called into question. 

That said, I am more than willing to say that, ego depletion as a psychological construct aside, when I am exhausted, I make choices that do not always align to my true values.  That seems fair and real and accurate to my experience.  

So I am trying to say:  the point remains valid, even if the grounding for the point must shift from the psychological literature to my own assent to my own experience.

Exercise: Defining The Great Life (II)

In the first exercise in the workbook, I am asked to define:

1. Great work (doing "high impact work in a timely fashion")
2. How close I am to achieving great work (and what might complicate achieving great work)
3. Great life (achieving a moderate level of satisfaction in life in the short and long term)
4. How close I am to achieving great life (and what might complicate achieving great life)
5. What are my biggest concerns as I think about achieving these things?

3.  Great life (achieving a moderate level of satisfaction in life in the short and long term)

This is the question I am asking as I read this book, the reason I am reading this book, in tandem with many other forms of self-reflective work.  After a series of professional and life changes and challenges, I think I can say this:

• I will achieve a great life if I cultivate relationships with people who will always encourage me to become better than I am -- to see the limitations in myself that I cannot see, to share with me the stories that show me ways of experiencing life that are not part of my experience, who cultivate in me new practices of self-exploration and new experiences in the world, and who push me to become more than I am now, in a context that feels safe.
• I will achieve a great life if I do the same for others whom I love (from the love one feels for family through the love one feels for friends through the love one feels for a partner and children).
• I will achieve a great life if I take the insights from these relationships (as well as from the art, literature, media, and travel that I love) and from my own practices of self-reflection, and work to make myself and my community (professional, civic and family communities) better.

4.  How close I am to achieving great life (and what might complicate achieving great life)

I am closer to the wide array of friendships and family relationships like this than many people I know.  There are forms of these relationships (romantic, parental) that I have yet to make part of my life in this way.  

That said, working with the relationships I have -- I think I cultivate myself and others in the way I describe here, and I cultivate positive change in my communities in this way.  So close, but with growth ahead.

5.  What are my biggest concerns as I think about achieving these things?

My biggest concerns are always about what I don't see and what I don't understand, what I don't know.  What are the lacunae in my vision that keep me from moving forward?

Initial Diagnostics: Mathematizing My Satisfaction

So, before I complete the narrative self-assessment (because the bits about my personal happiness will be complicated), let me share the quantitative self-assessment.

The book asks me to rate my productivity from 1-6.

This is a tough one.  I'm way more productive than average in my college and profession, but I'm not entirely sure that's for healthy reasons.  But it doesn't ask whether I am sublimating other issues by being a successful researcher, writer, and administrator.  I will call it "5."

Then, the book asks me to rate my professional satisfaction from 1-6.

Until recently, I would have thought "6."  And I have weathered a lot, professionally -- but I wouldn't be doing this book if things were entirely satisfactory, right?  This year forced some rethinking.  "4."

Then, the book asks me to rate my personal satisfaction from 1-6.

Again, I wouldn't be doing this book if things were entirely satisfactory, right?  "4."

Then, the book asks me to rate my:

• Power Subscale, connecting “motivation” to “meaning and purpose”
• Align Subscale, connecting “activities, projects and tasks with power and purpose”
• Connect Subscale, about connections for “mutual support and benefit"
• Energize Subscale, about “self-care and wellness”

My quantitative ratings, based on a battery of thirty questions:

209 overall, average score 7 — “I can benefit from this book.”  Whew.  I guess ordering it from ILL was worthwhile.

• Power Subscale: 36 of 50  (72%)
• Align Subscale: 28 of 50 (56%)  -- This is why I am using this book.
• Connect Subscale: 34 of 40 (85%) -- This is why I should write a book about networking in academic communities.
• Energize Subscale: 24 of 30  (80%) -- Six months ago, this number would have been so much lower.

So my need for this book is affirmed by the author (wink) -- or, the problems I intuit in my life and career are converted into numbers.  

This section of Chapter Two isn't to my taste, but it might be to yours.

Exercise: Defining The Great Work (I)

Exercise:  Defining The Great Work

In the first exercise in the workbook, I am asked to define:

1. Great work (doing "high impact work in a timely fashion")
2. How close I am to achieving great work (and what might complicate achieving great work)
3. Great life (achieving a moderate level of satisfaction in life in the short and long term)
4. How close I am to achieving great life (and what might complicate achieving great life)
5. What are my biggest concerns as I think about achieving these things?

1.  Great work

I like doing work that creates space for new voices to find full expression within fundamentally closed or restrictive contexts.  

• As an undergraduate teacher of writing, I like working with students to develop their own voice, as writers and (through teaching practical writing classes, like grant writing) to teach the skills that give them the economic security that will enable them to use those voices.   
• As a graduate instructor, I try to create space within the academic community for students to write theses and to have co-curricular experiences that allow them to express the full range of their interests. 
• As a McNair advisor, I value cracking open the life of the university for the new voices of first generation and under-represented students.
• As a grant reviewer, I like advocating for nontraditional artists and outstate (non-metro) artists, ensuring a wide array of voices in the arts.
• I love attending conferences outside the norm, to hear voices outside the norm.  DOCAM, Widening the Circle Conference on Displaced Indigenous Communities, Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric, and so on.
• As a reader of scholarly work, I have always valued the alternative voices -- the independent publishers (like Parlor Press), the independent journals (JAC, Pre/Text), the online journals (Harlot, etc.).  
• As an editor, I value integrating new voices -- graduate students, junior faculty -- into my projects.
• As a writer, I value integrating new voices into disciplinary communities -- integrating very heterogeneous bodies of theory and integrating novel objects of study into disciplinary discourse.

What would it mean to make this goal more explicit in my intellectual work, in the classroom, in my service? 

2.  How close I am to achieving great work (and what might complicate achieving great work)

Each of these projects are integrated, in a certain way, under this broad objective.  But they are dispersed.  They don't cumulate.  Like the way I plated dinners at the nursing home, by placing parsley on every plate, but parsley was not the core of the work, I can find the parsley on the side of each of these projects, but the meat and potatoes is elsewhere...  But I am not there, yet, in a genuine integration.