The PhD: In Search of More Time

by Researchex: https://phdlife.warwick.ac.uk/2020/01/29/in-search-of-more-time/

“Are there any other tricks you know which will reduce the amount of sleep I need each night, so I have more time during the day?” an old friend asks me. With only the slightest hint of a wry smile I respond: “That is not really how it works…”

You see, I know this desire very well. To achieve more, work harder, be better, in the hopes that I would feel good about myself. My life was about eking out every last second I could, whether in work, socially or life generally. My perpetual state of anxiety was never sustainable. I collapsed many times into depression and never learned my lesson. Eventually all I had left was work. When I continued stubbornly down the path of ‘busy’, my mind played the only hand it had left. It broke.

I learned many things to help me recover. Within this arsenal of tools, the one I valued the most was meditation.

It is the primary tool I use for introspection, to reflect on my thoughts and feelings. To think about the deep questions in life: “What am I doing? Why am I doing it?” This has been invaluable during my PhD. Since I came back from being ill, I have meditated on almost every single piece of work, including this piece. When conscious there is too much information coming in, the product of my thoughts and ideas are always incomplete. Meditation gives the space to achieve a higher level of clarity.

Meditation is pretty much the most efficient way to do nothing. To just be. Traditional activities for taking a break – like watching TV, reading a book, having a conversation – which can be highly beneficial as a distraction from problems, still involve doing something. The individual is still taking in information, possibly adding to the clutter in their head, not attempting to tidy it. In meditation, one cuts out as much external stimulus as possible to allow reflection on internal thoughts and desires.

I am bemused that the academic community believes the best test of a student’s academic prowess is to completely isolate them at the end of a doctorate, forcing them to write the paper which will be used to judge the efforts of the previous three years of their life under time and monetary pressures that they have likely never experienced before. I certainly could not have done it without meditation. Perhaps it is this that depresses me the most. To see an old version of myself in others, working long continuous hours in isolation, anxiety etched on their worn faces. All for the fruitless philosophy of ‘that is how it was done when I got my degree, and when my father/mother got their degree before me’. I believe students often work the way they do because that is how they have always done things, with little reflection on any deeper reasoning than “hard work never hurt anyone”. (Judging from the statistics surfacing on the deteriorating mental health of post-graduate students, this is patently untrue). This, for me now, is a confusing way to live. Even when one does complete their task, the elation is fleeting, the disbanded social connections mean there is rarely someone to celebrate with. I feel it is a horrible way to spend each day.

Since I started meditating, time has a different meaning for me. There is rarely any purpose to spending time actively worrying. Nobody can expect to ‘give 110% effort’. We cannot work more than our minds allow, in the same way a computer cannot work faster than its processor allows. This does not mean that I am never occupied by work for long periods of time, or I am never stressed or anxious. The world is complicated. If my mind does not like the task I am doing, I meditate to reflect on why I am doing it and try to find a different perspective or motivation to help. More of my time is taken up, but when I am doing something, it is purposeful and efficient. The entire process becomes valuable and fulfilling to me.

Time is precious to us, so much so that we attribute huge importance and pressure to it. We are afraid of wasting it. However, I believe the most precious time is time spent with friends and family, and time spent trying to become a wiser and better person. It is a zen philosophy that everything we do is a waste of time! After all, we cannot take our achievements with us. So, take that extra hour of sleep. Meet with your friends, Skype with your family. Meditate for 5 minutes. It is there the time you desire is found.

by Alex Hubert

I graduated from the University of Kent with an MPhys in 2014. I then decided to take on the challenge of a physics PhD at Warwick, which I successfully completed in September 2019. Currently, I am writing a series of articles on mental health and wellbeing within the academic community as well as in general. 

ajmh@alexhubert.co.uk

http://www.alexhubert.co.uk

Tweet me @AJMHubert

The Disneyfication of a University

by Dane Kennedy, Academe Blog:  https://academeblog.org/2020/01/30/the-disneyfication-of-a-university/

The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney Institute, which the president of our university commissioned last year to assess the culture on our campus. Fortunately, the institute, which is the “professional development and external training arm of The Walt Disney Company,” has a remediation plan. It has designed workshops to teach us the cultural “values” and “service priorities” we evidently require.

The culture that Disney has crafted for us is not, it should be said, the high culture of the arts that the poet Matthew Arnold described as “sweetness and light.” Nor is it the anthropological notion of culture - a system of meaning that shapes social behavior. Rather, it is corporate culture, a creature that has become all the rage in the business world - and now, it seems, is burrowing its way into universities. Its professed aim is to instill a sense of shared purpose among employees, but its real objective is far more coercive and insidious.

Our president is rumored to have forked over three to four million dollars to the Disney Institute to improve our culture (he refuses to reveal the cost). A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.” For everyone else, the university is conducting culture training workshops that run up to two hours. All staff and managers are required to attend. Faculty are strongly “encouraged” to participate, and some contract faculty, who have little job security, evidently have been compelled to do so.

I attended one of these workshops. It was a surreal experience. About a hundred mostly sullen university employees - maintenance workers, administrative staff, faculty members, and more - filled a ballroom. Two workshop leaders strained to gin up the crowd’s enthusiasm with various exhortations and exercises, supplemented by several slickly produced videos. The result was a cross between a pep rally and an indoctrination camp.

We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s brand new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.” Hold on. We change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition how? The answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous - by being nice. “Care,” we were told, is one of our three “Service Priorities.” We were given “Service Priorities” table-tent cards, conveniently sized for our pocketbooks and billfolds so we can whip them out whenever we needed to remind ourselves how we change the world. These cards offer a series of declarative statements - pabulum, some might say - about our “care” priorities. Here’s a sample: “I support a caring environment by greeting, welcoming, and thanking others.” To help us care for others, the university has established a “positive vibes submission” website, where we “can send a positive vibe to someone.” It was hard to detect many positive vibes in the workshop itself.

The other two “service priorities” give us a clearer idea of the culture initiative’s real agenda. One is “safety;” the other, “efficiency.” Both exhort employees to improve their work performance. The very first “safety” recommendation is an injunction to “keep areas clean, well-maintained, and inviting.” An important measure of “efficiency” is a willingness to “embrace change and [be] open to new ways of working.” One might wonder whether work efficiency would be enhanced by redirecting the millions of dollars that are going to the Disney Institute into staff salaries or bonuses instead. But that misses the point. The main purpose of this corporate culture initiative is to create a more disciplined and compliant workforce. Our workshop leaders actually acknowledged that “compliance” is a central pillar of the project.

Lastly, we were introduced to “Our GW Values” - “ours” only in the sense that they were being imposed on us. One might think that our president would be interested in promoting and honoring the values that are specific to our mission as a university, such as innovative research, teaching excellence, critical inquiry, and new ideas. Think again. As crafted by the Disney Institute and its administrative acolytes, “Our GW Values” are “integrity,” “collaboration,” “courage,” “respect,” “excellence,” “diversity,” and “openness.” All worthy values, to be sure, but is it possible to offer a more generic and innocuous set of standards?

The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.

Guest blogger Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University.