Balancing the Holistic Experience of Being a Graduate Student

[Adapted from a panel discussion I participated in at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference in March 2021.]

To be honest, I’m not sure that I’m a good person to give advice about work-life balance, especially amid the present global pandemic. But based on my experiences as, among other things, a graduate student, a teaching assistant, an instructor, a managing editor, a job market survivor, a pre-tenure assistant professor—and now a post-tenure associate professor, program director, researcher, author, advisor, mentor, and full-time caregiver for an aging parent—I can say with certainty that I am intimately acquainted with work-life imbalance. Some of my comments will echo those of the other panelists, who have already addressed this topic so thoughtfully and elegantly, but perhaps some things bear repeating. So, I hope I can offer one or two additional insights to this important discussion.

I would have appreciated an opportunity to consider ‘the holistic experience of being a graduate student’ when I was pursuing my own MA and PhD. Once I got past the shiny exterior and promises of the hallowed halls of academe, I discovered that being a graduate student (and an academic) is a profoundly life-altering proposition—one that can push us to new intellectual heights of discovery while also shaking the foundations of our lives, leaving us with economic, psychological, and other scars.

“To be sure, in American higher education today, significant numbers of men and women faculty [and students!] of all races and across all disciplines and institutional types report that they experience extensive levels of work-related stress. …[I]t is critical that we…strive to develop habits of conducting our work and our lives in ways that promote both our own and others’ well-being.”

Lindholm & Szelényi (2008, p. 36)

Graduate students are constantly navigating a host of challenges:

• Navigating unfamiliar institutional systems
• Developing proficiency with academic language and culture
• Learning skills to carry out independent and significant scholarly work
• Taking (and passing, we hope) qualifying exams
• Establishing working relationships with faculty and peers
• Often subordinating our own interests for another person’s agenda
• Locating and competing for limited resources

And they are juggling other concerns such as:

• Health (and our bodies and families remind us we are no longer 22)
• Family (sometimes caring for children or aging parents)
• Romantic relationships
• Economic burdens (e.g., debt, rent, food, travel)
• Living in unfamiliar cities/towns
• Maintaining outside interests (if we’re lucky)

It becomes clear, then, that when the whole self is imperiled, the various parts of our being—physical and mental health, spiritual and emotional well-being, cognitive functions, relationships, sense of self, self-worth, and so on—are unavoidably affected. Looking back, I think most of my interactions with peers and professors were invariably colored by feelings of fear and guilt: about not working hard enough or fast enough, impostor syndrome, or FOMO—fear that I’d miss out on experiences and opportunities necessary for my future career in academia. Like many of my peers, I assumed that taking time out for self-care would surely broadcast my weakness or lack of commitment to my academic goals and obligations.

I think one of my biggest life lessons from graduate school, besides learning to cope with the various worries, stressors, and other vicissitudes, is that the life skills and habits we cultivate (or don’t cultivate) can make or break us before and after graduation.

We can see that graduate life is therefore a kind of training ground that can help prepare us not just for academic life but also for the rest of our adult lives. And we must continue to remind ourselves that, unless we desire a career as a “professional” student (and you know who you are!), graduate life is only a temporary stop on a much larger journey.

My thinking about academic life can be summarized as follows:

1. Be intentional about what you bring into your world and what you put out in the world

2. Cultivate sustainable habits—skills and strategies that will nourish and protect you over the long term.

So, what might such intentional and sustainable habits and practices look like?

First, we need to check in with and really know ourselves: ask who we are, who we hope to be, what we value—and why.

I’m convinced that we can’t really talk about a holistic experience or work-life balance without understanding what “wholeness” means to us as individuals. Academic life tends to get broken down into various boxes such as research, teaching, and service or reading, writing, presenting, and publishing—but our lives (I hope) are bigger than that. For some people, it means balancing education, work, and leisure time or knowledge, people, money, and things. For others, it may include various intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational pursuits. This means paying attention to the various aspects of our well-being we have identified as essential, not just important or desirable. And this means that when something isn’t right, we have an obligation to acknowledge it and take steps to bring it back into alignment.

The literature on resilience and well-being refers to this as “altruistic egotism”—taking care of the investment—yourself. This means treating your self-care as a sacred obligation and acknowledging that you must first take care of yourself to be useful to others. Your health and well-being become non-negotiable.

Some examples of self-care include actively challenging destructive self-talk (e.g., “I’m so stupid.” “I can’t do it.”), getting enough sleep, communicating with healthcare providers, and engaging in practices that sustain mind, body, and spirit: going to the gym; doing yoga, journaling, or meditation; and (re)connecting with people and hobbies. I think it’s also important to understand when we work best on different tasks. For example, I’m always freshest in the mornings, so if I’m working on an important writing project, I use that time for doing more mentally demanding work and then saving afternoons or evenings for less demanding tasks such as formatting, revising, or responding to email. Chris Casanave talks about this in her books for doctoral students. And above all, don’t apologize for taking care of yourself!

Another part of self-care is community. An ever-present danger of academic or intellectual life is that it forces us to spend a lot of time in our own heads (a scary place, I know). This can lead to repetitive self-talk and a skewed version of reality. Do that long enough, and our harmful habits and attitudes become normalized and internalized. It is therefore crucial that we venture outside ourselves and cultivate and sustain our connections with friends, family, peers, professors, and others. This requires effort and honesty—and often a bit of prompting and “tough love” those around us.

And just as we have a responsibility to care for ourselves, I believe we have a moral responsibility to care for the people around us—to show them kindness and empathy. At the same time, I’ve learned that it’s important that we allow others to show care and compassion to us, too.  

An extension of our community life is our mentors. I can’t say enough about how essential it is to cultivate good mentors: they can be peers or professors, older or younger, people at our institution or people at other institutions, and people we meet at conferences or online.

But mentors don’t just “happen”: they take effort, investment, and sometimes a bit of luck. I can say without exaggeration, that my life has been shaped by my mentors. I wouldn’t be here today without people who have been my role models, sources of advice, sounding boards—allowing me to learn and vent! Of course, we should also be willing to be mentors to others.

If I am honest, I must admit that I have also benefited from my dementors and tormenters, people who have modeled behaviors and attitudes that I do not wish to emulate—but who nevertheless taught me lessons in patience, fortitude, understanding, and eventually…forgiveness.

Every mentor-mentee, advisor-advisee, and professor-student relationship has its own lifespan, sometimes short-term and sometimes long-lasting. That’s normal. Like any relationship, it can be fraught—after all, both sides are only human. Yet, whatever the circumstances, they should be humane. Communication and mutual respect are essential, and abuse should never be tolerated. So, choose your advisor carefully, and don’t be afraid to seek out a new one when things become unwieldy or unhealthy.

This figure represents the health of the formal advisor-advisee relationship. As a general rule, too little involvement (hands off) and too much involvement (controlling) are detrimental to healthy relationships. It’s important that we and our advisors understand what level of involvement we are able and willing to offer and receive. This is also good reminder to us that our professional relationships are also psychological relationships.

“As expectations change, it is essential to revisit the terms of the initial contract, so that progress (or lack of it) can be honestly assessed and new goals and expectations established. In our view, this periodic reassessment and recalibration is critical for healthy and productive collaboration. The psychological contract should be a living, fluid agreement. It should be open to renegotiation, to expansion or contraction, as history and circumstances dictate.”

Kramer & Martin (1996, p. 172)

Many universities now have mentoring contracts, so you may wish to see if yours has one. If not, you might see about putting one together. The Graduate and Professional Student Association at ASU initiated a “Mentor the Whole Student” campaign and created a mentoring contract and list of resources (here’s a link). In any case, I think it’s essential to discuss with your advisor about what your respective expectations, needs and boundaries are, especially in terms of frequency, style, and manner/mode of communication, feedback (and feedback triggers!), and so forth.

I think another component of the holistic balancing act is to strive to work smarter, not necessarily harder. This may mean working slower, with intention and focus. I’m still struggling with efforts to slow down, because it runs counter to the ways in which I have been socialized and expected to live in academia. Like many of my colleagues, no matter how much I work, I often feel it’s not enough. And each new achievement sets the expectations even higher!

“If you are struggling to regain work-life balance, most academic time management literature will not leave you comforted. You may actually feel that you are not working hard enough.”

Berg & Seeber (2017)

Consequently, I think academics have much to learn from the slow living movement and its focus on living intentionally. If you’re interested in reading more, I recommend books such as “Slow Pprofessor,” “Deep Work,“ and “Essentialism.” I’m discovering that the point isn’t about fitting more in but being more selective and making smarter choices about how I’m investing my time, self-worth, and life energy.

I’ve also found it to be true that “if I don’t take time out, time will take me out” and “if I don’t prioritize my time, someone else will.” So, for me this means scheduling regular e-holidays (turning off the devices!), blocking self-time on my calendar, and revisiting how I am investing my life and self-worth.

This may seem selfish, but I’ve found that when things are heading out of control, that’s when we need self-care the most. And that self-care will actually make us MORE (not less) productive in the various areas of our lives.

“When we are overwhelmed, it is easy to get sucked into the frantic pace; when work–life balance is careening out of control, it seems impossible to take an hour out of the day to “do nothing.” Yet, that’s precisely when we need self-care the most. As you make time for yourself, you will find that rather than taking away time from all those work and home demands, self-care will actually make your efforts in these areas more productive.”

Zavattaro & Orr (2017)

As grad students you will be presented with many new opportunities: organizing, attending, and presenting at conferences, volunteering for organizations, serving on committees, working on projects with faculty and peers, submitting articles for publication, attending talks and workshops, and more.

But like many of you, I’ve learned the hard way that every “yes” to one thing also means a “no” to something else: usually progress on my own project, time with friends or family, or sleep. So, a rule of thumb that I TRY to follow (not always successfully, of course) is that if it’s not a “YES!” (with an exclamation mark) it should be a “no” or a “not right now.”

I think we often say “yes” out of fear or guilt: fear that this person won’t like me; fear that I won’t get another opportunity like this; fear of missing out; guilt that I’m not being a good student, friend, or colleague; or guilt that I’m going to seem like a slacker. My own experiences have taught me that every time I’ve said “yes” out of fear or guilt, I’ve regretted it. And every time I’ve intentionally said “no” so that I can say “yes” to other priorities, I’ve never regretted it. Of course, there are times where we may say “no” out of fear of failing or hesitation to step outside our comfort zone, so we may need to seek advice from our trusted mentors and advisors to regain a little perspective.

Of course, guilt and fear often come with prioritizing our time and saying “no.” I think it’s a truism that we teach people what to expect from us. So, when we dismiss the value of our own lives and the decisions to protect our own well-being, how can we expect other people to value and respect those decisions? (Answer: we cant!) And the reality is that even when we are faced with various situations where we can’t say “no,” there are at least some opportunities where we can say and own our “no.”

Finally, although many of us on this panel have used the phrase “work-life balance,” I feel that term needs to be problematized. I think for most of us, this is all really about life balance: work is part of our life, as is family and/or the other pieces that help sustain us as whole persons. And our efforts toward wholeness support resilience, our ability to recover and bounce back from adversity; similarly, resilience enables us to work toward being and becoming whole. When we are whole (or at least more whole than not), we are empowered to support those around us in cultivating and reclaiming their own wholeness.

I also wanted to us to remind ourselves that we have many resources to assist us in this journey:

• Mentors
• Professors
• Peers
• Professional associations
• Professional blogs
• Books and articles
• Healthcare providers
• Counseling services
• Employment services
• Care communities

A recent volume I highly recommend is Luke Plonsky’s “Professional development in applied linguistics: A guide to success for graduate students and early career faculty.”

Selected References

Berg, M., & Seeber, B., K. (2017). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.

Casanave, C. (2021). During the dissertation: A textual mentor for doctoral students in the process of writing. University of Michigan Press.

Frost, P. J., & Taylor, M. S. (Eds.). (1996). Rhythms of academic life: Personal accounts of careers in academia. SAGE.

Lindholm, J. A., & Szelényi, K. (2008). Faculty time stress: Correlates within and across academic disciplines. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 17 (1-2), 19-40.

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing.

Newport, C. (2019). Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. Portfolio/Penguin.

Plonsky, L. (2020). Professional development in applied linguistics: A guide to success for graduate students and early career faculty. John Benjamins.

Posen, D. (2013). Is work killing you?: A doctor’s prescription for treating workplace stress. House of Anansi Press.

Sertillanges, A. G. (1992). The intellectual life: Its spirit, conditions, methods. The Catholic University of America Press.

Zavattaro, S. M., & Orr, S. (Eds.). Reflections on academic lives: Identities, struggles, and triumphs in graduate school and beyond. Palgrave, MacMillan.