Four Practices of Slow Grad Students

The posting below looks at the benefits of doing less, not more. It is by Dr. Chris Golde, assistant director of career communities- PhDs & Postdocs, BEAM Stanford Career Education, Stanford University, and is from her excellent blog Grad|Logic: Navigating the Ups and Downs of Graduate School. [Gradlogic.org]. © 2016 Chris Golde.  All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu


The Slow Grad Student/ Do Less and Be Mindful
From https://tomprof.stanford.edu/

What is a “slow graduate student”? That is what I puzzled over while reading The Slow Professor. Taking inspiration from the Slow Food movement, this book advocates embracing the principles of Slow, to reduce stress and reclaim faculty control over their work.

Two themes of slowing down in academia are particularly applicable to becoming a Slow Grad Student. The first is mindful, deliberate doing, which necessitates doing less. This theme is revealed in the book’s subtitle, “Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy.” Relatedly, Slow Academics also prize collegiality and community.

The authors “advocate for deliberative, imaginative and reflective thought as definitive of a professor’s work and life. Creativity and contemplation … can’t be multi-tasked,” summarized one thoughtful review. You can also read about the book in Inside Higher Ed and University Affairs.

How can graduate students adopt these principles and practices? What is “the slow graduate student?”

Principles of the Slow Professor

The authors, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, begin their book with a Manifesto.  They say:

“Slow Professors advocate deliberation over acceleration. We need time to think, and so do our students. Time for reflection and open-ended inquiry is not a luxury but is crucial to what we do. … We envisage Slow Professors acting purposefully, cultivating emotional and intellectual resilience. By taking the time for reflection and dialogue, the Slow Professor takes back the intellectual life of the university.”

Their book springs from their shared recognition that, as faculty members, they are pressured to do more and more. Time is the rarest resource. This pressure on academics is higher education’s manifestation of the “work first” culture in the United States.

Many time management books, including those particularly aimed at people in the university, advocate doing more, using time more efficiently, and multi-tasking. (Among the more extreme suggestions that Berg and Seeber cite are arising at 4 am to write; booking every hour of every week with tasks and meetings.) These “solutions” don’t attack the systemic problem that we expect to do more and more, faster and faster.

What we lose is time to think and reflect. We become less creative. Communal values of generosity and conviviality are the casualties when we don’t (or feel we can’t) take time with one another. The result of sped-up, work-centric academic life is chronic stress, unhappiness, and ill health. Some, like these junior faculty, respond by leaving higher education.

We need to cultivate new practices—or reclaim old ones—that open up space in our lives for thinking, being, and connecting. This is a route to joy and wisdom.

Many of Berg and Seeber’s suggestions are aimed at faculty. And grad students value faculty members who embrace and model the principles of slow. But you need not wait. You can put some practices into play now.

Four Practices of Slow Grad Students

Here are four practices to help you slow down. These are micro-practices that can make a small, but noticeable, difference...

For the list, visit https://tomprof.stanford.edu/


Published: November 17, 2016

Posted in Ideas Worth Stealing and tagged balance, community, goals, realistic, resilience, time on November 17, 2016 by Grad Logic.



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