Welcome to the Academia Made Easier Newsletter. I am so glad you are here.
I created this newsletter to share ideas on how to make academic work and life a little bit easier. For over a decade I have experimented with ideas, hacks, tricks, practices, and automations to help me not just survive in academia but to feel a sense of relative calm.
My experiments were borne of necessity: I started my academic career in 2008 with twin preschoolers, a chronic health condition made worse by stress, a very tight tenure clock, and a challenging learning curve as I entered academic life mid-career with a limited sense of how universities functioned. It was not a winning combination! Some of my experiments have worked, some have failed miserably, and some worked for a time and then didn’t once circumstances (both personal and career) changed.
In this newsletter, I share - in small doses - my experiences and lessons in hope that it reduces your own need to search for solutions. Some ideas may work for you, others may be wildly inappropriate. For all, I encourage you to try the idea out - even if just mentally - and see how it goes.
To get started, please check out my past newsletters, where I share easy ideas for how to say no to requests, how to spend less time in meetings, how to quit promising time and energy you don’t have, how to quit lying to yourself about how long things will take, how to write when you don’t want to write, and many other topics.
I invite you to subscribe and to share Academia Made Easier with your network.
Stay well, my colleagues.
About me: I am a married mother of twin teenagers, a political scientist, and a former department head turned dean (executive director of an amazing two university policy school). I am a runner, writer, and cat lover. I am passionate about the future of universities. I spend far too much time on Twitter. I live and work on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis.
