Hi all,

It's Wednesday evening and it looks like Congress is back to its work, certifying the election for Joe Biden. What a day. Somewhere in there I held a Facebook Live (my second--you can go into my coaching page at Jennifer Askey, Coach to watch it) and doomscrolled Twitter for news.

One of the threads I came across in Twitter, started by Echo Rivera, was a discussion about how to heal from graduate school. (Original tweet here.) This was a fascinating thread, as it pulled together a number of people who reflected on either the trauma or the alienation or the lingering inner wounds caused by time spent in a PhD program.

A few years ago, I was delivering a workshop on best practices in graduate student supervision to a group of humanities faculty members at a university in Ontario. These professors had all self-selected to come to the workshop--so I was obviously preaching to the choir here about the importance of good graduate student supervision. In one of the early warm-up exercises, people were invited to talk about their philosophy of supervision. About one-third of the participants said something along the lines of demonstrating their humanity and inviting their students to do the same. I felt then and certainly feel now the poignancy of these statements: only in an industry where the inhumane has been normalized do people feel the need to shine a spotlight on their ability to nurture basic human decency in their jobs.

When I asked this group of graduate supervisors what they meant when they said things like "be a good human being," or "show them basic human decency," they responded by listing things like demonstrating vulnerability, the willingness to ask questions and admit to not knowing everything, balancing family obligations with academic work, etc. These qualities, and many others, are key elements of human emotional intelligence--here, particularly, the ability to help develop and nurture others. For all of the importance that nurturing undergraduate and graduate students holds in the academy, we give ourselves and our colleagues precious little guidance on how to access and nurture our own EQ in the pursuit of our jobs.

Graduate education is, yet again, in the media spotlight, thanks to the recent Bloomberg article on why the US needs to stop producing humanities and science PhDs. I believe that if an institution is going to have PhD students, regardless of field, it is in the best interests of that institution, its faculty members, and its graduate students to make sure that the PhD experience is as enriching and, yes, humane as possible. How does your department or college or faculty go about formalizing and professionalizing graduate education? Does your institution require would-be-supervisors to go through a process of any rigor to become graduate student supervisors? Were you trained to supervise graduate work? My sense from the six institutions I've worked at over the last 15 years is that most of us bring our own histories of what was good and bad in our own training and work from there, doing our best.

Hats off to all of you as the new mostly remote semester gets under way. Whether you are teaching, on research leave, or supervising a group of graduate students, I'm here to be a sounding board and a champion of your efforts. If you, or a colleague, wants to schedule a complimentary session to see where working with a coach could increase your effectiveness and your satisfaction in your job, feel free to book a discovery call in my calendar here: https://jenniferaskey.as.me/

Take care, be at peace,

Jennifer