Description
This is Episode #15 of the A-KID-EMIA podcast, the home for parent-scholars looking to balance personal and professional goals. This is the sixth of an eight-part monthly series generously funded by the American Philosophical Association.
Crisis management is every academic’s daily fare: putting out fires in the classroom, toggling between deadlines, jumping to meetings, email overload, and on down the list. But operating on such tight margins leaves few scholars with the time to even wonder (or worry) about what they would do if tragedy struck. Although we win this gamble most of the time, something is still lost; a dark hour can illuminate where additional pressures might have forced us to improve. Today’s guest confronted that reality when she received a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. In this episode, Lab Director and Instructor Janelle Gagnon shares her experience as both patient and caregiver to her sick parents and child. She tells us how to practically manage major crises, and the lessons she has carried forward from them for a more organized and meaningful academic life.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
02:20 – Life Before Crisis: Academia, Parenting, and Workload
03:50 – A Sudden Diagnosis: Stage Four Cancer
06:00 – Support Systems in Academia
08:50 – Work As A Coping Mechanism
11:00 – Medical Leaves
13:00 – Lessons About Priorities That Carried Forward After Recovery
15:30 – Returning to Work: Boundaries and Time Management Regarding Emails and Expectations
18:00 – Reversing Crisis Management: Organizational Plan for the Academic Year
22:30 – Self-Monitoring for Burnout
24:30 – Parenting and Working Through One’s Own Illness While Caregiving For Others
35:30 – Teaching Systems, Tools, and Course Planning
39:30 – Time Management Tools: Calendars, Lists, Feedback, and ‘Breadcrumbs’
45:30 – Closing Reflections: Love, Meaning, and What Truly Matters in Academic Life
