Lee Skallerup Bessette - Of Many Minds

Welcome to this special mini-season of the agile academic where my co-editor Lee Skallerup Bessette and I introduce our edited collection Of Many Minds: Mental Health and Neurodiversity Among Higher Education Faculty and Staff out now from Johns Hopkins University Press. In this episode, Lee and I talk about our editorial and authorial journey with the book and give you some insights into how it came into being.

Sign up for our open book discussion on September 26 at 11:30! 

Transcript

Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): Welcome to this special mini-season of the agile academic where my co-editor Lee Skallerup Bessette and I introduce our edited collection Of Many Minds: Mental Health and Neurodiversity Among Higher Education Faculty and Staff out now from Johns Hopkins University Press. In this episode, Lee and I talk about our editorial and authorial journey with the book and give you some insights into how it came into being.

Welcome to the Agile Academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. In each episode, we tackle topics from career vitality to burnout and everything in between. Join me as I chat with inspiring women about their experiences, pursuing purpose, making change, and driving culture in the academy and beyond. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope Ruark. 

Hi everyone. My name is Rebecca Pope Ruark. I'm the host of the Agile Academic Podcast for Women in Higher Education, and I'm excited to have my co-editor, Lee Scup Bassett here today to talk about our book of Many Minds. Hi, Lee. 

Lee Skallerup Bessette (LSB): Hey, I'm Lee Skallerup Bessette, AKA, ReadyWriting on the socials. I know a lot of people know me as that. I co-edited this volume with Rebecca. I am the Assistant Director for Digital Learning at the Center for New Designs and Learning and Scholarship, also known as CNDLS at Georgetown University. I am the editor of the National Teaching and Learning Forum, which is a teaching and learning publication at a Wiley I co-host currently on hiatus podcast, All the Things ADHD, I'm what they call a multihyphenate, I suppose, doing all the things the podcast is called All the Things ADHD. So of course I also do all the things. And yeah, it was a real privilege for me to be able to co-edit this book, and I came into the process a little bit later into it. So to go back, Rebecca, where did the idea for this collection come from? 

RPR: Yeah, so it was kind of an inkling that came to mind after I finished writing Unraveling Faculty Burnout, which came out in 2022, and I was getting a lot of response from that book. And there were some publications in The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed about the book and things like that too. So it was getting some attention and people were really starting to talk about their mental health in a very open way. When that book came out a couple years into COVID, and we were all very attuned to our mental health at that point. We were all very attuned to what we needed in terms of self-care. We were also going back to work. We were going back to the office, and there were a lot of challenges in that space because a lot of folks had gotten really comfortable working from home and it was better for their mental health or for their neurodiversity. 

And the conversation was just getting, I think, loud in a really good way. And I thought, we don't have any real collections that look at and allow people to tell their own stories about their mental health and higher education. We talk a lot in the book about, in the introduction, especially about how higher ed is very much a place where intellect is valued above all, and that sometimes there's not really a place for folks who might be a little different than that, or it's a really good place for folks who have different mental health illnesses and neurodiversity. So it came from a place of really wanting to have a space for more people to tell their stories of mental health and neurodiversity in higher education. It came from a space also of thinking about just the ableism around higher education as a workplace, especially when I was writing unraveling, I was very much starting to think of higher ed as a workplace as opposed to the ivory tower or the academy. Really, it's a place where people go to work every day and it has certain conditions that work well for some people and do not work well for other people. So it really came from a place of how do we let other people tell their stories of what it's like to work in higher education and get that conversation going on an even more generous level. 

LSB: Nice. So I came into the project, as I was saying a little bit later, in that I saw the call. I wanted to contribute something again, I have a podcast called All the Things A DHD with a fellow Neurodiverse academic Amy Morrison. So we've been talking about this for a while, and I've been writing about mental health in higher education for a while as well, pre pandemic way back at University of Venus days on inside higher ed. And when the original co-editor had to drop out, I approached you and I was like, so I really think this book is important, and I know how hard it is to edit. I did edit collection of called Affective Labor and Alta Careers in Higher Education. So again, this idea of affect and emotion and that, and also, but as an extension, I know how hard it's to edit a book solo. 

So I really, again, the call resonated with me. The purpose of it resonated with me in terms of allowing a space for neurodiverse faculty to tell their stories. And so I was like, I totally understand if you would rather do it by yourself because training another person or working, but you graciously accepted my offer for help. And so I really, again appreciate having the privilege to be able to help bring these stories to publication and to wider, to be able to share them with a much wider audience. And I think that that is one of the things again, that in a lot of cases, the book talks about masking the books, talks about not talking about these issues. And so there's a lot of, and we talk about stigma. There's a whole section on stigma. There's still a lot of stigma. There's still a lot of silence. 

And so to be able to give voice and break that silence and to break that stigma and to create a process, I think that that's something that maybe that I'd like to talk about is that we did a non-traditional peer review process, which I'm really, really proud of. We're jumping around in the questions, but I think it's a good place to sort of say how we developed this space is where we peer reviewed, we are all academics in one form or another. We are all experts in one form or another in writing in our fields and all of these. And so why not do a peer review for each other? And so we really did this peer review process where everybody read a handful of everybody else's essays and gave feedback on them and then had opportunities to talk about it and discuss. And so it was a really generative, there was no reviewer two sort of thing. 

It was just a very generative process. And also it allowed for a space where the other contributors and authors knew that the people that they were editing and the people that were editing them had a kind of shared experience. And we're coming at it from a very, again, not exactly the same, but a very similar space and a very similar experience. And so it was a lot more productive. It was a lot more supportive. And I really, the honesty and the candor, and I hate to use the word brave. I hate it when people say that about me and they're like, you're so brave. I'm like, or full-hearted, I don't know. But definitely the honesty and the candor and the openness in which everybody was willing to share their stories, I think was really inspiring as well. 

RPR:  Absolutely. That vulnerability just shines through in all of the essays and the willingness to put themselves out there and say, this is who I am. This is who I am in higher education, and this is my experience in higher education for good or for bad. It's warts and all. Let's think about this as a workplace that has employees, and we're all employees, even though I think faculty sometimes don't like to think of themselves as employees, but 

LSB: We're a whole other thing. All my adjunct advocacy work, we can inform that, 

RPR: Right? But I think that critical friends review process was really, really a powerful part of the experience for us as editors. And for the reviewers who were also authors, they got to see how other people were telling their stories so that they could adapt about different structures. And that was one of the reasons that I really appreciated having you on board Lee as a co-editor, is that my background is in professional writing and rhetoric. I taught writing for 17 years. So some of my instincts with what to do when they came in, drafts were well-intentioned, but not necessarily serving the essays. And what they really needed and what those folks needed were space, the space to tell their stories and use the language that they felt most comfortable with and the structures they felt most comfortable with. And I will admit that I did add some subheadings to some of them that, okay, 

LSB: Subheadings, I'm bad at that. 

RPR: I did a little structuring of some of the essays to give it some shape. But for the most part, we let people tell their stories in their own ways, which I think is a really powerful part of the collection too. 

LSB: And I mean, part of it, I've always used this example is that I am an ADHD writer. I've written about that. I only realized that later that some of the challenges that I've always had in trying to write academic unquote is because that's not really how my brain works. And I was writing this essay for this, again, highly personal, highly autobiographical collection. I was always going back and forth with the editor. I was trying to tell this, but tell it in my way. I got the frustration. And she said to me, stop moving in and out of time. And I was like, oh, yeah, no, I do do that. How my brain works. So I really took that to heart as an editor myself in terms of how do we balance allowing the space for the authentic voice or that kind of personal expression of the experience, while also not alienating the reader 

Where it was frustrating to try and read what I was writing as a neurotypical person because it didn't make sense. And so it's like that balance, subheading, signposts some of those things, but while also being like, no, this is how my brain works, or this is how your brain, I mean, one of them was, I still remember a conversation that we had with one of them where it was just like I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and I'm like, yeah, they write, they're autistic and it's jarring at sometimes, and it's very, not blunt, but very concise, very, very direct, 

RPR: Very on the nose. 

LSB: And I was like, to me it was that question of it doesn't impact a person's understanding of it. The story shines through. Could we soften the edges a little bit? Sure. But why? And again, that was a challenge for both of us, is that we don't want to alienate the readers, but we also want to celebrate and elevate, as you said, the voices of the authors that are unique and different and powerful and important. So that it may have looked easy for me, but easier, but it's still trying to, where's the line? And I struggle with that in my own writing is where is the line between? And if anybody reads my essay and the contribution, you'll be like, yeah, I see she's that line at certain points. It's like she blew right past it. And I was just like, you know what? I'm an editor of this. I could let it go. 

RPR: We can do what we want. I can do whatever I want. And I think part of the challenge was thinking about how do we shepherd these essays? How do we really shepherd them? And I think after a while you get pretty protective of them. So to know that they're coming out and that book is in someone's hands now is both exhilarating, but also kind of scary that this is happening and people are going to read these stories and we want them to see the wonderful people that we've gotten to know over the past couple of years of editing this and to really understand. And we do have folks across the autism spectrum. We have folks with a DHD. I talk about my anxiety disorder and how that impacted my life. Some different personality 

LSB: Disorders. Personality disorders, 

RPR: Yeah. So there's a wide range of stories that people can often find some connection to, whether it's their own experience or the experience of someone close to them, they'll be able to connect to someone in this collection. 

LSB: Yeah, definitely. It still bothers me is we had, and this happens no matter what you're editing, right? No matter what you're editing, no matter what you're doing, academic, non-academic, everything in between. There are always people who drop out during the process. And there was one essay in particular that I'm still devastated and in a condition this stuff happens. I just edited a special issue of an academic journal. And you're like, stuff happens. People get busy, people over underestimate how much time things are going to take and everything. And so there's, you have to just shrug your shoulders. But in a collection that's so personal, this I almost feel like, could I have done more? What did this person need that we didn't give them so that they felt like they could still participate in this process in a way that I don't tend to feel with other publications? You know what I mean? Like I said, it's like, okay, your researcher, your coauthor dropped or okay, whatever, good luck to you. But this one, I took it probably more personally than I should have where I was like, no, I'm so sorry. What can we do? Please? 

So if you're out there, we get it. We love you. We're sorry. 

RPR: Absolutely. 

LSB: And don't feel bad. Don't feel bad. Because probably it was about rejection sensitive dysphoria, which is you take it and I know I have it. And so you take things so personally and then you just get down in the shame spiral. And I'm like, I hope you're not in the shame spiral for dropping out. We're taking it more personally than maybe you are. But that to me literally kept me up at night in some cases where I was just like, what could we do? And also just because there's just trying to extend an incredible amount of empathy towards the other authors too, where it's just like, and like I said, it's also probably because I over identified, you're talking about RSD, I know what RSD is. This is so important, but also I feel for you so deeply because I know you're exactly what you're writing about and talking about. So that to me was a challenge that I had not anticipated at all that I would end up taking it. So personally, 

RPR: Yeah, I found it, even though the collection was kind of my idea, I actually found it really difficult to write my own essay, even though the style kind of mimics what I did in unraveling, it was pulling a story that has a disorder that's affected me my entire life. So I was looking at it, and it wasn't diagnosed until I was later in grad school. So I had all these experiences as a child with this disorder and had to unpack that in ways that I hadn't unpacked other things in the past. So I felt connected to many of the other authors that also talk about their childhoods and getting diagnoses later in their lives that really reshaped how they thought about themselves. And there's a lot of really, I think, surprising stories in there that people will really resonate with as well as be surprised by. 

LSB: And I think that that's everybody in the collection too. And this was a bit of a challenge as well as at different points of their own process of a diagnosis and at their own phase of where they are in terms of understanding it, coming to terms with it, disclosing it. So for me, I've been talking about depression in public for 15 years. And yes, I had got different diagnoses of A DHD and those kinds of things as things went on, but I'm at a different point than somebody who may have only got a diagnosis a year ago and is still trying to reframe their own experiences all the way back to childhood and then others who got one when they were teenagers, but then were confronted with different forms of stigma as they moved through grad school, their careers and all that. And so everyone is at a different point in terms of acceptance, in terms of shedding, ableism, in terms of all of these kinds of different processes. 

And so that can be a little bit of challenge as well. I wanted, while I'm editing some of these essays, I wanted to hug some of them. It'll get better. I promise. I'm so sorry. So sorry. This is happening. It'll get better, I promise. Being in a different state or a different phase, I guess. So that, like you said, going back to the childhood or where am I? Because you're even writing this, your essay and me writing my essay as well, you're in a different spot. Even then, it would've been a different essay had you written it before the burnout book? 

RPR: Yes, 

LSB: Absolutely. Because the burnout book is another phase of that process that you work through for yourself. And then there's the other challenge of like, well, I've written so much about this, what else do I have to say? 

RPR: Sure. Yeah, I think that definitely came out for a minute too, 

LSB: Right? It's like, do I have to say anything else? So yeah, so that was sort of an interesting and a challenging part of it is, and again, it's not just, again, it has to do with that voice, but also the positionality, right? You are experiencing this in this moment of 2023, 2024 when you were writing these sorts of things. And to respect that and to keep that, to honor that I guess is how do we honor that you are feeling this and experiencing this in this particular moment versus what it might be five years from now, what it was five years ago, 

RPR: Right? Yeah. It was a really powerful experience to write that and then to compare them to, compare is probably the wrong word, but I think in some ways you do kind of compare, right? Yeah. You look at, is my situation really as powerful as some of the other stories in there, I think, because some of them just blow you away with their vulnerability and their attention to their experiences in higher ed. So what would you say Lee is a highlight of the collection for you? 

LSB: I was dreading this question because it's picking your favorite kid. I don't know. I am very much struggling. I think each individual stories are powerful. And again, this is personal. There are people in this collection whom I know and have known for a long time. And so reading their stories and getting more of their story was particularly emotional for me because I know that it's not just somebody who has submitted to the call. It is somebody that I know and have interacted with and met and all of this kind of stuff. So there's certainly a lot more invested in some of the people I know personally. And so that just makes them more powerful because of that prior connection to them. It doesn't diminish the other ones. And I think that's, so for me, it's the people who I know, but also there's something also really flattering that here is a person, I don't know. It's like these strangers trusted us with it, but at the same time, sometimes it's easier to trust strangers with some of this stuff. Like I will never see you, or may probably will never see, you may never. So it's just like we're good. So in a way, there is something really special about somebody that trusting you with the story because it's like, I know you and you don't know this about me, but I am still going to trust you with it. 

And so I think that there's something really humbling about that and powerful about that, that made those stories for me much more meaningful because I wanted to really be grateful for that trust. I'm grateful that everyone trusted us, but particularly the people that I know that they trusted me, trusted us with their stories was particularly special to me. What about you? Are you going to choose your favorite child? 

RPR: No, I'm not going to choose my favorite essay. I think what I'm going to say is that it was a privilege to watch some of these writers come into their art authorial voices in these experiences 

That many of them kind of joined the process thinking, I've never written about this. I don't feel like I'm a great writer. What do I have to say? But they felt some port of call to share their experience that it was important to share for them. And for some folks, we did multiple drafts and we were very actively engaged in helping them frame and shape those. And some people were able to just brain dump and feel really good about that experience that came out on the page that way. And so I think really seeing them own their stories and be empowered with sharing their stories in this way, I think was really powerful and humbling in a lot of different ways. 

LSB: Another thing that's a highlight for me, Katie's intro, 

RPR: Yes, 

LSB: That's Katie. We'll be talking to Katie in a couple of weeks, but that Katie accepted to write the intro introduction or prologue, or I don't remember who wrote the 

RPR: Intro. She wrote the right preface or something foreword

LSB: Yeah, the foreword. There we go. Words, sorry, folks. It's mid-August. We're not quite back on academic time. We still got summer brain. But when she wrote, this book Will Save a Life, I was like, Hmm, no. You can't see me making the hand signals a podcast, but sometimes you lose the forest for the trees. You know what I mean? When you're in it and you're writing these essays and editing and going through the process and all of that, you don't lose sight of it, but it kind of gets lost again in the does this need subheadings? How do we organize it? Where does this essay go? And then to have Katie take a step back and take a look at that whole manuscript that we had pulled together and say something like that was just a really big reminder again of this is why I wanted to be involved in this. This is why I was so excited by it, because I'd like to think it will, right? I'd like to think it will, if not save a life, then at least make people's lives a little bit better. 

RPR: Absolutely. 

LSB: Absolutely. 

RPR: Absolutely. And I think that kind of channels into our next question, which was what should people do with the collection or how do you read the collection Now, entrusting these stories to the general public, which is, like I said earlier, it's exhilarating, but it's also scary to put those things out there. So I think our goal with the collection was to pull together voices that the A people could resonate with, that they could really see themselves in that. And we're seeing some folks who have gotten their pre-order copies already talking about that online, that we were joking earlier before we started recording about someone saying they were enjoying the book and if enjoy was a word that you could use for reading these type of stories. But what we think that it's enjoyable to connect with people on those human level as we look at those stories. 

But I think the other thing that we wanted people to do with this is to have these stories really start a conversation at your institution, in your units, be able to look at these different stories as case studies. How do we engage with people who might have a similar level of autism or who might be having a DHD in our context? What does that look like? Are we giving them what they need to be successful or are we in that ableism space and really holding them back from being accepted and engaged in the context of the workplace. So we hope that people will be generous in their readings of the stories, and we also hope that they will engage them with others as almost case studies of how do we make sure that we are a welcoming to use Kevin McClure’s Caring workplace? 

LSB: And I think that that was one of the things is when we were going through and editing and conceptualizing and all of that, one of the things is I didn't have any advice in mind. A lot of people didn't have any advice. At the end of the day, it's like, dismantle ableism, what are my recommendations? It's like, well, a story is an inquiry. Narrative is an incredibly powerful tool. And like you said, I always go back to Kathleen Fitzpatrick's Generous Thinking, and this is if you feel yourself getting resentful or get your backup, you know what I mean? If these stories are making you uncomfortable, really take the time to unpack that. 

What is it? Is it like you said, that internalized ableism, is it that the structures within higher education and the norms and the unspoken rules, and even some of the spoken rules are that you have unconsciously internalized all of them and that the stories are running contrary to it and challenging it, allow yourself to be challenged, and you have that feeling of being challenged, sit with it. And I think that that is the power of a book and someone else's story is that you could read it. We know that campuses are doing reading groups on this and all of that, but there is something really powerful about sitting alone with this story, and you don't necessarily know that person. And so rather than it be somebody that you know work with, that you interact with, it's a colleague who's trying to share their story, you can react to this and read it on your own and process on your own, and you can't ask the authors to do that work for you. You know what I mean? 

RPR: Absolutely. 

LSB: And then hopefully we'll also create space for you then to be able to listen and to hear your colleagues better. I think that that's something that's really important where experience the discomfort as you're reading it on your own, and then process that before you go back to the group. 

RPR: Yeah, I agree. I think for me, it's moving people from empathy or sympathy into true compassion. Yes, I have empathy, but I'm willing to act on that. I'm willing to act to make your situation better and to make sure you're included and make sure that you feel welcomed in this space. And I'm hoping this gives people a way to do that. 

LSB: And again, if it's making you uncomfortable, sit with that. Think about that. Think about it. And what are you, and again, the question you should be asking is, as we engage in these with colleagues in the workplace, are you asking or is what you're asking or what you're requiring or what you're expecting about your comfort or their comfort? 

RPR: Yes. 

LSB: Right. I think that that's really important. I was coming across any really accusational right now, and I don't mean to, but I think that there is such an opportunity with these stories, with this book, and it's a beginning, it's a way to start these conversations. Somebody asked, when we were editing the book online, they were like, do you have examples of institutions who were doing this really well? And I was like, no, 

RPR: No, not that we know of. 

LSB: I would love that to edit that collection, but right now, there aren't enough. Or maybe we just don't know them. But there aren't enough examples. And I would love for people to come with examples of institutions like the Caring Workplace Place that have created spaces and processes that are welcoming and inclusive of neurodivergent peers, but as it stands right now, they don't really exist, or at least unfortunately not exist for any of the people who wrote the book. So I think that it's important. And also the other thing that I will say is if you have the reaction that would never happen in our unit or that would never happen in my workplace, I guarantee you have at least one colleague who is masking and who has had a much different experience than what you think that they're having. And so again, kind of ask those questions and sit with that is who's masking is and why do they think they need to? 

RPR: Yes, 

LSB: Why do they think they need to? And I think that that is a really important question to ask is why do they think they need You need to. 

RPR: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so what's next? Lee's got the list, but we can talk a little bit about the fact that we are going to be doing a few more of these episodes with, so Katie Rose Guest Pryal will be on in a couple of weeks and we'll be releasing a couple more episodes with folks who are in the collection through this podcast over the next month or so, and then Lee's got the list of everything else that we're doing. 

LSB: Yes. We will be on Bryan Alexander's Futures [Trends] Forum on September 4th. That's from 2 to 3 o'clock Eastern time. If you Google Bryan Alexander, we can put it in the show notes. Actually. We'll put a link, the show notes that forgot about that show notes exist. Everything will 

RPR: Be in the show 

LSB: Notes. Everything will be in the show notes. But most importantly, on September 26th at 11:30 AM Eastern Time, we are going to have an open Zoom discussion. We're bringing contributors in and anybody who has picked up and read the book or holding a reading group on their campus or in their unit are welcome to join us. There's a signup form that will be in the show notes. It's really just your opportunity. We wanted to do it about a month after release to give people a chance to get their hands on the book to read it. I know that there are lots out in the wild right now, but the official date is August 26th, and so we wanted to give it some time for people to pick it up and to read it, think about it, and then come and have a conversation around it. We really would love to bring people together to have those open discussions, to have the conversations, to ask questions of us and the authors in a generous way, generous way. We're still very 

RPR: Protective, empathy and compassion. 

LSB: Yeah, 

RPR: Definitely still protective, 

LSB: But also if you can't make that date and you would like Rebecca and I to Zoom in to your reading group, to your faculty learning circle, to book club, just drop us a line, put it in the comments, or Rebecca will share the email addresses and we'd be happy to do so as well. Right. Again, this is very much for me. I keep saying it was a labor of love, and yesterday when we're recording this, yesterday was my birthday and I did a social media marketing push on it, and I said, it's not really about me. I'm not making this marketing push for me. I am making this marketing push for these stories. 

RPR: Absolutely. 

LSB: And so that we want to do a lot to promote this book is less about our own self-promotion and more about helping these stories gain a wider audience because we really do believe in them and think that they are so important and so powerful and that they might, the other hope again is like when Katie says they save a life, but it's also for me, it's like they fill a that sized shaped hole in you that those are the words that you find that help you view. Because I truly believe that that's one of the incredibly powerful parts about storytelling as well, is that it can reach that one person who needs to hear that or read those words right at that moment, and we hope that it gets to you and that it helps you in that way as well. 

RPR: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, on that note, we'll wrap up this episode. Look for more from our contributors to the collection on this podcast soon. And like Lee said, I'll have links to everything in the show notes so you can make sure that you're joining us on or our upcoming events. Thanks so much for being here, Lee. 

RPR: Thank you so much, and we'll be seeing some more of each other over the next couple of weeks, so I'm really looking forward to it. 

LSB: Yeah, it'll be great. Okay. Take care. 

RPR: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Agile Academic Podcast for women in higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. To make sure you don't miss an episode, follow the show on Apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode a transcript and show notes theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.