Liz Norell on Staying True to Values and Finding Joy

On this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Liz Norell, teacher, educational developer, and author of The Present Professor. We chat about staying true to your values, finding joy in your work while taking care of yourself, and being a light in uncertain times.

Transcript

Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): On this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Liz Norrell, teacher, educational developer and author of the Present Professor. We chat about staying true to your values, finding joy in the work, while taking care of yourself and being a light in uncertain times. 

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 Liz. Welcome to the show. 

Liz Norell (LN): Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. 

RPR: Just introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

LN: Yeah. I'm Liz Norell. I am a political scientist by training, but I am an omnivore when it comes to learning, so I have lots of degrees and I work at the University of Mississippi's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning as a faculty developer, which means that I get to work with faculty on questions about teaching and I do some kind of light informal coaching in that way, and I tend to focus on assessment on the scholarship of teaching and learning and on neurodiversity, 

RPR: Given that little hint there, tell us a little bit about what defines your purpose in and around higher education. 

LN: My purpose has always been rooted in my curiosity and my desire to be of service to the world. And so I really love learning and I love being in an environment where being a lifelong learner is not only encouraged but kind of part of the job. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be of service to others in finding their curiosity and pursuing their curiosity and thinking about where that might take them after they leave academia as students or in their next role as graduate students. 

LN: Yeah, I do a lot of work with faculty vitality frameworks and things like that and teach some of those to the people that I do workshops with, and the curiosity and the creativity piece are always big key indicators of being a vital faculty member. Having those rejuvenating emotions and experiences in your day to day. 

LN: I have found, especially lately, but throughout my career that one of the ways that I've retained that curiosity and vitality is by taking classes myself in areas that I'm not an expert. So I am grateful that I work at an institution now where I can take a class as part of my job and it's paid for by the university. It has to have only the very minimalist of connections to my work. And I have just really enjoyed taking classes and disciplines that I've never explored before, and that helps me, I think, retain a beginner's mindset that can be so helpful when you're teaching undergraduate students in particular. 

RPR: That sounds like so much fun. My grad school friends, and I always joke that if we won the lottery, you'd know it because we would go get a whole bunch of master's degrees, not as stressful as PhDs, but it's just fun to take the classes and try things out. 

LN: Yeah, I have said for most of my life that when my retirement plan is to go to law school just for the fun of it, I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want to do anything with that degree, but I would really love to spend three intense years studying the law. 

RPR: Wow. It just sounds so fun. I'm sure people think it's a little wacky, but it does sound fun. No pressure on that, just learning. Exactly. Just the learning piece. 

LN: Part of the fun of taking classes now that I don't need to take classes is that I give myself radical permission to be a mediocre student. So if I don't want to write a seminar paper, then I just write what I want to write and I tell the instructor, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I want to write something that serves my needs. And they're usually really excited about that. And so I keep hoping that I'm going to start getting B's and C's, but they keep giving me a's because they know me, and so they're like, no, this is fine. Awesome. 

RPR: So tell us a little bit about your relationship to higher education. You've had kind of a long history of being a teacher and a learner in higher ed, so let's talk a little bit about your relationship to higher ed broadly. 

LN: Yeah. I specifically think about my first experience in graduate school and my first time teaching. So I started pursuing graduate education because I had this sort of moment of understanding that I really wanted to teach. And so I started a master's program in the fall of 2000 and was a graduate assistant with the instructor of record from the very first semester. And I just fell in love with it. And so everything since 2000 has been an attempt to teach as much as I can and to be involved in teaching as much as possible. And I think that over the years as I pursued master's degrees and eventually a PhD in political science, that I just saw that work as so deeply meaningful and aligning with my own kind of purpose and values so closely that to be perfectly honest, I lost my identity in the work of higher ed. 

It was completely wrapped up. Every moment that I was awake, I was thinking about or actually doing work. And I remember when I first met my partner, he said, what would it take for you to work like 30% less? And I said, A personality transplant, this is just who I am because it all felt meaningful and I enjoyed it all. And that was great for as long as it was great. And then it was suddenly very much not great when at a previous institution, I was going up for tenure and after having had six years of really positive feedback from everyone was denied tenure. And I was denied tenure for the most ridiculous and asinine of reasons that I wasn't a very good colleague or that I wasn't somehow, and I'm using the scare quotes here, professional, even though they said, your teaching is exemplary and your service is far exceeding our expectations, and you're publishing in a role where we're not asking you to do any of that, but you're not good at anticipating what other people need and therefore we can't give you tenure. And it was so destabilizing because this thing that I had just poured every second of my energy and love into said, you're not doing it the way we want you to, and so you have to leave. And that was just devastating for me. And in the wake of that, I have really tried to think about what are some guardrails I can put up so that my job never becomes my entire identity again? 

RPR: And I think that's so resonant for so many academics. We are trained so early on that everything, your everything becomes work, it becomes the scholarship, it becomes whatever you have to do to help your students succeed. And that can get used against you in so many different ways. And when your complete identity is wrapped up in that process. And it's such a tricky situation because we do believe in higher education so much and the transformative power of higher education to get sucked up into it to a place where you can't really see yourself as a whole human being anymore can be really, like you said, destabilizing and really challenging. 

LN: I never disliked it. I was happy I was not burning out. I had such a sense of purpose until, and I think about that book that I still haven't been able to make myself read called Work Won't Love You Back, and I just feel like I am not ready to read that just yet because I've lived it. But I try to remember that now that institutions are not designed to take care of people. And as much as I might want to take that on myself, I'm not going to do all of the caring work of a university. And so I have to make sure that what I'm doing is really the things that are in alignment with my values, but are not contributing to a culture where other people are having all of their vitality to use your word sucked away from them. 

RPR: And we have to model those behaviors and it's against the grain. It's absolutely against the grain. When I moved over from tenured faculty to more faculty development roles, I feel like I don't have a lot of stress in my life the way that I did for so many years in higher education. And sometimes you feel guilty about that. You feel like I should be doing more. I should be doing something all the time. I should be writing all of the time or being productive, whatever that means or looks like for you. It's hard to change that mindset. 

LN: It really is. And I know you've written about before and spoken about this kind of hustle culture of productivity, and you are what you create. In that role that I was speaking about, one of the incidents that was used to kind of highlight how they described to me as being unprofessional was an instance where I was asked to move my office to another part of campus. And at the time that this happened, I did not yet know that I was autistic, but what I did know is that I'm extremely sensitive to temperatures and sounds, and I had created this little nest of an office that was in a tiny room that nobody else wanted. I got condolences regularly for having this awful office, but I had gotten the temperature and the environment was just right for me. And so when I was forced to move, I mean, I was asked if I was willing to, and I said, I will if you make me, but I really don't want to for these reasons. 

And then I was told was moving, the person who made this decision said to me, the people in that other part of our department would really benefit from having someone with your work ethic nearby, which was a way of saying, you are working all the time, and I want them to do that too, and so I'm going to send you over there to make them feel guilty for not doing what you're doing. 

And that was a real poignant moment for me because it told me that I was clearly working too much and also that now I, and I would say to my colleagues, I can do this. I don't have kids. I don't have someone who is constantly agitating for me to be at home to do things. We are a pretty low key low stress house, and so I have more freedom than most of my colleagues. I don't have young kids at home to take care of. And so I thought, well, not a big deal if I do it because I don't have these competing demands. 

But what ended up being perceived by the leaders of the institution is we should make them feel guilty for not ignoring their lives outside of the college because this person is doing so much more. And I just will never allow myself to be used in that way again. It's very important that even though I could spend way more than 40 hours a week working, I will not. And one of the ways that I make sure I don't is I keep a time sheet for myself just of how much I'm working every week so that if I work too many hours, then I take that time off the following week and I make very certain that I am not constantly working for this job. 

RPR: And it's hard when you find joy in that work, right? It's hard. And it feels like because when I burned out, it was very difficult to separate what I actually enjoyed or found joy in the work and what I just thought I was supposed to be doing, that this is the way it is and this is what you do. So it took a very long time and a whole lot of therapy to figure out what do I actually want to be doing? What do I actually still getting joy out of? And there was some grieving there for things that I had to let go that it just wasn't in the cards for me anymore after that experience. And I had to really think about what does my identity look like? What does my time look like? What do I do with that time where I'm not working and try not to feel guilty about not working. How did you navigate that having more time suddenly? 

LN: Well, I immediately started reading a lot more, and so I mean you, Rebecca can see me on video. I have just an enormous volume of books, and this is just a part of my collection because I have fiction in another room and I have a whole bunch of books at work, so I read constantly. I'm in the middle of seven books right now and I just, I have specific circumstances where I read specific kinds, and so I read a hundred, 150 books a year. I listen to podcasts, I watch mindless tv. I do a lot of driving and traveling, hang out with my dog who's just outside snoring, and I just try to do the things that bring me joy that are not work. 

RPR: I think we all have to figure out what that looks like. I think we all have to figure out what that looks like. Reading is so cool because it's still learning. You're still learning about the world and you're still learning about people and you're still learning about what people, the narratives that we believe and that we enjoy. So there's so much power in that too. And I think just for listeners, think about things you did when you were a kid that you missed doing or that were fun at one point that you kind of lost touch with. For me, that was horses and I didn't have horses growing up. I went to camp and go on vacation and do trail rides, but then it was like, I want to do this. I can see this as something that's going to be different for my brain. My husband's a software engineer and he builds tiny motor motor cars. So it's like feeding different aspects of your brain a, it's fun, but it's also really important to just being a human and being an authentic kind of whole version of yourself. 

LN: When I was a kid, I was a very avid reader. I also really loved being outside. That has not really been the way I've given my time to myself as an adult because I frankly just don't like any of outside. I'm allergic to all of it, and I don't like being hot. So living in the south means that I just don't go outside very much. But I have really enjoyed being able to give some of that time to my relationships, my friends. So I live in a very small town in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee, and I work in Mississippi, which means I drive four and a half hours to Mississippi. I stay there for a few days and then I come back. So I spend time driving. I love driving because that's the only time of my life where no one can reasonably expect me to do anything. And so it's genuine alone time where I can just kind of decompress and it's a wonderful drive. But then all of my friends live elsewhere, so I will decide to take an afternoon and go to Chattanooga to have lunch with friends or go to a different place or go visit my parents who live in northern Arkansas. And using time for those things feels really nourishing and is just as important to me as the work stuff, but isn't asking me to give time attention and cognition to things for someone else's benefit. It's just for me, 

RPR: I think I obviously coach a lot of faculty and you talk with a lot of faculty and priority management comes up all the time. How do we get everything done? If there's that kind of constant stress of the hustle culture, what advice do you have for faculty who need to start separating their identity from their work a little bit? 

LN: I think for me, it usually starts with some sort of values, clarification, exercise. What are the things that you feel are giving you the most satisfaction and that make you feel excited about your work and your life? And then what are the things that feel like a drain? And we can't always just immediately back away from the things that are draining us. As an example, this semester, I have been feeling unusually overwhelmed by start of semester stuff. And so I had a conversation with my boss a couple of weeks ago about capacity, and for that, I kind of made a list of everything I do in a typical week and about how much time I spend on it, so I don't track my time in terms of what I'm doing, just how many hours I'm working. But at the end, we added it up and it was like if I did the minimum in my guesstimate range, it was like 35 hours a week. 

So this gives me very little time for the things that come up. And the only things on there that I don't find joy from were things like responding to email, but that's not something that you could just decide not to do, not for long anyway. And so there are some things that we have to do that we don't get great joy from, but thinking about how can I focus on the things? And this has been part of my own journey, thinking about the things that if I don't do them, nobody else would, because if somebody else would do it, even if they might not do it the way that I would want to or the way that I think should be done, then maybe I can just let that go and let somebody else do it and focus on the things that are uniquely strengths of mine. So that's like talking about neurodiversity with faculty. There's not really anybody else on our team who's going to do that. And so I want to kind of focus my efforts there. But when it comes to updating our website, I could do that, and I can do it probably more efficiently than others perhaps could have before I gave it to them, but they can do it. And if they have the capacity to do that, then I should let them, 

RPR: That, the whole idea of delegation, it's fraught in so many ways sometimes, right? Yeah. 

RPR: I mean, I like doing things myself and I want to feel like the most helpful version of myself at all times, but I also recognize that if I do everything, then that puts other people's jobs at risk, especially in this moment in higher ed, they need substantial and important projects to do too. So I try to think of it as spreading the work around to protect us all, but also when I am able to help someone else, it feels so deeply gratifying to me, and I think that's part of the human condition. And so I try to think of giving something to someone else as giving them the gift of having something meaningful and useful to do in service to the team. And so it's not about me shirking my responsibilities, it's about giving someone else the opportunity to feel valuable. 

LN: Of course, in some of my workshops, we talk about just how to say no, and we can talk about no being a complete sentence, but that doesn't always work. It isn't always the best strategy, but sometimes no can be a point of negotiation. It's not, maybe I can't do all of this, but maybe there's someone else who could really benefit from doing this thing. Not me pawning something off on someone, but someone else on the team or in the unit could really grow from having this experience or for taking on this task and being able, like you said, to spread it around to make sure people all have meaningful work. 

And there's that trite statement that we think about with teaching that the person who's doing the work is doing the learning. It's The same thing when we think about work, things like the person who's doing that work is learning something, especially if it's new to them. And so in our roles as educators, we want our students to become self-directed and self-motivated learners. And the same thing with our colleagues. We want them to feel like they're contributing something and growing as people. 

RPR: Yeah, yeah. Let's change gears just a teeny little bit and talk about your book, The Present Professor. So tell us where that came from and kind of the impetus behind writing that book. 

LN: It was very hard for me to step into the statement of, I'm going to write a book about teaching. That was the hardest part of writing the book, was just deciding that I was going to do it and I was going to tell people that. So it started when I went to a conference about teaching, and every session I went to, I realized that what they were saying was good, but I had a few thoughts that I wish I could have added, and I thought at the end of that conference, okay, maybe I know enough about teaching at this point during it for almost 20 years that I have something to say that would be valuable. And so I decided to go on a writing retreat to start thinking about possibly writing a book, and it was the scariest week of my life, and I was hot the whole time, and as I mentioned, I don't like to be hot. 

So that was the Crucible. And that was in the late summer of 2019. So I came home and I just immediately put it away because fall classes started and I had other things to do, and plus I was scared and there was a lot of resistance. And then COVID sent us all home and I was just bereft, completely disoriented. And in the summer of 2020, I pulled out what I had written the previous summer and just started putting it together and trying to figure out what is this? I didn't have a plan for the book. I just had a bunch of thoughts that I had word vomited on the page in Taos, New Mexico. And so I tried to figure out what it was and then started working on it. And it's really, it comes from how deeply important I think it is for instructors to be human and to see their students as human. 

And how hard has made it for us to do that by all of the stuff, all of the light to moderate hazing that may happen to some people in graduate school and the politics of departments and all kind of the things that those of us who are really paying attention are like, we're smart people. Why are we doing this to ourselves and each other? And so the book hopes to help readers break through some of that noise, to figure out what matters to them in their work, and then give them tools to start to do some inner reflection and work to figure out how to be more authentic and present in their work with students. That then unlocks the ability for students to also be authentic and present with each other and with us in the classroom. 

RPR: In my work in burnout, we, we really look at that ability to be present goes away when you're burning out or when you're burnt out, you don't have the mental space for that. You don't have the emotional space for that. You get into that depersonalizing space where you stop. In my case, I'll say that I had always, as soon as I knew I could teach at college, that's what I wanted to do and be in that experience. But when I was burning out and starting to depersonalize my students, I stopped seeing them as individuals with specific developmental needs that were perfectly appropriate for their age, and just started seeing the same problem presenting itself over and over again. That was a key signal that there was something going on. So having your book is I think an amazingly powerful tool for faculty to really think about, who am I in this space? What do I need in this space, and how do I make sure that I'm bringing my authentic self in that presence and looking for warning signs when those things maybe aren't happening? 

LN: I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. I do always want to make sure that we're clear when we talk about authenticity and presence in the classroom, that this is not a dichotomy. It has to be a spectrum. And there are some people for whom authenticity in the classroom is not safe because of political or social context. And so this is why it has to be an individualized, reflective process Because We have to decide how do we want to show up in our workspaces and our learning spaces in ways that feel authentic but also safe and at our tolerance for potential conflict. 

I was just having a conversation yesterday with someone about how that feels like the real work of this moment in higher ed that we're all trying to figure out what is our risk for discomfort or conflict and how do we live our values in a way that's at that level. So for some people, what might be called compliance in advance might just be because they aren't really capable in this moment of dealing with conflict or pushback or a spotlight on them for not complying in advance, and so they're doing the motions so that they can continue to do the work that they want to do, and we have to give each other the space and the grace to do that so that we are deciding for ourselves what is safe, what is comfortable, what is in alignment with our values. 

RPR: Yeah, that's really profound to think about in so many ways because it is, I mean, just the moment of uncertainty and just I think outright fear at this point, we fear of collapse at this point. What is going to happen? What is the structure going to look like? How do we bring ourselves into those spaces where you're anxious every day about what could happen next? Yeah. It's really, really powerful. 

LN: And I think that as academics, we are so determined to be rational thinking creatures who don't acknowledge feelings, and so much of our academic ego is wrapped up in that, and that precludes us from having these vulnerable and authentic conversations with one another, which is the thing that will sustain us community is what will allow us to survive and thrive in this period of uncertainty. And so I think that this work is so important and it feels so resonant to people because we all are kind of retreating as a way of protecting, but that's actually not serving our ultimate goal of education. And so we need to be willing to set aside the academic ego and talk a little bit about the things that frighten us or that we worry about so that we can find community and solidarity with one another, 

RPR: And that ego is hard to get over. We're taught that everything is so individualized. We're judged on our research, we're judged, our promotions are individual, so it's really hard to think about being part of a collective and leadership training. I often ask leaders, is your unit a collective or a community? Those are very different, very different environments with very different cultures. 

LN: Yeah, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about psychological safety in the last couple of years because I think that that is a really useful concept, and it's often watered down or misunderstood, but thinking about spaces where it's safe to make mistakes without fear of or shame, and I have worked in very few environments where that actually felt possible. And that's the thing that I think if we're going to figure out how to come together and weather this moment of uncertainty and come out the other end better, then we have to be able to have those spaces where we can make mistakes or say things in elegantly and not worry about being shamed or ostracized because that's how we get creative in the room and figure out how to do this. 

RPR: In this moment right now, what brings you the most joy? What brings you the most concern? 

LN: Anytime I can work with students, I am filled with joy and optimism, and I know that it is fashionable when faculty get together to complain about the challenges of students in this moment, but I just will not engage in that. I see bright, motivated, rational creatures making rational decisions in very difficult circumstances, and if we can understand why they are doing what they're doing, then the opportunity to have a very real and vulnerable conversation about why we're all here. It opens up. I try to teach a class every semester, and my partner always jokes that my reaction is always, oh my God, they're the best students ever. And it's literally true. Every time I start a new class, I'm like, oh, they're amazing. And I genuinely believe that. So that is what sustains me. 

The thing that worries me the most right now is just how much it feels like faculty and students are fighting each other in a time where we really need to be fighting together, and it's those comments about AI use and we've got to do everything in blue books again, and it's, they're not engaged. They're not coming to class, they won't talk. It's all of this kind of fighting. And then the students who talk to me say things like, my professor doesn't really care about me. They don't know my name. You're the first person who's ever bothered to learn my name, and they're sophomores, juniors, or seniors. That's just, that's very, very distressing to me. And so I think the thing that I worry about is that we're so fractured as a kind of sector of the world that we're not going to be able to build those communities that will sustain us and allow us to thrive 

RPR: Think's a really important thing to be thinking about right now. Because there's always that tension between faculty and administration who are dealing with things that don't even know about on our side. They have more information, and then you add that additional tension between students and faculty. Right now, it's just how do we build those communities? How do we find those spaces for dialogue and for communal support? 

LN: And at least for me, it starts with authenticity and vulnerability and presence and willingness to extend trust or at least credulity if even before somebody has earned it. 

RPR: All right. Our last question has always, what's one thing you wish all women in higher ed knew or practiced? 

LN: I think the thing that I would wish from my colleagues is just the ability to set aside all of the programming of and socialization into academia and know themselves well enough to know what is in alignment with their values. I just wish that we could have more people working in higher ed from a values driven place as opposed to a fear or a socialization. This is the way it's always been done place. That's the thing that I think would really change things. I sometimes worry that saying that is just asking women to do even more emotional labor, but it's not our jobs to be the moms of academia. It is our job to be ourselves, and so much of higher ed asks us to be something different. So that's what I would say. 

RPR: I love that. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much. It was such a lovely time talking to you. It's always great to see you. 

LN: Well, I'm very grateful for you and your work with this podcast. 

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.