How to be a good academic

towards a gentle academic:

ptsdscully:

gaspss-s:

1. be up front and honest about the things you do not know
2. acknowledge the intrinsic value of others’ knowledge bases, even if they do not seem important to you from your institutional context
3. do not feign mastery where you have none
4. respect the gaps in others’ knowledge bases
5. be generous, not only with others
6. but also with yourself
7. you overwork yourself at the risk of legitimizing a culture of overwork
8. privilege voices and perspectives that have historically been left out of the academy
9. nothing is ever neutral or apolitical
10. support the progress of other scholars
11. collaboration over competition

a really helpful thing that a good education-minded friend of mine has had me do lately is to explain things to people outside of my academic microcosm regularly and using terminology that’s accessible. it’s good practice for honing your own understanding and it keeps you from replicating the intentionally inaccessible nature of the academy.

I try doing this whenever I can. I do not believe in the old bias that you cannot explain the core of your thesis/paper/research in everyday language – this is keeping information to yourself and excluding others from sharing their point of view. Apart from this sharing, the biggest bonus is that you get to see your own work from another, less cryptic perspective. I cannot stress enough how valuable such shifts in observing yourself are – getting proven wrong or doing so yourself is not failure, it is part of learning. Thanks for spreading the message!