Healthy "Freak-Out"

Another Independence Day holiday has come and gone ushering in the season of unfilled summer tasks. Instructors made grand plans back in mid-May including but not limited to:

• complete some series of tasks on at least 1 research project
• submit conference papers and/or journal articles
• conference paper reviews
• grant proposal writing for new or continuing research projects
• post-award management of existing funded research projects
• course modification e.g., review your previous course instance and update course materials as appropriate
• course development e.g., design new course offering or receive (new to you) course materials

Sometimes, you make strides toward your summer tasks list. Other times, you can easily and frequently caught up in some other tasks. You are in the middle of what I call a healthy freak-out. The freak-out happens first. Those other tasks consume and eat up your days while leaving your nights to agonize over the untouched no-progress to-do items. Those other tasks are not high impact to your career plan and growth, but you still elect to complete them. or a WOC STEM faculty member, the freak-out experience is exaggerated. Why? Because you, my fellow doctor-sister, are the bridge. Poet Donna Kate Rushin says it best.

The Bridge Poem
by Donna Kate Rushin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the Ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...

Then
I've got the explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf you your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

    -from This Bridge Called My Back
             edited by: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
            New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.

You are frustrated by more than your unaccomplished professional milestones, but you know that you can not afford to be paralyzed by it.

You feel a burden to do and to be for others before yourself more times than not.

Stop that.

The healthy aspect of your freak-out happens second. You must sanitize that toxic frustration to green and clean fuel. Let your frustration make you better and stronger. You need to re-focus your energies by finding your balance. There is a time for work, a time for play and a time to do nothing. All parts should be roughly equal. Every day. You can revise your summer task list by answering the following questions:

• What are the high impact items to progress your career?  (e.g., journal article submissions)
• Which task items have impending deadlines? (e.g., grant proposal submissions and conference paper reviews)
• What can you reasonably accomplish in the remaining 6 weeks of the summer?

Originally fount at http://bschoolbabe.com/post/87204327699/how-to-live-your-purpose-i-love-this-graphic)

The image above is one pictorial illustrating what it means to fulfill a purposeful life. Your passion helps you solidify your mission, then your selected profession and vocation goals become more clear. At the center is your ability to find this intersection of your passion, mission, profession and vocation. 

You can do it.

Now, go play -- start executing your revised summer task list in the morning.