Finding meaning in our work, with Jonathan Malesic

Bonni [00:00:00] Do what you love, love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life. There are plenty of mantras about how to approach one’s career. Today I speak with Jonathan Malesic about finding meaning in our work.

Production Cred [00:00:17] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:25] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art. And science. Of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:00:54] Let me start by saying John’s been busy writing, teaching and teaching others how to teach. He has had numerous articles and academic journals the Chronicle of Higher Ed and has received grants for his teaching and research on work from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisville Institute.

Bonni [00:01:14] He teaches theology at Kings College and has published multiple books. He also has played the role of director of their center for excellence in learning and teaching. From 2011 until just this past semester. John, I’ll share more in this episode about why there’s going to be a change for him this coming semester. But it certainly isn’t because he doesn’t have much to contribute in the field of teaching and learning. I know that there was at least one thing that got left out of your bio that you thought might be relevant to today’s conversation.

Jonathan [00:01:47] Yes. This is not something that I typically list on my CV as previous employment but the last job I had right before becoming a college professor in 2005 was as a parking lot attendant. I graduated with my Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2004 and was out of work for a few months and eventually got a job working at the corner parking lot which is this.

Jonathan [00:02:16] Really kind of awesome parking lot right across the street from Thomas Jefferson’s rotunda. And it was a great job. I learned a lot working as a parking lot attendant. I think it’s made me a better worker and actually a better person.

Jonathan [00:02:31] In fact this parking lot was featured in an independent documentary a few years ago called The Parking Lot Movie by Meghan Eckman and I appear in it very very briefly at the end. And I kind of I have a really weird hair for some reason in that scene.

Bonni [00:02:48] I’m going to have to watch it and see if I can spot you because of course we’ve never met in person but I’ve seen your profile pictures. I’ll see if I can do it. I’ll be one of those Where’s Waldo but it’ll be where’s John.

Jonathan [00:02:57] And where is John underneath this gigantic shaggy mop of hair. At the end of this movie.

Bonni [00:03:04] What was that like for people when you would meet them because I was one of the things that really strikes me is how much our identity is wrapped up and the work that we do and especially in academia I mean we’re very important aren’t we.

Bonni [00:03:17] So that must have been for people knowing you had attained that level of education and knowing perhaps what you had hoped to pursue. Was there some sort of an evolution in your thinking and reflecting as you went along. And also I should ask how long you worked for that parking lot.

Jonathan [00:03:35] Yeah I worked there for a year and it wasn’t that unusual for people with master’s degrees and even Ph.D. used to work at that parking lot. There were a number of other graduate students who worked there at the time that I did.

Jonathan [00:03:58] Certainly among the workers it wasn’t. You know especially weird. Among the patrons. Some of them were surprised to learn what you have a Ph.D. You know. But I don’t know the patrons who I got to know and who I really liked were of course sort of just cool with it. I was just that guy who worked in the parking lot and you know we would chat with them on their lunch hour.

Jonathan [00:04:31] But the thing is that it was a really good job and it was a job that allowed me to pursue a lot of my intellectual interests. It was kind of a great postdoc in some sense it for one thing the job was really easy.

Jonathan [00:04:52] My job was just to take money from people and chat with them if you know they want to chat and occasionally deal with how irate customers who don’t really want to pay for their parking. But apart from that the job did not tax my brain very much.

Jonathan [00:05:07] There was a lot of downtime so I could read I could write. I got the idea for my first book in the parking lot really through a conversation with one of my former professors and I could go home after a shift and not really be tired. I’d be like oh you know I don’t feel mentally exhausted. I can I can go and live a normal life now.

Bonni [00:05:31] I’ve certainly been following you on Twitter for a while or at least had you on my higher ed list and can remember some of our conversations and you’ve given me some positive feedback about the podcast and such but one of the things that really really caught my eye is this Venn diagram and it’s one of those that is so brilliant but a little tough for us to describe out loud.

Bonni [00:05:52] But we’re going to give it a go so I’m familiar with a lot of people have seen the 3 circle Venn Diagram about our careers and so we find stuff we’re good at but we also make sure it’s stuff we’re passionate about and then it’s also stuff people will pay us for and I will be quite candid with you John.

Bonni [00:06:09] I’ve talked about this and a lot of my classes and I think I’m pretty behind it but you’ve started to crackle away my perceptions in a really good way.

Bonni [00:06:19] But I’ll just tell you up front I have been this Venn diagram has been drawn on many introduction to business courses whiteboard so that those are the three that come together and then in the center. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Bonni [00:06:32] And I think about my own role teaching in higher ed. It’s something I do love doing and it’s something that I have skills to do and that I’m paid for. And this is all good. It all comes together.

Bonni [00:06:45] So I feel like I hit the triple trifecta and now that we’ve started to see some models where a fourth element gets added in it’s kind of the social responsibility element of the world needs.

Bonni [00:06:57] That’s the Venn diagram that you described has just been going crazy over Twitter and social media. So we have these four bubbles coming together and then there are the four intersections. Do you want to talk about those or you want me to take a crack at those.

Bonni [00:07:11] The mission vocation profession and passion.

Jonathan [00:07:14] The version of Venn diagram that I had kind of seen most recently and decided to look you say kind to undermine a little bit was you have those four overlapping circles like you described. You know you love it. You’re great at it. You’re paid for it the world needs it.

Jonathan [00:07:31] And if in the space where two of those things overlap you have your passion. You have your mission you know your vocation or your profession for. For example if you’re great at something and you love it then well that affects your passion.

Jonathan [00:07:50] But you’re not necessarily paid for it. It’s not necessarily something that the world needs. I can think about. I don’t know. For me playing ice hockey. I’ve played hockey since I was a little kid growing up in Buffalo and I love it.

Jonathan [00:08:04] I wouldn’t say I’m great at it. But I’m sort of good enough that it’s it’s fun. And yeah that’s a passion for it and I’m certainly not a professional and certainly the world does not need me to play hockey.

Jonathan [00:08:19] And likewise you know if you’re really good at something and you’re paid for it well that must be your profession. And so one. And have you incorporated those kind of spaces where only two of those circles overlap in your teaching.

Bonni [00:08:35] Not not in my teaching necessarily. I would say that early on my first job very very first job as a 14 year old was to work at Baskin Robbins and I would say that’s not going to be that the world needs it although the world loves it but the world doesn’t necessarily need it. I was pretty good at it.

Bonni [00:08:54] I used to play a game in my mind too to see if I could memorize people’s orders and they kind of would make it go with their personalities and I loved just the delight that someone would have that you would know their order.

Bonni [00:09:06] I also used to try to serve twice as many customers as anyone else would. So I had a passion for it. I was good at it. I wasn’t really particularly paid that well for it. So but as I mean I was paid 14 have a job I’ve been working ever since. So it’s not too bad but I would say the world-

Jonathan [00:09:24] Even then you know you were you were productive. You were committed to it. You know just as today.

Bonni [00:09:32] Yeah one thing that we will of course dive a lot more into this but one thing that started to put a crackle is just as I’ve reflected on the articles that you’re going to touch on today and done my homework for today’s conversation.

Bonni [00:09:45] I really look back and go will you have been completely privileged and you’ve had a job since the age of 14. It was never a problem getting a job. I didn’t have to go to multiple places. It was like oh I want to get Baskin Robbins and I worked there. I want to work at the YMCA and I worked there and when I graduated I interviewed one place and got a job and got to make more money than people who were graduating and going on to work for public accounting firms.

Bonni [00:10:09] It’s all been good. And even my darkest days in my career I was laid off after working for the same company for more than 11 years. And it was a sudden thing and really devastating for me. Even then though as devastated as I was and as much as I realized my whole identity was wrapped up in what was on that business card.

Bonni [00:10:31] I still ended up doing consulting the very next minute. People were calling me saying hey come and talk to us and I ended up being so terrified of not having a regular paycheck but making more money than I’d ever made in my life. So I sensed this real great sense of privilege that I’ve had in my career that is not in common with other people.

Jonathan [00:10:50] Yeah. And I think that as you know you touched just now on that sense of uncertainty that you had as a consultant and you know people who. Study labor from a social scientific perspective or something like that often talk about precarity that state of being precarious of having your next paycheck be a little bit uncertain.

Jonathan [00:11:21] On the one hand there are people who are perhaps highly paid consultants who yeah they might not know when their next job is going to be but they can be fairly confident that when it comes around they’ll be paid pretty well and they’ll be able to cover their bills without much trouble.

Jonathan [00:11:38] And then on the other end though and we very much see this in higher ed with part time and adjunct faculty who also have a similar sense of uncertainty about where their next paycheck is coming from. But they aren’t necessarily going to be paid so much and have a lot to worry about in terms of what their of their financial security.

Bonni [00:12:00] Yeah. I worked as an adjunct for a year before attaining a full time but even then I know I can’t relate because it was a hobby. I had the job the consulting that paid the bills and then that’s what I did at night for fun. It was not something that paid enough to pay the bills.

Jonathan [00:12:17] Certainly you know we read and speak with a lot of people who rightly point out the problem of a lot of adjuncts who are not being paid in proportion to the amount of skill and passion and ability that they bring to their jobs.

Jonathan [00:12:37] But I think it probably is worth remembering that not everyone who is being. Yeah I mean there are people like like you were or yeah they’re certainly on my campus plenty of local teachers or local businesspeople who teach one class a semester in the evening and I don’t think that they feel exploited.

Jonathan [00:13:00] But at the same time there are lots of people for whom you know teaching might be their best source of income.

Bonni [00:13:06] And I know I have a person I’m connected with that I won’t be any specific on details to protect the mentality of this individual.

Bonni [00:13:14] We talk pretty regularly about this person wants to have the opportunity to be full time. And so how do you know.

Bonni [00:13:24] Should they say yes to the opportunity. The class that now has a hole in it for this next semester and they really need the person to do it. But then if you keep saying yes at some point you’ve trained them that don’t know they don’t really ever need to make you full time. It’s a really that’s a that has a really really point of tension and difficult course to navigate.

Jonathan [00:13:45] In that kind of gets at one of those areas that is not always labeled that Venn diagram that we often see about trying to find our purpose. You can do work that you love and I think that that is what most college faculty would say. Yeah I love teaching.

Jonathan [00:14:08] I love doing research. There are even a few who would say I love committee meetings and you know we’re a workforce that is typically you know we’re we’re pretty high trained we are committed to doing our jobs really well the world absolutely needs the work that we do. Higher education is something that.

Jonathan [00:14:34] A lot of people need and they want but it’s hard sometimes for so many in the higher education to be paid adequately for that work. You can get three of those things to add up. You’re good at it. You love it. The world needs that.

Jonathan [00:14:50] But if you’re not paid appropriately for it then we start to get into the territory where you’re doing this great work but you’re not really being treated with the dignity and the respect that is rightfully yours.

Bonni [00:15:04] The diagram that you created was again based on these four bubbles coming together. Bubbles right. I believe they’re called circles.

Bonni [00:15:15] Could you tell I’ve been around toddlers all morning.

Bonni [00:15:19] They’re also called circles. At any rate you had these overlapping areas that aren’t filled in in the original but that you failed. So you just started to get at the one you’re good at it you love it you’ve filled in that bubble with exploitation. I want to share a few other ones. There’s the one where you love it. And the world needs it.

Jonathan [00:15:38] And you can be paid for it. Which is all great but if you’re not good at it then there are certain jobs that you shouldn’t have. Like for instance don’t go into medicine.

Bonni [00:15:49] Yes please.

Jonathan [00:15:50] If you love medicine obviously the world needs medicine. You can be paid to do it. But please don’t be my doctor if you’re not actually good at it that’s something to worry about. I think I had another one where if you love it and you’re good at it and you could be paid for it. But the world doesn’t need it then you might be a Kardashian.

Bonni [00:16:11] Yes.

Jonathan [00:16:12] For example.

Bonni [00:16:14] What kinds of things come to mind for you when you hear people talking about pursuing success and specifically in academia what does that look like and what are some of the dangers of us pursuing success in academia.

Jonathan [00:16:29] Yeah well success. There’s a kind of. Stereotypical vision of academic success that I think we’re all. Taught explicitly and implicitly in graduate school which is that success equals getting a particular kind of job.

Jonathan [00:16:54] As soon out of graduate school as possible and that job ideally would be a job where there’s very little teaching. There’s a lot of research support you know the very prestigious kind of position that is labeled as a kind of success.

Jonathan [00:17:10] Certainly getting a lot of publication is considered success. And you know I’ll say that I totally bought into that in graduate school. I was never really shown any other version of success. I would say and for the past decade I’ve been teaching at a small liberal arts college in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Jonathan [00:17:33] And I do a lot of teaching and. Here successes is somewhat different. Certainly publication is valued at the college. But day in and day out. My first concern is for teaching the 80 to 100 students who you know we typically have in four courses during a semester.

Jonathan [00:17:58] And so I have had to learn over time. To see succeeding as a teacher to see my success not in terms of just you know getting a grant getting a publication or something like that but also and seeing students learn and making sure that they were not making sure like the nasty way like your kids you’re going to learn.

Jonathan [00:18:24] But you know in a kind of assessment way you know being sure. Yes they really did learn and here’s how I know that. And that’s the kind of success that is not usually very public.

Jonathan [00:18:36] The front page of the newspaper is not going to list the people who had the students I had the best learning outcomes in a given semester. The front page might lift Oh Professor so and so won a 5 million dollar grants.

Bonni [00:18:53] Which one gives you more of a sense of meaning.

Jonathan [00:18:59] For me it’s really both I think.

Bonni [00:19:05] You mean you’re not going to allow me to put two into a false dichotomy. No you must choose a or b.

Jonathan [00:19:15] Add one or two additional elements to that which would be you know from my work over the last several years in faculty development.

Jonathan [00:19:25] Getting to work with my colleagues and to see them get excited about becoming better teachers. That’s very gratifying. Even I would say doing committee work and being a good institutional citizen can also be very gratifying and provide a lot of meaning.

Jonathan [00:19:44] I think that what ties all of these things together and this is you know if there’s like a thesis to what I want to say this podcast it’s that the best productivity tool that we have as faculty is not a technology it’s not software it’s our personal self investment in our work.

Jonathan [00:20:10] It’s our commitment to students it’s our commitment to research it’s our commitment to our institution. We are in the great privileged position as you already mentioned to be able to do what we love. And for the most part we have a culture that really supports and encourages us doing what we love.

Jonathan [00:20:32] But there is a big downside to all of this which is that that commitment that high level of self investment that we have in our work also opens us up to gigantic pitfalls. We already talked a little bit about the possibility of exploitation for part time faculty.

Jonathan [00:20:54] But another one would be I’d say overcommitment and ultimately burnout that we can be so committed to our work that we eventually start to hate it that it overwhelms us. And you know we have identified ourselves so strongly with it that that actually becomes too much of a burden for our work.

Bonni [00:21:23] I’m sure you have seen that with colleagues and maybe perhaps with yourself. You want to give an example of that without of course using names or if it’s you you have to say I have a friend and then put your your air quotes right.

Jonathan [00:21:38] You know you always hear on Twitter. You know I’m asking for a friend. Yeah I mean I can say that this.

Jonathan [00:21:47] This past academic year and especially this past semester I don’t think I was at my very best at my job for really the first time I began to feel burnt out for most of my career I’ve never really enjoyed turning papers around really quickly and getting back to students graded.

Jonathan [00:22:09] But I never really struggled with grading papers in a timely fashion. And this past year and especially this past semester was the first time where I let you know stacks of papers with really electronic stacks of papers.

Jonathan [00:22:23] But you get the idea. Let those papers sit for weeks and weeks and not want to touch them. And. There’s a lot of guilt would build up in me as like I have to go and face those demons and I know that they want their papers back and I don’t have them ready.

Jonathan [00:22:43] And I already told them that they’d be back in a week and it’s already two weeks now and that kind of deal. Well I mean ultimately it’s bad for me and for all of us to feel that way about our work. If it’s you know maybe there’s just the right amount of guilt that can motivate us to do a good job.

Jonathan [00:23:04] But I think that had gone too far and. The kind of funny part about this was at the end of this past semester I told one of my classes after they had turned in their course evaluations so that I knew that this would not affect their evaluation of me. Well I gave them my self evaluation.

Jonathan [00:23:22] And I said you know I think that this was just about the worst job I’ve done in my career. I don’t think I did a really good job of teaching this semester.

Jonathan [00:23:34] And what surprised me was that even though I felt so much over not getting their papers back to them in time over not having you know just the right activity for them to do in class and for maybe relying on you know just a sort of rambling lecture a little too much. The students reaction was to ask me what are you talking about.

Jonathan [00:24:02] We thought you did fine. We didn’t see any that didn’t seem like anything anything wrong with the way you taught so on the one hand I really do believe that I did not do the best job. I was not as effective as I should have been and could have been. This past semester. But at the same time.

Jonathan [00:24:21] I recognize that student’s evaluation of some students learning doesn’t necessarily match up very well with our evaluation of ourselves. You know one way you could call that a sort of subjective and objective effects of our work and I think these are two ways that we could find our work meaningful.

Jonathan [00:24:41] We can find it meaningful subjectively I feel good about it. It is meaningful to me it helps me become a better and more effective person. But then there’s also the objective which is well what’s your product. And for college faculty the product is. Exists in someone else’s brain. It’s someone else’s learning and those things don’t always match up the way that you expect them to.

Bonni [00:25:09] The other interesting thing to me about that exists and someone else is that in some ways there’s a time release aspect to it and they aren’t necessarily. I mean I certainly wasn’t when I was in college able to embrace the value of what I was receiving at the time.

Bonni [00:25:26] And one of the things that helps me think about my teaching in a little bit better perspective this is on a good day is to realize I’m not the only input. There are a lot of people across the campus who are shaping these students lives who are contributing to their learning.

Bonni [00:25:42] And there’s no way it could be all made this one class or what have you. And that tends to like I said on a good day just helped me realize there’s a much bigger picture at work here.

Jonathan [00:25:52] Oh yeah absolutely yeah. And I think that this is a place where maybe the work ethic of the parking lot can help out. Yeah I could leave the parking lot and forget about it until my next shift and never took my work home with me there.

Jonathan [00:26:09] But surprisingly there is actually a lot of collaboration asynchronous collaboration. I would say between the you know the dayshift and the nightshift whatever I did during the day shift would affect the guy who comes in for the night shift and I see the guy because we were like all guys.

Jonathan [00:26:35] And if someone does a really good job of the nightshift that makes things easier for the next person. And I think this is something that. I think that this is a this idea of collaboration is potentially a great source of meaning for college faculty.

Jonathan [00:26:50] We don’t look like collaborators. We don’t always work side by side. But yeah like you said in the students mind what happens in their 10:00 class and what happens in their 11 o’clock class. Can build on each other.

Jonathan [00:27:07] Or they could totally conflict and this is the point where I think that good collegiality and good faculty development programs can help of faculty to as a whole do a better job through the small contributions of each individual faculty member.

Bonni [00:27:27] I’d love for you to picture me for a minute in my classroom and you’re going to replace the scene that used to be there and the scene that used to be there was find something you love find something you’re good at but you’ll be paid for and problem solved.

Bonni [00:27:42] Now you’ve got your perfectly packaged career. What conversation should replace that. Or I guess maybe how could we be more aware of its limitations.

Jonathan [00:27:53] What you described is definitely that has been me. At times I have tried to convince my students to follow your passions and all of this. I actually think that that center part of the Venn diagram where we are doing what we love and you know we’re good at it and you know the world needs it and we can be paid for it.

Jonathan [00:28:14] That’s still something worth hoping for. It should be a kind of goal but I think it would be. It’s important to tell students and I think it’s probably important for us as faculty to recognize too that that’s not always the paintable and that there’s a lot of meaning.

Jonathan [00:28:36] Well two things first there’s there’s a lot of pain that can go into the pursuit of that and sometimes the unfulfilled pursuit of that goal.

Jonathan [00:28:44] And second of all that there’s a lot of meaning to be had in our work even if we don’t hit that sweet spot. Even if any of a number of factors prevents us from finding that you know sort of meritocratic purpose.

Jonathan [00:29:07] You know there’s the person who has been struggling to get paid well for their work teaching in a college or university stumbling into work.

Jonathan [00:29:20] They can be paid really well for well for even if it’s not what they want to graduate school for. That’s pretty meaningful.

Bonni [00:29:29] Sometimes too all of us myself very much included are not aware of what it is that we’re limiting ourself by and I’ll give you an example there was a wonderful episode that This American Life did a couple of years ago and I’ll post a link to it in the show notes.

Bonni [00:29:46] And one of their stories was around a community that has the highest rate of disability claims in the country. And I won’t go into the broader theme of the story about one woman in particular who was interviewed is burned into my soul and they were interviewing her about what her dream job was.

Bonni [00:30:07] She said I would love to work at the disability office that was her dream job. The person interviewing her thought that the reason why she wanted that job was because she knew what it would be like she could be empathetic to the clients who would come in and would maybe need help or questions answered. And it turns out that’s the only job she had ever heard of. Where you got to sit down while you work.

Jonathan [00:30:32] Right.

Bonni [00:30:33] And there has to be in all of our lives some limitations we’ve made on ourselves because we just didn’t know what else might be possible.

Jonathan [00:30:40] Right. Absolutely.

Jonathan [00:30:42] I think that that’s that’s something else that graduate school probably teaches us is that you know this is it. You can you know especially if you’re like me. I mean my Ph.D. is in religious studies right.

Jonathan [00:30:56] And the only people I saw with Ph.D. in Religion studies were my professors. Of course I guess I should become one of them. And I don’t know if you get a lot of students who say that they want to be professors too.

Jonathan [00:31:10] But I’m in this weird situation when students expressing interest in graduate school particularly graduate school in say an M.A. program as opposed to you know a MBA or something like that.

Jonathan [00:31:27] And again you know I want to I want to be a college professor. On the one hand. Great. That is a great thing to be you know it’s flattering and obviously here I am. I am one. But at the same time. I kind of want to warn them and say. I don’t know it it’s it’s actually a pretty tough road.

Jonathan [00:31:53] And there is a lot of heartbreak and a lot of burnout and a lot of exploitation along the way to that road. And there has to be something else that you would find every bit as fulfilling or more fulfilling that can make use of the real skills that you have that will not. Perhaps have so much so much pain a long way.

Bonni [00:32:19] I’m going to be including the link to all the articles that you sent to me even if we didn’t necessarily touch on them because they’re so good. I liked my homework for today. But before we get to the recommendations segment is there anything you really want to make sure we mentioned before we do that.

Jonathan [00:32:33] Yeah. One of my mentors in graduate school is named Charles Matthews. Chuck Matthews and he is an extremely wise and good and funny person. And a year and a half ago he had an essay in Inside Higher Ed about exactly everything that we’ve been talking about.

Jonathan [00:32:55] And he breaks down. The elements of an academic and academic life really into four categories job career vocation and life. And he in that essay kind explores the various ways that these things can all conflict with each other. But ideally they should be able to line up and I absolutely recommend every reader I start every listener read that essay.

Bonni [00:33:25] And actually your life has been a little bit. It’s been taking a backseat.

Jonathan [00:33:33] I am an academic. I’m also married to an academic. For the last couple years we have been teaching at different colleges in different states. I mean this is just not sustainable. I mean we cannot be happy people continuing to commute several hours to each other on the weekends.

Jonathan [00:33:51] So yeah I am in the fall I’m taking some unpaid leave in order to well you know be married and to do some other you know writing project. So keep on the look out you. You have not heard the last from me.

Bonni [00:34:09] Now is the time in this show where we get to the recommendations segment and I’m going to just quickly say I got to go see a movie with my husband and we have not been in a movie theater since. I think before both of our children were born and I think it’s been a long time and it was a delightful one it’s Pixar. Most recent movie called Inside Out.

Bonni [00:34:28] It’s about an 11 year old girl Riley. She moves from the Midwest to San Francisco and it’s all of the motions that exist inside of her they become characters in the movie there’s joy fear anger disgust and sadness and they all attempt to help Riley navigate these changes with her move.

Bonni [00:34:45] It’s a delightful story and we would not probably bring our kids they’re too young for this kind of a movie but it was fun to in the theater because there were all the little kids in there who add their little sound effects which make it that much more fun to watch.

Jonathan [00:34:59] Sounds great.

Bonni [00:35:01] And what would you recommend.

Jonathan [00:35:03] Yeah I would recommend really on the topic that we’ve been talking about in addition to Chuck Matthew’s essay for academic and academics thinking about their careers. There’s been a great series of articles by the chronicle Vitae by Melanie Nelson. They address productivity career decisions the applicability of academic skills and non-academic careers and vice versa.

Jonathan [00:35:28] And her essays have been really interesting really helpful in the about things like time use and setting boundaries around your work.

Jonathan [00:35:39] If I can add one little bit more recommendation it’s a book called Refuse to Choose! by Barbara Sher and it’s about people like me who have a lot of different interests and struggle within narrow focus that’s so much academic work demands that if any listeners are fine that they’re working on a lot of different products at once and feeling frustrated. This might be a good book to read.

Bonni [00:36:06] Well thank you so much for accepting my invitation to be on the show. You sent me an email suggesting some guests and I am going to pursue those but I also said hey you’re on my list of people that want to invite on the shows. It was so great getting to talk with you today about something so significant finding meaning in our work.

Jonathan [00:36:24] Thank you very much. I appreciate getting the invitation and this was a fun conversation.

Bonni [00:36:30] Thanks once again to John Malesic for being on today’s show and sharing about finding meaning in our work. And if you’d like to comment on today’s episode you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/54 as well as getting all the links to the great articles that John shared about and also our recommendations.

Bonni [00:36:50] If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update that’s where you don’t have to remember to go to the Web site to look up all the links you can do at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe and you’ll also receive a copy of Ed Tech Essentials: 19 tools that will help you incorporate technology into your teaching and productivity. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to catch you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.