Are the academic circles wrong?

More than a decade ago, Palaeocographer Summer Praetorius received some bad news: her mother has brain cancer. Brightorius was deep in her postgraduate studies at Oregon State University in Corvales, but she somehow managed to reconcile her mother’s care with the burden of demanded work. But within a few months, the mother of Brighturius died.

In the aftermath, Brightorius looked like a picture of flexibility for her colleagues as she continues to work and go to lectures. But under the roof she was torn between her grief and her desire to continue her higher studies. The only way she felt can remain on top of her study demands is to attach her emotions. “I often wanted to leave because I felt very running and strands,” says Brightorius, who is now working in the American geological survey in Minlo Park. California. “But there was not a really option.”

Praetorius experience of the academic circles often embodies the flexibility – the ability to adapt and overcome challenges or adversity. Academic circles are not the only environment that encourages people to put a brave face when it becomes difficult – other workplaces appear a similar cultural tendency. There is no doubt that flexibility is a necessary skill to deal with inevitable failure, rejection and fierce competition that comes with the construction of a research profession. Some institutions, including the National Institutes of American Health (NIH) and Import College London, are running courses aimed at helping researchers develop the flexibility needed to move in difficult job challenges and maintain their well -being.

But some researchers say that the culture of academic circles perpetuates the harmful misconceptions about flexibility, such as implicitly that researchers should “make it difficult” in a toxic environment. Others believe that institutions need to do more to address regular problems – such as low wages and lack of inclusiveness – before they have always put responsibility for researchers in the storm. “Instead of teaching people to avoid the stones we threw them, it would be better not to throw stones from the beginning,” says Roman Zviagintsev, a researcher in educational equality at the University of Vienna.

What is flexibility – not

David Yiger, a psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, says that there is a simple definition of flexibility that “when something bad happens, it does not bring you out.”. But this opinion has its limits and feels a lot of myths about flexibility, such as its equality with the suppression of negative feelings, and Yigger adds. He says this approach often makes things worse in the long run. “It is a very bad strategy to organize passion,” says Yigger. Other flexibility is that flexibility revolves around continuing to work in environments where inequality, varying and bullying is.

The expectation of upgrading this edition of Emily Warton, Biomatic Mechanics Researcher at the University of Liverpool John Morris, UK. On the International Women’s Day in 2023, Warton made a presentation of her division on issues that students faced in comprehensiveness, along with her own experiences. But a large male colleague refused her fears and struggled to understand where she came from. Although some of the colleagues of senior others were supporting after that, most of them advised her not to share a lot about her personal experiences. “I was told that I need to tighten if I wanted to be in this world,” Warton says. “Basically – I need to change,” instead of there being a shift in the behavior of others or the broader system, she says.

But real flexibility does not revolve around wearing a suit of shields to work or continue with goals at the expense of mental health. The vital medical researcher who heads the Training and Education Office at the National Information Institutes (Oite) in Betsda, Maryland, says that instead, it comes to “making” calm and intentional decisions in the face of setback and disappointment. “This means often setting the borders and learning to say no for demands or unreasonable requests that do not coincide with the researcher’s values, as Milgram says:” It is the ability to be able to Know when to continue and when to be stirred. ”

For example, an early researcher may continue to work with the fatwa and is a leading main investigator because they see them as a necessary starting stone in their career. But in this case, finding a way to get out of this toxic situation is healthier than getting rid of it and exposure to abuse, as he says who had interviews with them.

Dosana Durgi, a cognitive nerve scientist at York University, UK, says flexibility is not a fixed feature that people generate, but it is a skill that has been developed and practiced over time (see “how to become flexible, a healthy way”). A large part of the flexibility of buildings includes thinking about challenges instead of responding to them, as well as looking at cases of failure as opportunities for learning. “These are habits that you need to develop all the time, so they exist when you strike adversity,” she says.