CLAS Acts July 2020

Monthly newsletter of the tenure-line faculty of the college

NOTE FROM THE ACTING DEAN

Ellen Schendel

As you’ve probably heard, I’ll be serving as Acting Dean until Dr. Jennifer Drake assumes her role as Dean of CLAS on August 10. My priorities in the next five weeks are to assist in your continued preparations for the launch of a successful fall semester and to prepare for Dr. Drake’s arrival on campus.

I want to acknowledge the incredible work of faculty and staff across the college as you participated in a range of activities not normally on your agendas for May - August. Faculty governance work, committee meetings, town halls, task forces, and professional development toward teaching online and hybrid courses in the fall have all been on the docket, resulting in an unusually active summer across CLAS. Your tireless engagement makes a difference in the life of our campus and for the learning of our students. Thank you for leaning into this work with creativity, persistence, and students’ needs at the forefront.

I’m also grateful to our colleagues in the dean’s office for getting me up to speed on the college’s conversations about fall ramp-up, scheduling, and budgets, while also planning for a smooth leadership transition as we look ahead to welcoming Dr. Drake in August.

Please reach out to me or anyone else in the dean’s office if there are things we can do to aid in your fall preparations. We’ll continue to send the CLAS Weekly Mailing to keep you informed.

Considering Resilience in a Time of Great Change

Keep in mind how fast things pass and are gone ꟷ those that are now, and those to come.  Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations.  Nothing is stable, not even what is right here.  The infinity of past and future gapes before us ꟷ a chasm whose depths we cannot see.
~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (5.23)

“Seery, Holman, and Silver (2010) recently found that people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than people with no history of adversity (see also Neff & Broady, 2011; Seery, 2011).
~Psychological Resilience: A Review and Critique of Definitions, Concepts and Theory David Fletcher (Loughborough University) and Mustafa Sarkar (Middlesex University)

Unlike the Roman emperor who famously reflected in his personal writings, three of our Psychology faculty with clinical experience are assembled in a Zoom meeting to reflect on coping with change.  While our current crises are literally global, their thoughts turn to how we as individual human beings construct resilience in our lives as we find them now.

Professor Tara Cornelius (Clinical/Interpersonal Relationships) shared some of her own teaching tactic in the early days of the winter transition to remote teaching for the April issue of CLAS Acts.  Professor Mary Bower Russa (Clinical/Child Abuse/Health Psychology) was also teaching in winter.  Their colleague Assistant Professor Mikhila Wildey (Clinical/Personality/Interpersonal Relationships) found herself with somewhat different challenges as she was on maternity leave in winter term and is now active in a clinical work.

The three agree that individuals differ in their resilience.  Some find a lack of structure far more disconcerting than others. 

Mikhila points out, “The sheer amount of change lately has really challenged people.”

They point out that the literature on resilience has expanded significantly in recent years.  One of the findings is how important it is to frame change as a challenge rather than a threat.

“I tried to see our transition to remote teaching as an opportunity to learn online skills,” Mary notes with a hint of a wry smile. She notes that health professionals can often reduce the tendency toward burnout through this sort of reframing.

“With so many unknowns,” Tara adds, “our stress tolerance is challenged.  I’m a planner so the pervasive unknowns in work, health, and family make finding work/life balance hard.  Now our work space is in the center of our home lives so creating boundaries is hard and it is very challenging to be systematic about it.”

Mikhila recalls her maternity leave as a unique challenge due to COVID 19 and the sheer amount of chaos.  “Being home 24/7 when you aren’t used to that, the difficulty in drawing boundariesꟷyou just are not going to get things done as quickly as usual.”

Mary offers that we need to be realistic.  Faculty had two work days to flip their classes so it was impossible to be optimal.  “You do the best you can and consider it a work in progress.

Part of this realism is breaking tasks into smaller steps than one might have before.  The “to do” lists can be much more specific.  They also strongly advocated for being compassionate with ourselves. 

Mary laughs, “I lost half my class in virtual space when trying to break them into groups for the first time.  And my final didn’t launch perfectly.  In the end, I did the best I could, I was realistic, and I gave the students a couple extra points for the stress of dealing with these bumps in the road.”

Tara noted, “Faculty can be perfectionistic.”  Mikhila agrees, “We can’t do things this year as well as we are used to or at the same level.  But that’s okay.”

Do the best you can.

No one is expecting perfection.

No one in our or other professions can do it all.

They recognize that self-care is made more difficult when there is no break from family so some creativity about ways to tag-team may be necessary.  Tara admits that she had to be more deliberate to carve out some space for herself.  Her car has become her alone time spot because she was never alone in her home.  For some, the outdoors becomes this space. 

Mary has been fostering puppies (quite a few at one stage) and knows that kids and pets will go through a reverse adjustment when we go back to campus.

On the other end of the spectrum, some had more of a break from people than they wanted.  Those who live alone or were by themselves due to circumstances often found pets, hobbies, cooking, and social media took on larger roles in their lockdown lives.

Tara observes, “The disruption in socialization activities certainly affects our mental health, and we have to be perhaps even more systematic in seeking out that social contact now, particularly for those who do not have a social structure at home. Even though we don’t usually think about it in this way, those incidental contacts and chats in the hallway with our colleagues, coworkers, and students are important social interactions that contribute to a sense of accomplishment, pleasure, and mastery. We don’t have those incidental, “hallway” interactions in the present situation. So it is even more important to monitor ourselves, and be deliberate in creating social interactions- with friends, with colleagues, family members, etc. Of course, this can happen virtually, outside at a safe distance, with masks, while on walks, etc., but it does require that we all be more systematic about generating those opportunities/interactions, because those casual, unplanned ones are not likely to occur without being deliberate in this way.”

“I agree with Tara,” Mikhila says. “All of the small interactions we have day to day are still meaningful and helpful for our mental health. Being isolated at home alone can definitely lead to increased loneliness and feelings of depression due to lack of social contact. As humans, we are social beings and do need connections with others (no matter how small) to survive. So, we do need to be creative about how we maintain those connections in a new environment. Virtual meetings with friends are great and I am hearing more people making concerted efforts to do this with friends and family. In addition, as we can travel/leave the house more, setting up distanced meetings or even going to the store (even for essential groceries) can be helpful in maintaining some of that connection. For those individuals who are on their own, they unfortunately may have to work that much harder to maintain those connections given they don’t have it inherently built into their own home life. However, the effort is well worth it as it is again very important for one’s mental health to at least have some level of engagement with other people."

There will be an upside to all this sudden swimming in the deep end.

“We will teach better in the fall,” Mary predicts, “because we have more prepꟷbut we still won’t be master online teachers unless we already were.  We should strive to learn one, not twenty, new things at a time.  We need to think about taking care of ourselves.  We need to reflect on what our coping mechanisms are that work for us, such as exercise, reaching out to friends, taking time for ourselves.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Tara adds, “I hope the campus community stays safe.” Mary recommends that we be especially “respectful of people’s different concerns and anxieties.”

“GVSU had real camaraderie in winter term,” Tara recalls. “I hope it endures.”

“People are forced to be more flexible,” Mikhila observes. “We had to let some things go.”

Mary agrees, “Systems have been forced to look at things in new ways.  These new systems can be better for students with varying challenges.”

“Modifying things to meet students’ challenges is okay,” Mikhila emphasizes. 

“And students get to see us struggle,” Tara notes.  “In winter term that brought a sort of emotional closeness.”

“It’s like that moment you realize your parents don’t know everything,” Mikhila says.

“The more we can communicate, clearly, our expectations, the better,” Mary adds.  “When there are problems, let them know you will be flexible and acknowledge the stress of the technical problems.”

“Yes,” Mikhila agrees, “the students valued the clear and transparent professors.”

Faculty felt this too as the university worked as fast as it could on plans in a context of fast changing information.  In a vacuum, it was easy to have thoughts such as “what’s going on?” so any message that reassures the campus community that an answer will be forthcoming is appreciated.

The joint recommendations of the three are reassuringly straightforward:

Sleep

Eat well

Exercise

Try to have some sort of schedule.

Break things into smaller tasks.

Keep an eye out for any unhealthy coping strategies (e.g. increased alcohol use) because these are not effective or sustainable.

Remember that people have shorter fuses and allow for that.

And if you feel overwhelmed with anxiety or depression, it is a sign of strength not weakness to reach out.  Professional help is available to GVSU employees through the Encompass Employee Assistance Program and to our students through the University Counseling Center.

Mikhila reminds us that we can all play a part. “Folks struggling with depression already are more likely to isolate, and so for them, finding the energy to maintain these connections may be particularly difficult. This is also a time for all of us to reach out to people we know who may be struggling in that regard, because they may especially need it right now.“

   

Further reading

Literature Review of Concepts: Psychological Resiliency

Ross Edgely, The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body (HarperCollins, 2020) [Monica Johnstone recommends this one: The author swam around the UK in 157 days and combines exercise science and stoic philosophy in this fun account of his epic feat.]