Distance for Thinking and Restarting Community Spaces

I write this as I try to work through the exhaustion I am feeling deep in body and mind. This feeling of being too tired to do anything, really relates to what I want to talk about this week which is giving yourself distance for thinking. For many, Tuesday will be a big day of restarts, as classes begin and most holidays end. I write this now because I know I need to give myself some distance for thinking this long weekend. Distance for thinking is something that is so important and yet remains so often in a framework of privilege and elitism. When you say "I need time to think" it is with a deep awareness of, "not everyone has time to think." And because this is so true  it is also something that we should be advocating for everyone. Everyone should be given some distance for thinking. 

This can be put in place with paid holiday time, with inflation appropriate wages, with care work support, with quiet spaces, with boundaries being respected. Learners definitely need distance for thinking too. Processing and metacognition is so important, and meaningful course design leaves space for these moments. I deeply realized this week that I needed distance for thinking when I was talking to a colleague and friend and we were discussing the courses we are teaching this term. I mentioned how I found creating case studies for my classes much more difficult this term than last as I was finalizing the assessments for the course. They mentioned that exhaustion is real, and it was then that I realized how the bodily exhaustion I was feeling from change in routine is really a body-mind exhaustion. 

And this is going to be the reality for many come Tuesday. Because maybe you will now have to wake up earlier a few more days a week to work because capitalism doesn't care about  disabled folk. Maybe you will be surrounded by more people than you are used to being around (most of them always unmasked) and while everyone is celebrating this, this gives you deep anxiety and no one is acknowledging that; well know I see you and acknowledge it. Maybe your campus was turned into a movie set this whole summer where you were yelled at by security and felt confined to a very small anxiety and panic attack producing spaces in an excruciating non-trauma aware way. Just me? Actually I am glad if that was just me because I honestly do not wish that garbage situation on anyone. You get the idea. Change is hard on the body-mind. Lack of awareness is hard on the body-mind. Feeling as though you are the only person who cares about health supports is hard on the body-mind. And I promise you that learners in your classrooms will be feeling these exact things too. 

One thing that may help is taking distance for thinking this weekend. Giving yourself space, away from the pressing work at hand, to think about a meaningful positionality to the asks in your life. It could mean just thinking over some case exemplars to see if there is something that could connect more to the concepts and learning goals of your course. Maybe it is brainstorming activities that are respectful of the different levels of comfort for learners. Maybe it is thinking about creative activities you want to try for yourself. Maybe it is thinking about how to restart virtual spaces that you hold dear and be in community with folk who listen and care. So basically the "do it" this week is "give yourself distance for thinking." 

In that same vein I also want to put on your radar that I will be tweeting about the restart of two initiatives that have been on hiatus for a few weeks over the summer:

1. I will be tweeting a Google form on Monday to gather text ideas, availability, and best contact info for those of you who would like to join the Twitter Disability Reading Group that has been going since last year. We meet on Zoom every other week for an hour or so and discuss a section of the selected reading. Together we have read Dolmage's Academic Ableism, Price's Mad at School, and this last summer a novel by Mona Awad called All's Well. We are open to any type of reading, fiction or non-fiction the only parameter is that it should be connected to critical disability studies in some way. 

2. I am starting #FirstGenPLN chat again which will happen every other Sunday probably from Sept11. I am going to send out an informal poll on Monday about the best time for this chat on Sundays, (last time we did 7pm ET) so be on the look out for that. The #FirstGenPLN is a personal learning network (PLN) for graduate students, staff, and instructors in HigherEd who are first generation folk (broadly defined as your primary care givers growing up did not go to college/university). It was started because I was seeing a lot of discussions and resources for first gens in undergrad but somehow those supports disappear for those in graduate school or as folk become staff members or instructors and I identify as a first gen scholar in a staff role.

Send me a tweet or a DM if you have any questions about the reading group or the chat. 

Looking forward to being in community with y'all, and please take some distance to think if you can this long weekend! I will be thinking of you!