Last Friday night when I was settled in on the East Coast mainline on the way back from a conference in London I rashly asked for topics that people would like me to say something about on my blog (which I’m playing with, updating, and trying to write more on). One of our final-year undergrads, Hannah, asked for thoughts on stress management / keeping up motivation in the face of self-doubt.
It’s definitely getting to that time of year – we’re approaching the end of teaching (we start early in Scotland, and early within that at Napier). Dissertations are due soon. Students on other courses or at other universities might be starting to think about exams.
As I said in my set of tweets, I don’t claim to have The Answer to this, but I can tell you some things that have worked for me, or that I believe are valuable. Some of these pieces of advice will be familiar to students I’ve taught over the years. While I’m writing this in response to that undergrad query, I think all of these things are potentially useful general writing practices.
The first piece of advice on stress management is going to seem a bit counter-intuitive: give yourself a break. You can’t work constantly. I know you’ve got competing commitments, and it’s a struggle to fit everything in, but make time for activities that aren’t stressful. Take a pause and make a brew. Find an hour to do some exercise. Take a night to go to the pub. We all need to recharge our batteries from time to time in order to work better, rather than just more.
If you can’t do that, try to make doing academic work more fun. Arrange a writing date with some friends. I am a firm believer in the value of a bit of silently supportive peer pressure to do something, and if you’re working on similar things it’s good to have other people around to ask questions of, take tea breaks with, have three minute raves in your breaks, or whatever it is that keeps you going and enthused.
The subtext of both of the above is: don’t get too isolated. Some people work best on their own, or don’t find social commitments relaxing; in that case take some time to be kind to yourself in whatever way works for you.
Stress can also often come from an accumulation of deadlines. But these shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Assessments normally come roughly at the middle and end of term wherever you are; at Napier there is actually an assessment matrix in the Programme Handbook that will enable you to plan ahead (these are always subject to a bit of change, but we don’t make a habit of changing submission weeks year on year). Think about how you can strategise that work. If you have three essays due in two weeks that might mean, for example, taking a calculated decision to write one of your essays on the text you were most interested in from the first or second week to give you space later. (I say this as someone who was stupid enough to do an 80/40 credit split in his second year of a three-year English degree. I got some of my highest marks in that term when I did two-thirds of the year.)
Stress can also come from deferral of work. Everyone works differently, but I’m a big fan of the accumulative method. Keep getting stuff down; writing is a process, and breaking the tyranny of the blank screen is soothing. Brilliant quotation that you’re definitely going to say something about? Type it into a word document and type a few sentences of preliminary analysis about it. Critical quotation that says exactly what you want your overall point to be? Stick it in a draft of your introductory paragraph. Random quotations that you feel might be useful? Type them in a document (with reference), keep them for later. I still have bits and pieces that have travelled with me for well over a decade now, and once in a while they come in. Cloud and tiny USB storage means this is easy.
For me, doing is soothing. If you’re the same, keep doing things. While I enjoy my own time, I also enjoy being around people. If you’re the same, make sure you have social things planned. Try to think about what makes you feel less stressed about writing and keep doing those things; try to create a virtuous circle of behaviour. And if you find writing generally stressful – maybe try changing your writing practice and see if that helps.
As I said at the beginning – these things aren’t the answer. I don’t even think I’m particularly brilliant at managing stress. But they are a few things that you might try that work for me when I remember to do them!
I’ve ended up just writing about stress management here; I’ll come back to self-belief soon (although there’s a lot of overlap between the two, for me).
Academics Are People Too 