156 Letter from Ksenia Kirillova
Dear women scholars of the future,
I am writing this letter to you to discuss the subject of mental health and its effect on your life as an academic. I have decided to focus on this because: (1) This volume already contains well-placed pieces of advice from brilliant tourism academics. As a mid-career researcher and a millennial, I do not yet feel “qualified” to give life and career advice. For example, Levecque et al. (2017) found that one in two PhD students experiences psychological distress and one in three is at risk of developing a psychiatric disorder. Yet, there are still debates on the cause-effect relationships: Does the academia cause deteriorations in mental health or the academic world simply attracts those of us who are already at a higher risk? (3) If you ever struggle with mental health issues, I want you to feel that you are not alone. There are people (like myself) who have been there, and I would prefer that you learn from my experience than suffer in solitude. Below are a few lessons that I have learned:
- Make career decisions that prioritize what is good for you as a wholesome individual, NOT what is good for only your career. In my early years, I tended to think that what is good for my career is also perfectly fine for me as a person (research is my life, what else could I possibly want?). This, however, went south very quickly. As a person with a seasonal affective disorder (I get severely depressed during hot and sunny season. Yes, such people exist!), I quickly learned that my happiness in Hong Kong Polytechnic University (where I secured my first academic position) depended more on the local climate than the job (which I loved, by the way). Combined with the sense of social isolation, research and teaching became my only sources of joy. After five years at the institution of my dreams, I chose to leave Hong Kong with its eternal summers for Lyon (France) and its four seasons. From the career standpoint, my departure right after being granted an early tenure made no sense. However, I think this was the point of my life when I wanted myself no longer to be defined by my research. As I enjoy the rainiest summer of 2021 in Lyon, in retrospect, I can say that it was an intuitively right decision (although I miss my Hong Kong colleagues).
- Make the object of your concerns your research interest. It will encourage you to have an analytical and a more objective view on what you are feeling. For me, research has therapeutic qualities; it allows me to concentrate on what feels meaningful and important at that moment. My entire stream of research on existentialism originated in the earlier struggle to find the meaning in life. Reading Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, and Buber were not just comforting but also made me feel that I am not the first (or the last) person to ponder these issues. While I cannot report on having found the meaning in life (like existentialists, I am convinced that it do