191 Letter from Agnieszka Rydzik
Dear Friends,
I have travelled a long way. You probably have too.
I grew up in the 80s in rural Poland. I was an introverted studious child who liked reading stories. My mum was a teacher so we had plenty of books at home but also there was little else to do and I was not exactly sporty back then. There were not many distractions in way of technology or gadgets in communist Poland, so books and stories were some of the more exciting things in an everyday world defined by shortages.
I come from a family of strong-minded and independent women. I grew up watching them challenge many social norms at home and beyond. This is something I carried on doing in my life albeit in different contexts and in different ways. Now, I see my younger sister conforming to even fewer norms and challenging even more. Ours is a continuation of the journey of the many women who came before us and paved the way for who we could become.
On my journey to where I am now – via several countries, degrees, universities – I have met many wonderful people who contributed to the shaping of who I am as a person and as an academic, starting from my university tutors, PhD supervisors, co-authors and mentors, to colleagues, students and friends from across the world. It is thanks to them I am able to navigate the linguistic, cultural and organisational norms.
I have spent over a decade in UK HE. In those years, I have felt fulfilled professionally and also there were times when I wanted to leave academia for good. I have more distance to all this now and am able to see a bigger picture. Maybe not all the time but most of the time. This ability to step back has not come to me naturally but was a conscious effort to reframe who I am and who I want to be.
I have seen many talented passionate colleagues and friends normalise overworking through feeling huge underlying pressure to work non-stop. This often comes at the cost of sacrificing private life, health, wellbeing, family. I was there too. I thought this was part of being in academia and that I did not have a choice. I saw many excellent academics with amazing potential burn out, lose joy in the work they do, and walk away. But I also met academics who were very successful, loved their work and also managed to have a life outside of academia. I decided to be in the latter group. This is still a work in progress for me (a lot to do with managing time, prioritising, letting go, fighting perfectionism, training myself to distinguish between work and out-of-work time, and most importantly, managing digital tools and not letting the inbox take over), but I am now in a better place than a few years ago. This balance, although extremely difficult to strike in a multi-dimensional role full of competing priorities and tight never-ending deadlines, I see as essential to building a long-term rewarding career in academia. I hope you can find this balance too.
It saddens me to see talented young researchers worki