On modeling

At various points in our careers, but especially early on, it can feel like we are the only ones struggling. I have benefited from peers and mentors being vulnerable and sharing their own hard moments, and how they persisted, and how life evolved. I think this is really important modeling.

Since soon after arrived at UCSF in 2015, I’ve been nearly constantly re-inventing my professional and personal life due to various major changes – from having Theo while on the job market (and losing job opportunities as a result), to trying to figure out lactation accommodations across multiple campuses a day, to trying to figure out my research agenda and write many grants and papers, to my dad and stepdad dying within five months, to massive changes in my mentoring structure and work team, to my age-peer friends and cousins dying of cancer, to aunts and uncles dying, to a pandemic. While this was intense it’s not wildly abnormal in academia.

Academic training takes so darn long that when we get our “first” job, we may be making decisions about kids, houses, and experiencing loss, all at the same time. It’s not just that being junior faculty is hard (with requirements that in and of themselves can lead to burnout), it’s also that it can happen amid a lot of other really hard things. Even aside from the academia-specific weirdnesses, as a colleague-friend noted, when you are the person going through hard stuff it’s exhausting to always being the one admitting to vulnerability in order to request help. It helps to hear others be vulnerable too, and admit their own struggles.

Both in the context of the pandemic and in parenting, in December 2020 I reflected on how much behavior modeling matters. It’s easier to make the choice to wear a mask when everyone around you is doing it. Someone is always watching. With parenting, I’m increasingly aware of teaching Theo that his feelings are ok, but not all his behaviors to express those feelings are ok. Similarly, I’m trying to model in my weekly letters that we all – no matter how successful we might seem on the outside – experience self-doubt, are challenged by balancing professional responsibilities and personal relationships, and a thousand other examples of being humans.

I hope you are extending yourself the same grace you do to your best friends.