Tag: academia

8 tips for surviving academic conferences with fibromyalgia

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In November, I attended two academic conferences. The first was the meeting of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (in Williamsburg, Virginia), and the second was the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (in Vancouver, British Columbia). Here is what worked for me to navigate the situation.

1.Look at the schedule ahead of time

This is something you should do anyway, but especially if you have a chronic illness. Be strategic in how you will expend your energy, because it is a limited resource. Identify sessions and workshops you absolutely do not want to miss, and then identify some that you would like to go to if your energy and pain levels allow. If there is an afternoon session you really want to go to, take it easy in the morning, so that you don’t burn out early.

2.Plan around your own presentation

If you are presenting something at the conference (paper, poster, or other performance), chances are it’s going to be the most intellectually demanding part of the conference. You have to be “on,” paying attention to your topic, to what your co-presenters are saying, and you will be engaging in intellectual discussions. I personally think this is the best part of the conference but it also takes a lot of energy out of me. I never make concrete plans on the day I am presenting. I identify a few sessions I want to go to, but do not commit to a workshop or formal meeting for that day.

3.Early panels or late receptions – but not both

Conferences are usually jam-packed with activities. For example, the earliest AAA panel starts at 8 a.m., and receptions for various groups within the organization run until 11 p.m. or later. As someone with a chronic illness, I can do one or the other — but not both. Trying to do both means that I am in too much pain and brain fog the next day to do much of anything. So again, look through the schedule and at your presentation time, and decide which is better for you to attend — the early stuff or the late stuff.

4.Build in rest times throughout the day

When you are around other people in your field who are just as passionate as you are, it is tempting to try and see everything. Figuring out dedicated rest times ahead of time can remind you to slow down and stretch your energy. For example, you can identify a coffee place close to the conference venue to just sit down with a beverage and relax. Or you could take advantage of a dedicated quiet room, if the conference happens to have one. At the Society for Applied Anthropology meeting in Portland, Oregon earlier this year, I was lucky to have a room at the conference venue itself, so I could simply go back to my room for a quick nap if I needed it. That was by far the best conference experience for me.

5.Be strategic in your networking and note-taking

Sometimes you go to a talk and really want to further connect with the speaker/author, but your brain is fried and you don’t think you could put together a coherent sentence. Jotting down the person’s name and why their work is relevant allows you to look them up later when you are in a better mental space. While running very low on energy, I ended up just jotting down the time and the room I was in, as well as a few key words for the presentation’s title. This allows me to cross-reference with the conference program later, and helps me stay in the moment so I can listen and absorb the information.

6.Use your mobility aids if you need them

This one feels like a no brainer, but it needs to be said. I struggle with using my cane at conferences because I don’t want to deal with potential questions and stigma. Or I worry that I will not look “professional.” However, there was always a point in time where I wish I had my cane with me, where my pain got to the point where walking was difficult. So just do it, regardless of what internalized ableism tells you. Your comfort and ability to enjoy the conference is more important. I have a button that says “I have fibromyalgia” that I do wear if I have my cane, so that people don’t just keep asking. The choice to disclose is of course yours, and thinking about what you want to say in advance if someone asks you about your use of a mobility aid is helpful.

7.Be mindful of how travel affects you

Even if you have a pretty good idea of what your limitations are and how you can best stretch your energy, the stress of traveling to the conference can throw a wrench in the system. As graduate students, we often have to find the cheapest flights to conferences, and that can mean many layovers, departures in the middle of the night, and the most undesirable seats. Allowing yourself time to recover from your travel before hitting the conference will help.

8.And of course, listen to your body

If you feel you need to rest, rest. That may mean changing your plans or canceling on some activities, but in the long run that is what your body needs. This is where looking ahead at the schedule helps, since you can have an idea of what you can cut out and what you really want to attend.

Mental health, grad school, and fibromyalgia

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It is no secret that grad school takes a toll on grad students. Study after study show that students in graduate program have an increase in mental health issues, depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation. A big culprit in all of these is how we, as students, are constantly pushed into having to do “more.” More research, more publishing, more service – and more writing. “You should be writing” is ubiquitous when it comes to academic memes.

Picture from Shit Academics Say

Having a chronic illness also comes with a toll on mental health. The biggest for me has been to remember what I was like before fibromyalgia showed up. I used to be able to go on runs, to have all-day reading marathons, to write out a seven-page reading response in a couple of hours before heading out to be social. No more. Everything has to be meticulously planned with rest days and contingency plans.

Therefore, this summer has been very rough on me. Having advanced to PhD candidacy (basically, all I have to do now is write my dissertation) I feel the need to work as hard as I can to collect more data. Unfortunately this has coincided with a worsening of my fibromyalgia condition. I have been in and out of flares of various intensities, my focus basically shot, managing to do the bare minimum for my work responsibilities but feeling like I am getting nowhere. This is also why I put this blog on the back burner. As much as I enjoy sharing my experiences, I have to prioritize my job, my research, and my social life.

Of course, once I write out all that I’ve managed to do this summer, I’m doing fine. Meeting with my PhD committee this week has also confirmed that I am doing fine. I am on the right track. However, my brain is still telling me I should be doing more. This constant tension between what I think I should be doing and the knowledge of my limitations is a huge downer. Focusing on the positives only works so far – at the end of the day I still have a lot of limitations to work around, and that is exhausting. But I keep on keeping on. This semester I have a plan to get more writing done, as well as a couple of conferences to network and share my research. I am cautiously optimistic that I can navigate the ups and downs of fibro and stick to my timeline of defending my dissertation in the Spring of 2021!

Victory! Officially advanced to candidacy

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I’ve been quiet on the blog front lately because I was working on passing my oral comprehensive exam (that is, my prospectus defense). Big presentations are stressful in their own right, and of course stress ends up triggering some fibromyalgia symptoms. For me, it was the fatigue and brain fog, the exact symptoms you don’t want for a presentation. Thankfully I had prepared enough that I went on auto pilot and delivered a good presentation.

I feel very lucky to have mentors who have helped me tailor my dissertation research to something I can manage given my physical limits. I went through a dark period where I felt I could not complete my PhD so it is gratifying to have come this far!

Thinking of my future self as sick

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At this point, I am very good at understanding where my energy levels are at and at not overdoing work… in the present. I am not so good at remembering that in the future, I will still be sick. And that’s a problem because a lot of academic work involves looking far into the future.

For instance, call for abstracts for conferences go out months in advance. I need to attend conferences, so I submit something, but months later when it is time for the conference, I could be in the middle of a flare.

Or, a call for book reviewers goes out, and I indicate my interest, and by the time I receive the book and have to write the review, I have three other things going on (since I still work, and am still a PhD student) and, you’ve guessed it, a fibro flare.

This is where I am currently. In March I have two conferences and a research trip, and a book review to get out before then. I also have to work on the brunt of my PhD proposal before March, because I need to schedule my defense before the end of March (!) and I will be traveling so much.

I’m not sure how so many things suddenly piled up in this one month, and I think it is because while I can see myself, in the present, as chronically ill, I can’t do that for the future. I can try to manage my workload, but fibromyalgia is always going to throw a wrench in the plans. I haven’t quite figured out how to do this. I can’t really RSVP to a conference with a “depending on whether I am flaring” condition.

My emergency fibro kit

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This is a collection of things that I keep together so that I can easily bring it with me anywhere I go. It’s very small which makes it a lot more portable, but obviously does not include bigger items like my cane (which I usually still have in my bag just in case I need it).

The contents of my kit are:

  • Compression gloves [for when my hands start hurting, or when I get too cold in the office but still need to type]
  • Elbow compression sleeve [because working at a desk with a painful elbow is terrible]
  • CBD balm, lavender scented [the lavender helps with stress; at this point I’m unsure if the CBD balm helps with pain]
  • CBD vape, lavender [lavender again helps with stress; vaping CBD does seem to help with my fatigue levels]
  • Medication spares [sometimes I forget to take my medication in the morning. Having spares means I don’t have to go without for the day.]

Publish or Perish – How Academia perpetuates that your worth is your productivity

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If you’ve spent time in academia, you’ve probably heard the phrase “publish or perish.” This refers to the idea that, as an academic, if you do not publish research regularly, your career will die. Academic publishing is supposed to be the gold standard of science: you conduct research, you submit it to a journal, your work gets reviewed by other scientists who critique it, you make the changes they require to bring it up to the required standard, and you have a publication.

Publications build your CVs, which in turn builds your career. Advice I have received as a grad student invariably contain “have 2-3 publications before you get your PhD if you want to stay in academia,” and one of the more useful classes I have taken had a professor emphasizing that you need to think of the publishing potential of all the research you undertake prior to even starting the research.


“Publish or perish” neatly exemplifies the idea that if you’re not doing work, you’re just not doing enough.

Beyond being competitive for the job market at graduation, what you publish and how often also determines your chances at getting tenure, that is a job for life at a university. Tenure is highly sought after, even if studies show that the number of tenured jobs available is decreasing while the number of PhD holders is increasing.

“Publish or perish” neatly exemplifies the idea that if you’re not doing work, you’re just not doing enough. This is so ingrained in academic culture that a slew of memes exist revolving around the idea that “you should be writing.” Even though publishing is supposed to be “good” research, and certainly that is still important, publishing is slowly turning into a quantity-over-quality game. There are so many journals that it is difficult to know which have high standards and which do not without spending time researching them. In theory, again, they should all be going through the same peer-review process, but academic publishing is a business, and papers make money. The recent story about three academics managing to get papers published and accepted for publication, even though they were either made up or preposterous, illustrates that there is something broken about academic publishing.

Even for academics without a disability, this expectation of producing work is brutal. There is a lot of guilt that comes with not doing enough, to the point where it even changes what “free time” entails. There is an expectation, especially as a graduate student, that you simply should not have free time. Every moment of your waking day should be spent in pursuit of your degree.

When you have a disability that affects your ability to think, process information, and get things done, this unattainable standard is even further away. I posted earlier about feeling that I could not use fibromyalgia as an “excuse” because I wanted to be held to the same standard as my peers, and that means producing research at the same pace as they are. And yet, if I produce good research but need slightly more time to produce it, I am not as competitive as others in the field. It doesn’t matter if my research is sound or good; if I am not publishing regularly, I am at a disadvantage. 

Currently, I am working on two manuscripts (research papers to be submitted to a journal for publication). One of them is part of my work, while the other is research from my Masters degree that I am finally getting around to turning into publication format. I am trying to churn them out before the year is over because I want to be able to tell my committee that I am finally on the way to getting something published, after three and a half year as a graduate student. I have accomplished many other things this year, and yet it feels that if I don’t manage to submit something for publication, I won’t have quite done enough.

The pernicious thing, too, is that there really isn’t an “enough.” There are lower limits that you should be hitting, but really no upper limits. Even with no disability, this is not a healthy model.

On Appreciation

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This Thanksgiving, social media lit up with a wide variety of gratitude posts. Our celebrations here took a slightly different angle though, focusing on appreciation instead of gratitude.

On Wednesday, Marc came home with a bouquet of flowers to show that he appreciates me. That night, we made an effort to acknowledge each others’ efforts in our relationship and reflect on what we could improve on. It was lovely to feel seen and heard.

In academia, we often must work alongside other academics for periods of time, be they through the long years of the PhD program as your committee members become the gatekeepers of your entire career, or through shorter collaborative research projects. These are all professional relationships, but when you throw something as personal as a chronic illness in the mix, it’s hard to find where the boundaries are.

Clearly, I want to communicate with my supervisors and collaborators that any delays or changes of plans are not due to a personal failing, but are because of an illness I am still trying to grapple with. However, I also acknowledge that they don’t need to be privy to the whirlwind of doctor appointments, new medications and their attending side effects, days of fatigue where even getting out of bed feels like too much, or even days when I have the energy to do work OR to come to work, but not both.

I don’t know that I feel comfortable expressing gratitude to the academic people in my life because of their understanding and patience when it comes to my illness. I mean, should I really be grateful that they are willing to work with me for not being a perfectly healthy human being all the time? Do people experience deep gratitude when they are laid up with the flu and have to delay some things or adapt to do others? Or do they just expect that the other people will be understanding?

So instead of gratitude I want to show appreciation to my collaborators and supervisors who have worked with me in changing things around because of fibromyalgia. It still takes the form of a “thank you” but it changes me from viewing fibro as something that is getting in everyone’s way, to something that gets in my way sometimes but which can be worked with.

I appreciate my academic colleagues for working with me, I appreciate my supervisors for their flexibility, and I appreciate my collaborators for their trust that I will not let them down, even if I have to work in an unorthodox way (such as by taking advantage of insomnia.)

Reclaiming a lost year: words of wisdom from my committee member

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  • Grad school is HARD. For years, you are constantly asked to prove to the people around you that you are worth being there. Give yourself some credit to be doing this difficult thing even with a chronic illness.
  • Being forced to take an alternative route to achieve the same research could lead discovering new methods or at least refining existing ones. There is a place for you in academia.
  • Find your support group. Find people who can share wisdom and who can use yours. It’s even better if they’re not just grad school friends. It’s good to take a step back and see the bigger picture away from academia.

These were the biggest takeaways from a wonderful committee member following a meeting. Story below the cut.

Continue reading “Reclaiming a lost year: words of wisdom from my committee member” →

Figuring out a new identity: how my diagnosis was received by those around me in academia

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When I was diagnosed, I had been with Marc for about 6 months. Our relationship had gotten to a kind of weird funk because of fibro, to the point where he told me that I seemed like I just did not want to have conversations with him anymore (not true, of course — I just did not have the energy to hold in-depth conversations, being barely able to comprehend simple questions like “how was your day?”). Getting a diagnosis was both a relief and terrifying. I had an explanation for what was going on with me, but something was actually wrong with me.

Marc’s reaction was fantastic – he asked me how he could best support me and make my life easier. Reactions from my closer friends – the ones who knew that I was struggling with a slew of symptoms that got no relief – ranged from being grateful that I finally had an answer to wondering what exactly fibromyalgia is.

The reaction from my professors was overwhelmingly positive too. All of them told me to take time to process my new diagnosis and to take care of myself. Even though I had medical documentation that I could offer as proof, I had established a good enough relationship with them that they took me at face value and didn’t question the authenticity of my diagnosis.

The real issues don’t stem from telling people your diagnosis — they rear up in the aftermath, when you are trying to adjust to life with fibromyalgia. 

Continue reading “Figuring out a new identity: how my diagnosis was received by those around me in academia” →

Catching up by making the most of insomnia

~ fibro-academic ~ 1 Comment

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My desk. I may be slightly unicorn obsessed.

This was my desk at 5:45 a.m. I’ve been up since 3 a.m. You can add “insomnia” to the list of side effects I started yesterday.

However, I only feel regular-sleep-deprived tired instead of fibro-fog tired, so I am using the opportunity to catch up on work I did not do this weekend with the help of my Chibi Star Trek cup filled with delicious Mauritian tea.

It’s not an ideal state of mind to delve into citizenship theory, but it’s better than nothing. I’ve learned to take the moments of clarity where I can find them.