Hello, everyone,

If you've been around here for awhile, you'll probably know that I am very big on celebrating wins throughout the PhD - I encourage it among my 1:1 coaching clients and it's a big part of any kind of group training or coaching that I do.

I believe that to counter the competitiveness, comparisons and rising instances of not-good-enougness in academia, it's important for us to acknowledge the things that we do well and feel good about.

BUT.

I've also been realising recently this rah-rah thinking can be harming just as badly; that feeling the constant need to celebrate and to emphasise the 'bigness' of our potential impact can be its own awful pressure-cooker.

Because while I do 111% believe that every person's reason has an important place in the world, that can potentially make a real and tangible difference to the lives of many, we don't have to make that the sole or central focus of our research journeys.

Big, flashy life-changing research is great.

But I want to remind you today that it is also great and valid and perfectly fine for you to want to be ordinary

It's okay to want to *just* do 'ordinary', even 'mediocre' research.

It's okay to not want to make big splashy research headlines, but to just do a small piece of research that may only make (what you perceive as) a 'small difference'.

It's okay to not want to win awards! or rake in millions of dollars of grant money! or change the fabric of society!

It's okay to just want to do this work because you feel it's important for your tiny corner of the universe
or because you simply love knowledge and learning and exploring
or because there are questions that you've been wanting to examine for years
or because you just enjoy the process of doing research
or because you recognise all the other parts of PhD life that you gain from and enjoy that have nothing to do with the PhD itself

It's okay to be ordinary.

And it's okay to be doing the PhD to align with and meet your close and personal goals and values for a happy life.

There's this deeply harmful lie of academia, masquerading as encouragements towards 'personal development' or 'thriving' or 'success', which tells us that you not only have to be the best researcher your field has ever seen, but that you also have to have excellent, extraordinary, exceedingly-large ambitions and goals.

There's the lie that as such highly qualified, educated people doing such important work, we "should know better" and we should want and aim for more.

There's that lie that "it's such a waste" if we've invested all this time, energy, money into such a reputable qualification/degree and don't go on to do something massive and 'worthy' with it.

BUT - URGH.

For some of you (me, certainly) that kind of pressure may not be inspiring or motivating at all. It makes my gut churn and every part of me clench in overwhelm. It makes me pull away and not want to do the research.

Today, I invite you to reconsider: what do "excellent, extraordinary exceedingly-large goals" mean for you? (Perhaps nothing at all to do with tenure or publishing or life-changing research; but about the satisfaction of knowing you've done very thorough study work on a subject you love profoundly)

To consider: why knowing better is not about agreeing with academic / societal / cultural expectations of what makes a good career/life, but about knowing yourself better, and being intimately attuned to what brings you fulfilment, joy and a sense of achievement - no matter what that looks like to anyone else.

To question: how can anything, ultimately, be a 'waste' if means you get to wake up each day feeling completely at ease, healthful at all levels and deeply content with your life; if it leads you to doing the things that you really want to and which completely align with all that you deep-down desire.

Here's a story to end with: I went to a highly competitive school full of ridiculously smart and highly capable people; a place where getting Cs were considered abhorrent (!). It was a given that everyone should be applying to Ivy League universities and a given that most of them would receive offers from their first choice.

About 5 years later, after we'd all gone to and graduated from university, I saw on Facebook that one of my classmates, let's call her Mary, had gotten married, started a family and was now posting joyful, proud photos of her homemade jam.

My immediate thought was "what a waste of a good education", that that's what she's doing with her days now. "After all the opportunity she had and she became a stay-at-home mum? Pfft!"

Meanwhile, here I was slogging through jobs that I hated, waking up every single morning feeling restless and inadequate, chasing one job to another to another, right up until I started my PhD (where I then continued to chase more and more and more accomplishment - conferences! awards! writing! workshops! - and never feeling satisfied)

I think back now and realise - the joke was on me. Mary didn't waste her education; she was living her happiest life while I continued to "waste" the next 20 years chasing after some illusive 'big' 'worthy' accomplishment. I'm almost envious now, of Mary's maturity and insight to have known so soon after leaving school exactly what she wanted, and to own the hugeness of living in such a seemingly 'ordinary', unremarkable way.

(although 42-year-old me now would say that making your own jam is pretty fucking remarkable).

In the hyper-competitive, driven spaces that we find in most higher-education institutions these days (and, I daresay, in most other sectors out there), the extraordinary thing is not to obediently and unquestioningly fall in line with the huge, massive, impressive goals and expectations that aren't our own.

The truly extraordinary thing is to step away and reconfigure what really feels worthy and celebratory and important to you;

and to give yourself permission to go after it...

... even (or especially) if it's quite, quite 'ordinary'.

I am here cheering you on and loving hard on all your small or big, precise or messy, exceptional or unexceptional dreamings.

As a recovering hyper-achiever, I'd love to know if this email has resonated for you at all. Feel free to email me back and let me know what very, very ordinary things you'd like to begin resting in more; and which grandiose goals and ideals you'd like to start letting go of.

Love,
Jamie x

*****

​Jamie Pei, PhD ~ The Messy Coach​
​jamiepei.com​

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