When I saw that Rebecca Pope-Ruark and Lee Skallerup Bessette had a new book out that focused on the experience of neurodiversity and mental illness as faculty and staff in higher education, I knew I wanted to talk to them.

Lee and I have known each other for years so I reached out and set up this interview.

I don’t have a diagnosis but I strongly suspect a few things, and our conversation definitely bears the hallmarks of ADHD style. We go off on tangents and spiral back to previous points to develop them further. And really struggle to end the interview.

I’ve tried to edit out some of the verbal holding patterns while our brains and tongues catch up with each other without losing the style of our speech. There are also some spots where we interrupt and talk over each other, but they resolve into coherent stuff and we are pretty equally matched on the interrupting and how we deal with it.

I’ve tried to give the conversation some structure, and keep it connected to the book. We do veer off on occasion, but I think I’ve done a decent job of bringing it back.

There will probably be a whole other episode of outtakes on the topic of old school Twitter and how it helped a whole bunch of neurodivergent people connect and build networks and careers, before most of us even knew there were names for the ways our brains worked.

On to the interview …

[Start of transcript.]

Jo VanEvery
Lee has recently got a book come out with Rebecca. How do you pronounce her last name, though?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Rebecca Pope-Ruark.

Jo VanEvery
Okay. So the two of them have edited this book, which is mostly sort of personal essays by various neurodivergent faculty, staff, people in higher education who are working in higher education, not students, with varying kinds of brains. So you’ve called it: “Of Many Minds”, because we’re talking about, we don’t all have the same kind of brain when we’re in higher education. What’s that experience like? So you’ve… “Of Many Minds: Neurodiversity And Mental Health Among Faculty and Staff” is the title, and it’s published by John Hopkins [Press], and it’s out already. But yeah, so you’re saying that that didn’t… That came about because you, you met Rebecca, presumably, on Twitter.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, yes, and also, originally it was one of the co-editors was supposed to be Kelly Baker, who I’ve known for a really long time. She’s another OG Twitter person who I’ve been following. Our kids are about the same age as well, sort of thing. We’ve been through a tonne together, adjunct, advocacy, all of that kind of good stuff. And she was originally going to be co-editing this with Rebecca. And I saw the call for for proposals, the call for abstracts. And so I submitted, because I was like, this is exciting. And, you know, I knew Rebecca, again, from Twitter, but not as well as I knew Katie, right? Katie I knew, like, like, I said, og kind of Twitter, Twitter friend, and, um, and then, so [I] submitted, you know, my abstract was accepted. They’re really excited. And then Kelly had to pull out of the role of editor, right? Life happens, this… And I had just, you know, I have previously edited a book on my own on affective labour and alt-ac roles, so I know what’s involved in editing these kinds of essays and this kind of work, and I also know how hard it is. And so, speaking of awkward conversations, I just emailed Rebecca and said, “Hey, I think that this volume is really important. I think that it is going to make a difference, and I would […], and I know that Kelly has had to pull back from this project, and I am offering to co edit this book with you, if that suits you.” Right? And also, like, the super awkward, like, caveat, where it’s like, sometimes if you don’t know how you’re going to work with the person that you’re better off on your own. And “I totally understand if that’s how you’re going to do it. I still want to contribute. I just want to offer the, my help for being able to edit this book, because I know, because this is really meaning[ful]. I think this book is really meaningful. It is really meaningful for me personally, and I really want to help do it justice and help you in any way that I can.” And so that’s… And she’s like, after my long, rambling, awkward email, immediately responded, “Yes, let’s set up a time to meet and talk about it”, and we did. And so that’s how I ended up as co-editor of this, of this volume, which I’m, we’re both extraordinarily proud of, and just, you know, really thrilled to be able to do.

Jo VanEvery
I think, you know, it’s really good that you stepped up. And you know, Rebecca’s last book was about burnout, so presumably one of the things she learned through that is about accepting help. You were all like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
As long as it would be okay. I was like, “I don’t want her to burn out on this book.”

Jo VanEvery
This is hard work. So,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
If you wanna help, but she’s like, “Oh, fantastic. Yes, come.” And obviously, you know, that’s, you know, that’s really good. I just want to like, let’s, let’s… There’s so much in this book, and I don’t really… Like a lot of it is personal essays. And so I think you really do have to read it to kind of get the real sense of… It gives a really good sense of, like, the variety of things people are dealing with. And it does mix sort of things like ADHD and autism, and things like, you know, there’s a few contributors who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or with other kinds of mental health conditions. And then, obviously, because of the way everybody gets treated when things like ADHD and autism, almost all those people have some sort of mental health thing going on anyway, and then the whole state of higher education at the moment is pretty much mental illness created for everybody. Like there’s no… There’s a good reason a lot of people are writing about burnout, which is, like unfortunate, but, you know, it’s really… The pressures right now are just terrible. So I think it’s nice, because it gives that kind of sense about how these things, like, you see a lot of commonalities and a lot of that kind of thing.

Jo VanEvery
The book, I like the structure. Like, I really like the structure. You’ve got the sort of three main things where you’ve organised them under, like: Coping and Masking, which is kind of, how do individuals manage when they’re like this. And then there’s the thing about the structures of H.E. and people kind of realising “This is not me, these things, this, this context, makes this really difficult.” And then the last section is about stigma, which is, again: I’m a sociologist. I’m familiar with the concept of stigma. You know, it’s, it can be kind of individualising, but I think the way that you’ve set it up means that it comes after the structures part. It’s like, it’s almost as if, like, this is how the structures part is experienced individually, is through this sense of stigma. And then you’ve kind of book-ended it with… So at the beginning, you’ve got a foreword, and an introduction, so a guest contributor, foreword, and then an introduction by the two of you. And then at the end, you’ve got this thing that just kind of like, it’s almost like the section is called “Other”, I can’t remember what it’s actually called…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Coda. I call it Coda. I hate when…

Jo VanEvery
There’s two things in the section called “Bonus Chapters”.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Oh yes, no, we did, yes, we did have the bonus chapter.

Jo VanEvery
Right? So it’s kind of like, “What do we do with these? They don’t fit under the three headings”, but they’re sort of a conclusion. And both of them are sort of a conclusion. One of them is kind of on just… Spoiler alert, but I think the spoilers are useful in this case. One is about the importance of accepting that you’re human and and, you know, the fact that you’ve used ‘neurodiversity’ rather than ‘neurodivergence’ in the title, I think, also signals that it this is just part of what it means to be human, that all of us, right, like, everybody’s brain works differently, and some of us there are, like, real, you know, serious, often disabling, ways that that happens. But there’s also just a lot of diversity, and many people struggle with mental illness, some people have chronic mental illness, but some people do struggle with mental illness due to circumstances or whatever. And this is just part of what it means to be human, and that we have to be sort of compassionate with ourselves.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then you finish up with this Coda about professionalism, but I want to go back to what you say in the intro, which is “Higher education is a trap for neurodivergent people.” Now I could read the longer quote I’ve highlighted. So this is on page three of the introduction.

Jo VanEvery
“If there is one thing that became clear to me while editing this collection, it is that higher education is a trap for neurodivergent people. It is not the only trap, but it is one of the more seductive. Structures that support flexibility, encourage and reward hyperfixations, provide clear guidelines and have some degree of tolerance for, let us call it quirkiness. The masking is seemingly easier, at least at first, and fuels a neurotypical view of ourselves. If can just do these things. I will be accepted in this space.”

Jo VanEvery
And then you say, “In reading these first person accounts of neurodiversity in the academy, the pattern of the trap that higher education set for all of us becomes clear. We were rewarded at various points of our academic journeys, and things often seen as weaknesses or detriments were celebrated, but slowly or all at once, the pressures of structural ableism, conformity and our own internalised ableism have caused us enough harm that our mental health has suffered..”

Jo VanEvery
And I just think that just sets it up so well. You know, it seems like this is an inviting place, right? There’s a lot of flexibility, but I’m also recalling other things I’ve learned outside of your volume, where a lot of times people aren’t diagnosed. You know, we’ve talked you were a late diagnosis, and some of that is generational, but even I’ve also seen parents talking about trying to get their kids diagnosed. And it’s like professionals refuse to diagnose people with ADHD or autism if they’re not struggling really badly, like if you’re managing, even if the managing is taking a real toll, you know, in the short or the long term, and it often does in the long term anyway, they just don’t, they don’t, even if parents want their kids to be diagnosed, the professionals will do it because they’re like, “Well, it doesn’t seem to be affecting [you]… You know, you’re getting good grades. You’re getting…” Right? Or you’re, you know, “You’re not disruptive, or not disruptive…”, or whatever it was, right? And, and so, you know, in a way, that’s part of what you’re talking about, is like we were rewarded for, you know, being able to, like hyperfixating to do really good work. But I think, you know, also often, you know, the other thing I see a lot in some of those little memes and things on social media is, you know, the kind of thing, “Oh, we never thought you were autistic.” And they’re like, “Well, of course you did, because, because you’ve been calling me weird my whole life.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? So like we’ve all been [told]… “They’re just really weird. They don’t, they aren’t…” Right? But then academia seemed like this place where the particular kind of weirdness was acceptable and it was okay.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So I don’t know if you want to say more about that and like, that sort of sense of what’s going on in and as a thread through some of these stories in this book. And what you hope this book does for people reading it in terms of, maybe, maybe it like, just bust that myth for people so they don’t, they can deal with it better.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I think, though, that, like, there is, I think, I think, I think the, I think the the promise of higher education will remain a trap, right? Just because it is like: “Study a thing that you are obsessed with for a long period of time”, and then, if you’re lucky, too, especially as a grad student, “We’re going to give you a class where you get to talk about the thing that you’re obsessed with to undergraduate students”, right? Like, “And they have to listen to you!” You know, like, there’s, there is so much about that. And I mean, it is to expand it to just even talking about, should students go to grad school anymore? Is there a career in the professoriate? There are, there is always going to be this, this, the certain class of students, neurodivergent or not, who are like, “No. I want to dig into this topic. I want to… Like, there is more to this.” I I – The life of the mind. Like, “I want to not be in a cubicle. I want to have the the the ability to, like, obsess over Beatles, obsess over medieval Portuguese history”, about whatever it is, right, whatever it is that has caught your attention and caught your, you know, for neurodivergence and hyperfocus. But like, just like, you know, there, there is a certain type of person who is attracted to academia, and that is a person who is, really wants to get deep and study something, right, and have that opportunity. And so, like, in that way, higher education is always going to be a trap for a lot of people. It’s just the results of that trap look differently, and one of them is for everyone, unemployment. But that’s a whole other podcast episode… But it’s… So I mean, there is this idea where you know, the opportunity to study, to hyperfixate, to sort of have a much more flexible schedule. This is all very attractive.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And and again, you can think about on the flip side of that, like I think the other question is: “How then, can, can regular jobs, whatever they may be, be more appropriate for neurodivergent people?” Right? Like you, you, happen to hear that like emergency room doctors all have ADHD, right? Like, because everything is always changing. Everything is like, is just like that, that hyper stimulus that, like people think ADHD, because we don’t make dopamine in our brains. Like you know, you can see certain, certain jobs, certain disciplines, are attractive to, again, undiagnosed people, right? It’s like, if they’re a doctor, they probably haven’t been diagnosed with it because, you know, they’re doing real well in school, obviously…

Jo VanEvery
And they’re not disruptive!

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Like, or they are in a good way, right? Like, there’s the good disruption and there’s the bad disruption.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
They’re not the ones, like, you know, throwing spit balls. They’re the ones in the front of the class going, “Oh, I know the answer.” That that’s the two, that’s the two ends, right? And we’re worried about the kid doing spit balls, but we’re not worried about the kid who always has the right answer. We just sort of roll their eyes at them and be like, okay, you know…

Jo VanEvery
Let somebody else have a turn.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Let somebody else have a turn. Let’s, you know…

Jo VanEvery
I think you and I, know [that], , we’ve been that person

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah and again. So there’s, you know, like, it’s for a certain kind of neurodiversity, always having, you know, I was weird because I was was a, was a geek, was a nerd, was a, was, you know, do we was the one in the front of the classroom will always have the answer. But, like you said, never got diagnosed, because that wasn’t a problem, right? It was, but it wasn’t a big problem, right? Like, and then, you know, to then go into, right, grad school where it’s like, “Oh yeah, no, like, getting good grades is a good thing”, right? Like, “And getting the right answer and, is a good thing, and it’s rewarded. And, you know, being good at writing tests of a certain kind is rewarded”, right? And again, not all neurodivergent people would be suited for grad school in terms of like, can you sit for three, four hour comprehensive exams? There are divergence where it’s like, “Nope, never mind. I’m out.” But then, you know, the kind that are attracted to academia, that’s, you know, the things that, as I said, are being asked of them to do are those things like, “Oh no, I’m good at that”, right? “Oh no, I don’t mind doing that. I can do that.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But, but then like, and this comes up later in my introductory chapter in it. And again, it’s another through line that was really striking to me, is the idea of that we all had, and it’s it is rooted in ableism, but it’s also rooted in sexism and and racism and all that kind of stuff. But there is this ideal of what a professor should be, right? And it’s old and white and male and slight, like, maybe a little quirky, but ultimately, right, like, they, you know, like, not, not so quirky that it’s, it’s, like, destructive, right? And, and so, like, there’s so that, like, like, that’s why I say it. Like, comes up against the clash of, there are lots of things that are really great, and I wouldn’t want to change about academia, right, about the grad school, about getting there, about, you know, and maybe, and maybe that’s why it’s like I was really good at it, so we shouldn’t change it, but, you know, but then again, like the structures of the institutions… We were on Brian Alexander show and asking about, like, what can higher education do to be more welcoming to neurodiverse folks? And less, like, you know…? And I said, like, “Institutions can’t do anything”. Right? “Institutions can’t do anything. It’s the people within the institutions”, right? “The institution is people, but people aren’t the institution.” Like, it’s this weird thing. And, I mean, you’re a sociologist, so you think more about [that], but, like, but you know what I mean? Like, it’s just really hard, because the the institution of higher education is what it is, and it is slow moving and slow changing, because that’s what it’s meant to be, right?

Jo VanEvery
I think that’s another thing about what you were saying about we got rewarded for, you know, being able to do these exams, or being able to, right, getting good grades, you know, because we knew all this stuff. And I think that, like this is another thing I think about, and I hadn’t really necessarily connected it with the neurodivergence piece, but there’s been a lot of writing and thinking and talking about the harms that grading has done recently, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And a lot of that, quite rightly, focuses on the people that get excluded by those systems, right? The people that don’t do well and get excluded because they can’t write the exams or do whatever.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But you know, as somebody who works as a coach with a lot of people that did do really well by that system, I also have a theory that it has harmed all of us as well.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah!

Jo VanEvery
Right? And precisely because of what you said, like that is part of this trap. It’s like, for a certain kind of neurodivergent brain, some of what was rewarded early on, like having the right answers, getting good grades, all that kind of stuff, you got rewarded. You got scholarships. Like you got rewarded with actual cash, sometimes, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah! And opportunities.

Jo VanEvery
And you got opportunities, and you got all these things. And one of the things that happens between doing a PhD and becoming like a regular academic, if you are so lucky as to be able to pursue that path, is that the reward system flips.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? That, that, you know, some of what got you there is absolutely, almost detrimental to your progress after that, because then it’s like, “Okay, now you’ve got the PhD, you have the stamp of approval as an independent researcher. We now need you to kind of be independent, and, you know, motivated and make your own decisions. And we’re no longer…” – you know, like, we have all these debates about the importance of, like, being able to retain seminars in the humanities and stuff for undergrads, because, you know, it’s important to be able to discuss these works in order to properly understand them. But then, you know, you’re an associate professor, and you’re trying to work on your book, and it’s like, who are you supposed to discuss this theoretical stuff you’re reading with, right? Like, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, you’re supposed to just be able to understand that on your own. Are you kidding me? Like… When are you supposed to have the time to figure that out? Right? But also, like, some of what comes out in this book is very definitely a kind of, like, you know, people were good at, like, “Okay, this is what good work is. I’m going to do a good job of my assigned task.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then the story… Spoilers, guys: some of these people get turned down for tenure or promotion despite, like, really glowing publication records, student evaluations, whatever, because they aren’t attending enough optional social functions. Or…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. That one is the one that I always talk about. That is the one that I always talk about where

Jo VanEvery
It’s kind of weird…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know, like, what does this have to do with my job? But that’s the thing that, for some people, is like, oh, that’s… You’re too quirky. You’re not friendly enough, or you’re not… Right? And…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
The other one that, the other one that I, that always sticks up, out for me, is that the at their annual review, somebody made a comment that they were rude because they passed by the open door of an office and didn’t stop to say hello, right?

Jo VanEvery
Oh god.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no. And then, and like it was, you know, it’s just this little vignette. And again, different parts will stand out to different people, obviously…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But like all of those little things where it was like, “I didn’t know that…” And that’s that’s part of the neurodiversity, social cues, hierarchies. That’s always been my downfall within higher education and a lot of people with ADHD. I’m not so sure about autism, but I know for sure, for ADHD, is we have trouble seeing hierarchies, like, and they don’t make sense to us.

Jo VanEvery
I think I’ve seen autistic people say: “It’s not that we don’t see them, it’s that they don’t make any sense to us, so we don’t think they’re important.”,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Well, yeah. And so like, I don’t… I would often not show the proper deference to the right people. You know, I’m interested in what you have to say, not the title that you happen to hold.

Jo VanEvery
I’m definitely like that too, yeah, and that really varies, like, what institutions care about, that and stuff. Yeah, there is a really good sort of contribution to this volume by somebody who changed institutions, and the new institution had a very different setup, and that really kind of threw her. She was really succeeding. She got recruited to the new place because of her success. And then she gets there, and it’s like, how does this place work? And why won’t you tell me how it works? And in the end, she leaves and goes somewhere else where she’s able to succeed because they’re able to [explain]… So I think like that, that’s one of the things. But I think there is that thing where, you know, the the way in which that trap gets set. So, to use the metaphor you use in that introduction is that it really depends where you are. And sometimes the trap is, you think, “Oh, the whole place is like [this], like, all of academia is like this”, and then you end up in a different institution, or a different department, or a different like… It’s just, and it’s like, “Oh, what? Wait a second. How is this not working this way? And, and why am I all of a sudden struggling?” And I think what was really like, interesting about the trap, thing that you set it up with is that then you, the coda basically comes down to saying, to kind of calling out professionalism as this kind of, you know, it’s almost, it’s almost like a cloak, an invisibility cloak, or something for for discrimination, right? It’s like a Get Out of Jail Free card for people to discriminate. And that, again, I’ve highlighted a piece that I just want to point out to people. A couple of bits on page, 172 and 174 so the first part is, and this is Lee’s words again in the book:

Jo VanEvery
“Professionalism is just our society’s acceptable way of saying ageism, sexism, racism, sizeism. And in the context of this collection, ableism being labelled unprofessional is not discrimination, even when we know it is”

Jo VanEvery
And I’m assuming ‘we’ here as those of us who get labelled that way. And a couple pages later, you say:

Jo VanEvery
“Professionalism has become the catch-all reason for dismissing and marginalising people who do good work outside our society’s norms, or could do good work if they were allowed to work in ways labelled unprofessional.”

Jo VanEvery
And I think that is just a really powerful way to kind of end this whole collection. And by highlighting it here, I just want to highlight it, because I think if you go into this book thinking of that, what you spot is really like, who is being…? Like, we know who’s being labelled unprofessional, because we’ve been in that category, but who is really being unprofessional? And this came up earlier today, actually. I was talking to a client, and, you know, she’s worried about… She’s a PhD student. Most of my clients are not, but she is. And she has ADHD. She’s a mature student, so she’s in her 50s. She was, like, kind of, talking through with me, kind of how to approach a meeting with her supervisor, right? So, like, I don’t help, I don’t supervise for PhD, like, she’s got a supervisor for that, but like, part of what I help her with is, like, navigating some of this, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yep.

Jo VanEvery
And so, you know, but she’s worried about, “Can I tell my supervisor this? Do I appear unprofessional? Do I appear…?” – The other word she used was ‘immature’. And I’m like, you know, yes, you’re 50 odd years old. You’ve grown up now. Like, I know exactly where that instinct to call it ‘immature’ comes from. Because, you know, we’ve been told that’s what we are since we were 12. Like 40 years of being told you’re immature. It’s kind of, you know, it sits in there really hard. But, but, you know, the fact is, you’re not immature. This is how your brain works. This is what you need. It’s not immature to ask for this. And what occurs to me is the people that are being unprofessional are like in that story about the person changing institutions, their new institution was really bad at being clear about rules, or at following the rules that had apparently been set down, because they had some sort of a norm about everybody being included and being all friendly and all this kind of thing, and it’s like, so what’s really unprofessional here? Is it unprofessional to not say hi when you walk past your corner – and I don’t remember if that was the same, same person – but is it unprofessional to tell people that we have these rules to govern our behaviour and then not apply them? Is it…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well,

Jo VanEvery
…unprofessional, right, to like, need accommodations to be able to do your work? Or is it unprofessional to ignore agreed [upon] – which has happened to my client, right – to ignore agreed [upon] accommodations?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that comes up in the book as well, right? Like the, I think the one who, and again, spoiler alert, about half, I think it’s about half of our contributors are no longer in higher education, right? They’ve left academia, right? You know, some have found a place where they are, you know, if not thriving, then it’ll be surviving. And one of the essays does really point that out in the story, that they ended up leaving academia. And the most frustrating part, and again, think of this from a neurodiverse, from, from the very, like, rules following autistic brain of like: “You have these rules. I follow these rules. I’ve done everything that you’ve asked me to do, and yet I’m being punished.” And then they’re just like, “This is untenable”, right? And it is. It stays completely untenable, and it’s… But, but it’s so exhausting to call that out and then fight it, that it’s like, why? You know, again, the idea of burnout, the idea of of all this kind of stuff, and so, yeah, so there is that, and it truly is… It’s like, which one of us is being unprofessional, me or you?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Like, that’s on top of like, being punished for following the rules that you set out, I’m also, *I’m* the one being called unprofessional. Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. This is what I hope people really sit with, ultimately, and not just for neurodivergent [people]. And we’ve been asking people to do this for for a long time – and by ‘we’, I mean any sort of marginalised population – is, you know, we, we’ve heard it with issues around race, right? The way people dress, the way people style their hair, the way people, you know, talk. “That was unprofessional.”, right? And that’s why? No, no, we’re not, we’re not, with, it’s not because they’re, you know, not because they’re, they’re black or Hispanic or or Indian or anything like that. It’s just, it’s just like it doesn’t, or it doesn’t fit with the culture, right? It’s, it’s not professional. Same thing with same thing with gender, right? Expect… Being expected to conform to professionalism as it apply, as it has applied to men for however many, you know, years. “It’s unprofessional to wear your hair that way. It’s unprofessional.” I mean, there’s, there’s a whole, and I don’t, I don’t want to call it out, really, because I do, but like, the whole consulting about getting an academic job and what it means to be professional, and how to be professional and how to dress, right? I could even remember when I was on the job market. They’re like, “Don’t wear your wedding ring”, right? Like, all of these sorts of like… Because people will think you’re professional enough because you’re married, and you might have kids, and it’s like,

Jo VanEvery
How is that unprofessional? As opposed to a friend of mine who, you know, at a job interview very early in her career… I mean, she’s now a full professor and a, you know, gets a lot of grants, whatever. But one of her early… I remember her telling me and her sister, you know, this experience she had. But I mean, obviously, like whether she had her wedding ring on or not, she was heavily pregnant when she did this interview, so whatever. But got actually asked, not in an interview, because that would be illegal, it was in Canada. But in one of the informal parts, because there’s a lot of informal parts, people literally said to her, “What does your husband think of moving here? Like, if we hired you, what does your husband think of moving here?” – somehow that’s not considered unprofessional. Yeah. Excuse me?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. And again. So it’s all of this, like ideas of what professionalism is, and it is sort of, maybe not so much anymore, given the climate here in the United States, but for for a little for a window, that was the kind of last accept-, like I said, acceptable way to discriminate, was to say “You are unprofessional.” And then it was like, “Oh, okay, well, then that’s, that’s all right. Then if they’re unprofessional, then, like, of course you shouldn’t hire them”, or, “Of course they should be let go”, or, “Of course they should be put on…”, you know, what are those HR improvement plans? Or whatever it was, whatever those things are, “Of course they need to be put on one of those…”, right? You know, it’s, currently in my positionality. It particularly has expressed itself through, like, my neurodivergence. I mean, again, you’re an OD. You remember my whole bad female academic series?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And really, I didn’t go far enough. Like I revisited it, and I just published an essay about revisiting it, and of course, I didn’t have an ADHD diagnosis then.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Right? And so a lot of what I was talking about was, the, what I was coming up against was “unprofessionalism”. I was unprofessional because I had this undiagnosed condition, but also for being a woman, right? And also, I talked about class and that too,

Jo VanEvery
Well then you can’t really win, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Because, you know, like, I’ve had, I’ve known many women who, you know, it’s like, there is a sort of underlying expectation of kind of gendered ideas about what you should care about, and, yeah, some ways you lined up with that, right? You did care a lot about students, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…And teaching, and that was really important to you, and so you kind of lined up that way. But you know, for, you know, I, you know, I, I’ve had a few women clients who come up against, you know, issues with their colleagues and senior colleagues if they don’t care enough about teaching enough, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad teachers, but you know, when they very clearly prioritise their research career, right? It’s kind of considered, like, weird for them, right? Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Or set up boundaries around service.

Jo VanEvery
Or they set boundaries around… Yeah. Like, and I remember, you know, when I was a grad student back in the 90s, you know, remember, there were a lot of senior, older women academics, right, who’d around for a lot that just had a reputation for being eccentric, and they were kind of eccentric, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I developed this theory that for women of that generation, you know, who were probably, you know, in their 50s, in the 90s…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, and they’re academics. Almost all of them were single. If they weren’t single, they mostly didn’t have any kids. But also, they were all these, like, very kind of eccentric [women], right? And I think they probably cultivated eccentricity, so they didn’t get stuck with all the pastoral care, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Otherwise, how do you get any work done? If, if your male colleagues just, you know, assume that: “Well, if students have any real kind of need for, like, care and support, they can just go to the women in the department”, right? Like, “We don’t have to provide that”. And I think like the ways that you had to kind of twist yourself around that, whereas male academics, there was a whole department. One place I worked that basically agreed as a department never to assign one of their colleagues any undergraduate teaching, because his personality was not… Like, “He’s a big brain, and we really need him, because he does this amazing research”, and all that kind of thing. “And we can let him have post grads, like, we can let him have PhD students, because, you know, he’s a big brain, and that’s good for…”. Well, we cannot let him near undergrad students, because that’s just going to make more work for us, because he’s such a… Right? Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, so he didn’t get… You know, like, sometimes these things kind of cancel each other out, right? It’s almost like, you know, some of us are allowed to be quirky, you know, take our time and actually just not do whole chunks of the job. Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, and that’s part of the trap too, right? You see the one exception, right? Where it’s just like, “Oh…”, but it’s like, you know, 1) is like, “Yes, he’s a, he’s a dude.” So that, you know, that, “Are you a dude? No, you’re not gonna get that probably.” But also 2) It’s just, like, just like, just being able to have, just the, right, like, research topic, or whatever it is, and, like, whatever is hot at that moment, or getting funded a lot at that moment. Or, like, you know, it’s again, that’s the trap. Like, you see this as like, “Oh, I, you know, I kind of relate to this weird, quirky professor,” and like, they’ve… And also, you know, we – I don’t know if it is gonna make it into the episode, but – we’re talking about how on early Twitter, it’s, it just so happened that everybody we tended to, like, gravitate towards and become friends with, and all of that, all of that, all ended up having a neurodivergent diagnosis. I mean, I think that, I think that there is a kind of recognition, even if it’s not like, “Oh, I think they have ADHD”. It’s like “Hmm they have very similar traits to me”…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
…and they’re very successful, and there’s something very empowering about that, because very often we haven’t seen those sorts of models, right? We haven’t seen people like us be successful in the ways that other people are successful, you know what I mean? And so that again, like going back to that roundabout way, back to that idea of it being a trap, is that you’re sort of like, “Oh, maybe this could be for me, because look…”, right? Like, I don’t… “I haven’t been diagnosed with it. They haven’t been diagnosed with it. But that’s like, I see… Like, I see you, right? I see those things.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And even being able to see how – and I remember this as well, where it was, like, for the first time, particularly in grad school with certain professors, it was like their brain seems to work the same way mine does, right, in terms of those, like quick flashes, the way ADHD does, and making those connections and everything like that… Where it’s like, if you’ve been the weird one your whole life, where everybody’s talking about, you know, hot dogs, and all of a sudden you’re just like, “…and the meaning of the universe”, and they’re like, “What are you talking about?” And it’s like, “Well, you were talking about hot dogs. And I started thinking about, like, how hot dogs are made. And then I thought about, like, the ethics of it. And then I started thinking about like, Ephesus, and then I got to like meaning of the universe.” – where it’s like, everybody’s like, “What the hell is wrong with you?” But then in grad school, when you, like, meet another person whose brain works that way, right? And again, you know, it’s hyper fixation, but it’s also being able to make those connections that nobody else makes.

Jo VanEvery
People don’t like the idea of, oh, you know, ADHD, or autism is a superpower, but there are some ways in which, you know, it is very disabling, for all the reasons that are in this book, right? Like,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, and all the reasons we talked about.

Jo VanEvery
On another hand, that divergent thinking, like… Right? Like, that whole divergent thinking, you know, it’s a blessing and it’s a curse, right? And so you know, when I’m helping people, and you’ve talked about this a little bit on your other podcast, and and I know you’ve probably struggled, but you know we’re talking, when you’re talking to people who, when you’re helping people write a book, right, like that ability to go from hot dogs to the meaning of the universe or whatever it is, right, like that connection, seeing all those connections, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…is like, really powerful for creating new knowledge, right? Like, that’s where new knowledge comes from, and the whole job of research is creating new knowledge

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Creating new knowledge. Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
That’s exactly what you’re doing, you know, you’re taking what’s there, and you’re like… And that’s the other thing about that shift from being a student to being an academic, is that you’re going from being able to kind of learn and repeat what other people have said, to being able to, like, create something new out of all of this, right? And to see, and a lot of it is about connection, right? Like it’s about, “Oh, here’s a connection people haven’t made before between these things”, or whatever, right? And so that that is really a… Neurodivergent people do have a real benefit in the sense that the way their brain works makes that part a lot easier, but then you have to kind of squeeze it into this linear model of an article with it, you know? And, and that’s not how your brain works, right? It doesn’t. It goes in these… And so being able to write it and…

Jo VanEvery
Side quests!

Jo VanEvery
Side quests. Right? All of that kind of thing… I’ve been using that, like, language of ‘side quests’, because it makes so much sense to so many people, right? It’s like, okay, which parts are the core thing and also, but also one of the real things I really love about a lot more people talking about these conditions from the experience of experience, rather than as kind of medics diagnosing something wrong with them, is, I really love the idea of ADHD as interest based or interest based attention, right? And so one of the things that happens, though, is when you get all that into line, right, you lose interest, right? Like it’s done now and I’ve lost interest, and now it doesn’t get published, or it doesn’t… Right? And it’s really hard to get it to go to the [publisher?]… So, like, so like, it’s a, it’s a kind of blessing and a curse thing. But there really is that blessing part, and that that’s really, like, exciting, that you get to do that, and you get to be around other people that do that, and that you get to sit there and have these kind of mad conversations.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Exactly. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You’re like, “Oh, but I read this thing. Do you think that’s…?” – you know? And you kind of have all that sparky, sparky kind of conversation. But then you need to kind of corral it into some other kind of form in order for it to kind of… And I think that’s the other thing about this book, is that you and Rebecca made a really conscious decision not to corral it into a particular kind of academic form, even though there is a bibliography and there are a lot of references in some of the things and whatever. But you kind of made a decision to be a bit freer about that form, apart from this [structure]… And then I, and I’m assuming that structure, I said at the beginning, that coping and masking structures, stigma, emerged from you trying to like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. That emerged organically, like, we knew we would have to create some sense making for it, and this is the one that made sense. We had another section, but we didn’t really have enough. And of course, just just because it doesn’t talk, just because it’s [about] masking, doesn’t mean it also doesn’t talk about, you know, obviously… But, but, like, these are the le grande, as we say in French, and and so like, we did have a section, but it only ended up having two, and it felt imbalanced. But so we can move, we could actually move them into other ones and and that, and that was, that was actually – and Rebecca talks about this in the podcast, and also in the introduction of the book – that’s one of the things that I brought to it, was that I really wanted to let the authors describe their experience in their own voice.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
So there’s one essay in particular that… And we did, we did this really cool… and I’m so happy about it, because I keep thinking about reviewer two as we talk about being let loose in the world where we’re no longer graded, except for this elusive reviewer two, who could make or break our careers, and gives us very confusing [feedback], even for, or even for neurotypical people, but for neurodiverse people, very confusing feedback on our work. We’re like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” So we did, because it’s the, because of the nature of the essays, we did a kind of internal, open peer review. And so Rebecca and I read, we gave a preliminary wave of feedback, and then everybody read everybody else’s essays and gave feedback on them. Because everybody was, you know, was attached to academia. Everybody was an academic, either currently or was an academic. So everybody… And everybody had their level of expertise with it. And so everybody got feedback from at least two of the other authors or contributors to the book, and then we sort of went through it and helped.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And again, the sensitivity to, you know, the sensitivity to… I have rejection sensitive dysmorphia, and so trying to take care of that where, like, everybody sort of understood that, but also everybody had their own way of giving feedback, right? And so just to be able to, then, like, help the authors translate that feedback into something positive and useful, right? And most of it was very positive and useful, but still doing it that way.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But there was one essay in particular that both, both of the peer reviewers and Rebecca were like, “This is really stilted. This is very… Like, it feels disjointed. It’s very abrupt. It’s very, you know, direct.” And they’re like, “Could you… Maybe…?” And I was like, “No.” Like, “What do you mean, ‘No’…?” And I’m like, “No, they’re not softening this.” And they’re like, “Well…” And I’m like, “They’re writing like an autistic person.” And I, and I said, “I recognise this style of writing, I recognise this style of thinking, I recognise this style of talking. I think for this particular… I think you should just let it be.” Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And, and, I mean, if you read, if you’ve read *my* essay about it, it’s written in a very ADHD way, right, which is very cyclical and circular and not ephemeral. I don’t remember the word I was looking for, but anyways… So it’s… And now that I’ve discovered, like I’ve discovered… I’ve really… I know how I want to write as somebody with ADHD. And then I also know how I’m supposed to write as an academic, but also so that I’m… “Am I understandable?” Right? Like, if I wrote purely about, about what, how I’m ADHD, [it] wouldn’t make sense to anybody. It would be completely alienating to the reader.

Jo VanEvery
Well and, yeah, but like, when you’re writing your first draft that, that’s how you get it out, and then… Right? And then it’s like, you know, and this is often what I say to other people, it’s like, it’s like, you need to [understand]… Other people aren’t necessarily going on the same journey you’re going on to understand this. So what helps other people? And you don’t necessarily want to assume those other people are very strictly linear thinkers. But, you know, like, it…

Speaker 1
They’re not inside your head. They didn’t make those seven steps.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And sometimes you go off on a tangent, and one of the tangents, I think that, you know, I’ve talked a lot about this because we’ve been, some of my clients are working on books, and we’re working on introductions, right? And it’s like, you know, the introduction to a book, and you know, how do you talk about, I think the the whole shift in terms of what a literature review is doing, when you’re a student, versus what a literature review is doing in a published article or book… And, and the thing that it’s doing in a published article or book is partly establishing that you have the authority to talk about this, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Mmhmm.

Jo VanEvery
You are… And… But the main thing it’s doing is kind of connecting what you’re doing in your piece, to what the reader is…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
The larger discourse, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like you’re part of a conversation. It’s a very weird kind of conversation, but you’re kind of connecting it. But that one of my clients is really working on, like, “How little can I say?” Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I get it. I’ve done that too.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s not in a: “I don’t want to say anything” [kinda way]. But like, “How little do I want to say?” And what it’s made me realise is that, yes, sometimes when you lean too heavily into “I need to demonstrate that I really understand this literature.” What you’ve done is gone on a side quest with the book, and you’ve taken them away from introducing them to what you’re about to say. And so you’ve gone on a side quest of, “Here’s all this other stuff going on”.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then you’re kind of coming back and like, “Here’s where I’m going.” And it’s really easy for them to miss the “Why was this relevant?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah!

Jo VanEvery
I think sometimes when you get those reviewer comments that are like, “I don’t understand. You haven’t done a very good job of this [insert feedback here]”, and you look at it, and you’re like, “I wasn’t even trying to do that.” Sometimes I think that’s why. It’s when *this* reader – like, we have to remember that reviewer, reviewer two is not usually setting out to be mean – sometimes they have, like, someone representative of your potential readership, right? Like, that’s what peer review kind of means, who, who got lost somewhere and thought, somehow [this feedback would help]… Now, sometimes they just are like, “The only way to talk about this topic is to do this, and you’re not doing this.” But sometimes there’s… The way you address it is not by doing the thing they wanted you to do, by being like, “how did this person get lost in my introduction? And how can I ensure nobody else goes down that path?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…because, because somehow I went on a side quest and then got really upset with what I did. And, and really, *I* led him there, and then just kind of left him in the woods with nothing, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. They were like, “I was really excited about him being able to talk about this, and then we didn’t talk about that.”

Jo VanEvery
Exactly.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So there is that thing where you’re just like, “Okay, I need to help people. You know, because they’re not having this exciting, you know, sparky, divergent thinking moment. They’re trying to follow an argument that I’m setting out here, and I’m trying to… Like, and the sparks are going to happen between what you wrote and other things they’ve read. Like, you’re not responsible for *their* sparks, right? So, but you gotta kind of get some of your sparks out of what you end up writing, which is, which is really hard, right? And, er…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, there’s also the… When you’re neurodivergent and you’ve, you’ve heard so much feedback around… Like there is an imposter syndrome too, attached to it, right, especially around: if you’re masking, if the mask comes off, of what is going to happen to me, like, and the compensating and all that kind of stuff, and so… Like, these big lit reviews are often me just further justifying, you know, that, that “I have a right to be here, and that I have a right to, like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
If you listen to, the podcast you’re referring to is it’s called All The Things ADHD. It’s myself and my co host, Amy Morrison, who’s tenured professor in Canada. And we always joke about her 500 reference article that she wrote about… And it and it’s an important article, and I recommend it to anybody, because it’s about disclosure. It’s about disclosure. It’s about diagnosis, it’s about seeking accommodation, and it’s about how, again, when we talk about the institution, how the institution is set up in such a way that it is punitive on someone. The system, the system is set up to really punish somebody for disclosure and for asking for accommodations and all of that. But the joke was (and it really wasn’t) is that, like, she had to, she has five, she’s made 500 references, and there’s like 250 articles in the ‘works cited’ for, like, not even a book, just an article, Jo. And again, it was, and that’s… She, she talks about that a lot. For her, what [her] writing process [is], is that she does get lost in the research, right? And those are her side quests, so much.

Jo VanEvery
Very clearly, hyperlexic, right? So she reads a lot. And really reads.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
Right? In a way, which is not all autistic experience, but it’s definitely not uncommon. And, and, you know… And so, like, she kind of leans into… And, like, again, if you’re hyperlexic, like, academia seems like a fantastic place to be. Like, what about the rest…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
…that are like, “How do I get through this reading?” And like, I mean, we have another autistic friend who is absolutely not, and who is like, “I keep getting told to skim read, and I just can’t”, right? And so… But [it] also feels like “I need to have read everything, and it just takes a long time. And why does not- anybody…?” Right?

Jo VanEvery
So there’s like, these are both autistic experiences of academia, who, which are very different. But also, like, yeah, if you are able to absorb that much, and get down that rabbit hole of research, and then you’re just like, you know… But all of this stuff did influence my thinking. Because of this, like, blessing, you know, the the ability to see across, and make connections, and whatever, like, it came out of all of this. And it’s hard for anybody else to imagine how that happened. And I’m so glad that she’s able to do it so that the rest of us don’t have to. You have to publish this, so nobody else has to go down that particular rabbit hole. They can just kind of start with where you ended up, and go down their own rabbit hole. But like, exactly like, it’s also… But I think she also, I also remember from your podcast with her that she also realised at some point that even though she’s in a discipline that really values books, that she is not going to write one. Like that, that’s not her thing. That, that she can’t sustain the attention that long, right? And that… And also, every time, you know, when she’s trying to edit it, it’s just like, well, she ends up changing the whole thing. Because, you know,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, “Oh, I read something new, and now everything has changed.”

Jo VanEvery
Well, or just, like… So I had this conversation with my own kid right, who now has an ADHD diagnosis and has recently finished a degree. She went as a mature student, did a degree. Well, we were talking a couple summers ago about the way, because I write – and I suspect you might as well – I kind of blurt it all out onto the page, and then I edit it, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yep. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, I definitely start with free writing. And she’s like, “But Mom, I can’t do that.” I’m like, “Well, okay…”, so she, because she’s like, “Once I see it like that, I can’t imagine another way it could be.” And I think that’s probably what goes on with Amy too, right? Like, as soon as…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well. And I’m highly like that.

Jo VanEvery
She’s like, “Yeah.” So what she says is, like, she starts, she writes these incredibly detailed outlines, and then her first prose draft is very close to the final draft.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And, but she had a great analogy for it, which I’m going to share because… I’m sure people know it. So she said, “So it’s like the difference between playing Scrabble, and doing anagrams.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Ahh!

Jo VanEvery
She’s really awesome at Scrabble.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
She hates anagrams.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no, I [get that]. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Because an anagram is already a word. Scrabble is just a bunch of letters.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. Yep, yeah, no, that’s a great analogy.

Jo VanEvery
It’s like, when you when you’ve written it all out in prose like that, then, well, that’s how it… Then, like… She can edit other people’s writing, but like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So for her, it’s like, it can’t look like prose till the end. And I have had another client, like, which – and this happened before we had that conversation, but I now realise that’s probably how her brain works, too – who, who wrote the first draft of an entire book in bullet points.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I mean…

Jo VanEvery
And then it was like, “Okay, I need to turn these bullet points into prose.” But it was bullet points all the way down to paragraph level, like it was an outline all the way down to paragraph level.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I can’t do that. You can’t do that…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
No, I can’t do that either.

Jo VanEvery
Like whatever, but that for her, that was what worked.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And I think that I like the Scrabble and anagram [analogy], because I think that that also really sums up the type of neurodivergence of, like, the, when you get to those boundaries. Right? Like, I think that it’s… And I think that this is also sort of, like, it’s a different way to frame ableism, and it’s a different way to frame neurodivergent and neurodiverse brains, is that it’s great that we have anagram brains and scrabble brains, but for some reason it’s just like: “Oh, you’re really good at anagrams, and we value that. But you’re good at Scrabble, and we don’t understand that.” You know what I mean? Like, there is this sort of unspoken standard where it’s like, “But I’m really good at Scrabble. Why, why aren’t they…?” Like, “No, no, you can’t do anagrams, though. So, like… Uh uh. [disapproval]” Right? And that’s the sort of, that’s the sort of world that we live in, right?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and I think that, like, and that, that gets down to, like, what is the really basic problem? I love a division of labour, and it’s like, somehow, in academia, we’ve ended up with this kind of thing where it’s like, “Well, everybody should be able to do [everything].” You know? And also this real, like, “You should be able to do it [by] yourself.” Like, in the, the way that some of the budget cuts are being like, “Oh, let’s cut a bunch of services staff.” And then it’s like, “Well, we’ve got these really bright people. Well, surely they can learn how to, like, fill in their own expense forms.” And it’s like…

Speaker 1
You’ve just, you’ve just brought up Amy’s bugaboo, right? Like, she’s like…

Jo VanEvery
I’m sorry. Like, that… No. That’s not…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And part of it as well is that academics have fed into that sometimes, because they sometimes denigrate the skills and abilities of the professional services staff, right? Like, it’s like: “Well, you know, you don’t, necessarily, you don’t have a PhD.” Like, it’s like, you know what? Like, you don’t need somebody with a PhD to be able to organise your events, right? Like, we’re asking PhD students and, and faculty to organise conferences instead of hiring professional events organisers. And like, sometimes they are good at that. But also it’s like, you know what…? Like, event organisers, like, never asked me to organise an event. I don’t even want to organise, like, like, you know, a holiday, like, you know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, it’s like, okay, we’re going to this place, but…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But, then… If, if, for me as a grad student, I love that stuff, right? Because… But then was punished for it on the job market, because it’s like, “Well, you’re gonna have to do these things, but you’ve already done them, and so that won’t make you a good professor.” And so it’s like, there’s this, again, there’s all of these things where it’s like, “You need to learn how to do these things because it’s important, and it’s going to be part of the job.” But then when I go on the job market and say, I can do all of these things, they’re like, “Yeah, but where’s your second book?”

Jo VanEvery
Like… Exactly, right? It’s like, you can’t write a second book and organise a [conference]. Right? And…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And also, the thing about moving. Like, in one of my planning classes, somebody was like, “So I’m moving, and what is that going to mean about how much writing I can do?” And one of the other people who has moved a lot, she’s just like, “Every move is an article. Based on my own personal data: every time you move, that’s an article you didn’t write.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, sounds about right.

Jo VanEvery
Right? But we’re now in a situation where we’re asking people to do more and more temporary jobs, before they get anything where they can stay somewhere for several years, right? And so you’re based… And then in order to get the job where you can stay somewhere for several years, you’re being, like, asked to have published a lot of stuff, but it’s like, “But I had to move every year, like those, that’s three articles I didn’t publish, because I was moving.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And I had to take on… And I had to take on contract writing work or instructional design work because I didn’t have enough money to make ends meet.

Jo VanEvery
Well, yeah, in a lot of situations, yeah, yeah. Like, it’s just bananas, right? But, yeah, I think, I think in terms of, like, the neurodiversity, it’s like, if we think about the concept of neurodiversity and the fact that, like human brain, like humans are really complex organisms, their brains are really complex. So it’s like, you know, there are certain things that get to a stage where we’re like, “We need to give this a name and call it something. How this works.” Right? But there’s also just a lot of variation anyway. And it’s like, instead of saying, “How do we make the most of this kind of group of people we have? To get, like, the collective… Like, we have this much work we need to do, as an institution, or a department, or whatever. And these are the different kinds of work, and these are the different kinds of things involved. And here are the kinds of people we have. And how can we make the best use of everybody’s talents to get all this done?” We end up saying “No, like, here’s this idea that everybody needs to be able to do, all of these things.” Right? And none of… Nobody’s ever going to succeed at that, and I… And it’s kind of really frustrating,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Or, or “We’re only going to reward… We need all of this work done, but we’re only going to reward this one kind of work, and then everyone else is going to be contingent staff.” Right? All of that kind of stuff. And that’s the other one, where it’s like, everybody’s expected… Or it’s just like, you know, “We are going to hold up this one class of work that is done as being more valuable than all of this other work that has to happen in order for a university to run and to work.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But even for that kind of work to happen. You know? So it ends up… You know, with some people, you know, it’s just like, well, why should you feel bad if you need the support of a developmental editor…?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…to be able to structure your kind of mad, diverse thoughts into some kind of structure? Like, why should you feel bad about that? If that’s not… You know, having somebody who can come in and help you figure out the structure, so that then you can do the rest of the steps… It’s still your work, right? And you know, what difference does it make if, like, you know, like, if finding the time you know, it’s like, you know, what if you can’t just ‘get on’, like, what if, you know, you need somebody to say, “This is a higher priority than that.”? [Or,] “It’s okay to give less time to this work, in order to make time for that work.”

Jo VanEvery
But so many in academia are unwilling, you know, because of their aversion to the idea of ‘management’, and being [controlled]… Like, it’s fine. You don’t want to work in some kind of terrible really, you know, particular kind of management structure. Or, you know, whatever “bad management is bad management”. But, you know, like, if you’re a head of department, like, why can’t you tell people “This is a higher priority than that.”? Like, instead of just being like, “Oh, you need to figure it out for yourself”, like, what, what’s, what’s the problem with [helping people prioritise]? Like, some people are bad at prioritising. Like, let’s help, let’s help them prioritise, right, in a way that can also take into account what their needs and desires are, right? Or… And their strengths. Like, like, I just don’t understand why.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
That’s just not how higher education is…

Jo VanEvery
No, I know, but it like, it…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I know.

Jo VanEvery
Like, it would be a really small tweak, right? And there are people out there actually who are doing that, right? Like, there are people who are taking up, you know, Head of Department roles or whatever, and they’re thinking, “Well, this is who I want to be in that role. I want to be supporting my colleagues in being able to do their best work.” Like, there’s loads of people going into, you know, Dean roles and everything with that, and sometimes, sort of, pressures from above are preventing them from doing that in the way that they want, because we’re all in these structures, which is why I’m really glad you had that whole [section in your book]

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Scarcity mindset. Like we just have the scarcity mindset.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but, but there are a lot of people doing really good work. And that, and there are people who are able to kind of thrive with their… You know? And like… And it… I don’t know, like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I would just say, read the book. Like, just go out, read the book and start a conversation with your colleagues.

Jo VanEvery
But I think one of the things to come back is like that, in that section, in that coda, where you talk about professionalism, you directly address everybody. Like, whether you’re neurodiverse or not, if you want your workplace to be more like a good place for a diverse range of academics to work, right, then the one thing that you end up saying is “You really need to question every time the word ‘professionalism’ pops into your head.” Right? Like, that’s the one thing. Like, you really need to think about that. and question, “What do I mean by that?” And. “Is this, really, like, is this problem really a problem, or can I let [it go]?” – and that. that’s the one thing. And I… And you kind of address the people who are not being accused of it, but doing the accusing. But I think so often the internalised ableism is that you start accusing yourself. And so I guess, even if it’s you…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes, exactly.

Jo VanEvery
…and somebody else has accused you (And we can’t wait. We can’t change other people. I mean, we can try, but they have to do it on their own. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait for them to change before our work, [can start], right?) We can listen to that, and we don’t have to accept that they’re right. And we certainly don’t need to start accusing ourselves, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I think when we start thinking, “But is it professional for me to do X or Y?” We need to pause, and just be like: “So what’s the real goal here? And what’s the likely risk and problem?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And: “Is there a way that my way of doing it can be okay? Like, [that] it’s okay for me to do it this way. It’s okay for me to…”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, or understanding that it’s like, like you said, if I’m thinking that “This is unprofessional”, is this because somebody has told me it is? Is it because I think it is? Is this because, like, I’m not following the guidelines of of, that have been, of quote, unquote “professionalism” that have been put forward by the institution, by my department, by my, by my centre, by my culture, by my supervisor? And then, and then you can, sort of, like you said, to be able to unpack that. Then you can kind of address, “Okay, here’s how, either I can do the work, or I can have a conversation about how I do the work, or…” You know, the, these kinds of things where it’s, you know, because, because it’s very easy… Again, this is the whole point of this book is to really, we don’t solve anything. And it was really funny when we were doing a lot of these things. So, like, “So what should we do [about it]?” And we’re, like, “I don’t know, dismantle ableism.”

Jo VanEvery
Or whatever.. Like, yeah…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I don’t know, like, but, but, but again, like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, the whole point is to have this, start this conversation. And I’m glad that that idea of professionalism resonated with you so much, and I hope it does with others too, because that’s the opening, that’s the conversation starter, that’s the way to start doing the work.

Jo VanEvery
That’s the being human part, right? With that being… I like how it’s paired with the “but we’re all human”. So there’s a kind of sense about that in that other bit, in that extra chapters, bonus chapters section, which is really a conclusion in which it’s also like we’re not robots, right? Like we are human. And so we have to have some grace. We have to extend some grace to people for being human. And and and that, and our understanding professionalism needs to do that.

Jo VanEvery
But I think, although you don’t solve anything, I think a lot, because a lot of these people are talking about a trajectory over several years, I think many of the essays in this book will give people ideas for things they might be able to try in their own context. So I think it will give… Although there is no… Because there never is one universal solution. Like, it would be lovely if we had a magic wand and could go, “Well, did you do THIS?” And it’ll be all fine, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But like, you have to work out what works for you. But also, like seeing how other people have navigated these things often helps you see your own situation in a different way. It might give you ideas for things you might want to try. It might, and it might do that in a way where you’re like, “Oh my god, I could never do that.” – but then that sparks [something] right? Because of the divergent thinking. It’s like, “Oh, I could never do that.” But then that sparks: “Oh, but what if I did this instead?” Right? Like, so that…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…it doesn’t have to be in your book. It kind of like, and I think the fact that you left them in many ways in the voice of the people as much as possible, and that you let them tell the stories in the way they wanted to tell them. Because many of them are messy, like, none of them are really clean about, “Well, it’s either a good or a bad.” Like, a lot of them are like, “Well, all of *this* stuff went really well. I was able to have *this* career for *this* long, and it was kind of mostly working. Like, there was *this* … blah, blah, blah” … And, like… I mean, there’s one where the the person is like, “You know, I’ve managed to…” This is a person that’s still in academia. I think who, you know, it’s really noticeable, because it’s like, “I’ve managed to find a way to have this career in a way where I still get to sleep 10 hours a night.” Like.. I remember that stuck out, right? Sleeps 10 hours a night, eats properly, doesn’t take work, takes all the weekends off and is still performing at a level where they got promoted to full professor in the institution where they are. And I think that’s nice too. You know, it’s like the book doesn’t say, “Oh, this is possible, if only you do everything right.” It’s more like “Sometimes you’re able to kind of navigate”, and that person, I mean, that same person – I’m pretty sure I’m remembering this correctly – did have a period in that trajectory where they actually called their mom and said, “Can you come and look after me so I can do my job”, right? They got from there, to: “I can now look after myself, including getting 10 hours of sleep a night, and do my job and succeed”, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So it’s not like an easy, you know, whatever, and not everybody can call their mom, or wants to, but I think it does give that sense of the variety of paths this could take, and how sometimes there are opportunities. And I think that idea of being able to… Having an idea what those opportunities might look like, and having some language for being able to talk about, right, like that professionalism language. Like, being able to say: “Is this just being used as a way to…”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
As a cudgel.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, or to cover up discrimination, and make it look like an acceptable thing when it’s not. Or is this being used… And I think you know, is that really…? And, and it’s really easy to call some things unprofessional, and really hard to call other things unprofessional.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, yeah, once you’ve seen that, you can be like, okay, maybe I can’t do anything about this now, but at least I can kind of distance myself from that as an objective descriptor of reality, and that might give me enough space to be able to figure out how to manage in this situation.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So anyway, it was great to talk to you, and…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
It was really great to talk to you too.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. And I’m really glad that you’re doing this kind of work, because, you know, you’re not in a job where anybody requires you to do it. You’re doing it because…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
No.

Jo VanEvery
This is why I came into this in the first place.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
This is… I mean, this is what I say, is the – like on the… Again, it’s my ADHD brain. I need… I don’t have any projects going on right now, and I’m just like, going insane. I’m just like, “What, what is my next three projects? To go alongside my…” But the nice thing about being in the role that I’m in now, is because it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a tenure track position, it’s not a, you know, it’s in academia though – is that, like… I *can* pick and choose my projects. I can decide who I’m going to work with. I think that that’s really important for me right now, is, is… Again, and maybe this is the advice I can give to individuals. And I’ve had a I have a certain amount of privilege around this, but like, I choose who I’m gonna work with, right? Like, when I saw that it was Katie and Rebecca editing this book, I was like, I feel comfortable getting involved in this.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Right? And to step in and to say I’m willing to the sacrifice the time to co edit this. It, as you said, it wasn’t because I’m like, “Oh God, I have to do this in order to get tenure.” It was like, “No, because this is something that is of value to me. I want to work with these people. I want to work with these stories.” And, you know, again, “I want to create an environment that that everyone feels comfortable with these stories.” And so like I don’t work with anybody, now, on projects, that I don’t feel that I’m going to be not taken, taken care of, right? It’s like, I’m, I’m, you know, when there’s that desperation to publish, where… You, you know?

Jo VanEvery
I think setting that as something that is achievable for a lot of people, right? Like, I think it takes a while. Sometimes you have to, like, kiss a few frogs to meet your prince, right? So sometimes you work with people, you think they’re going to be okay, and they aren’t. And you learn more about what you need in those relationships and things. So there is a learning curve to that, right? But, you know, the whole thing is, people value academic freedom, but then they’re like, “But I don’t have choices about what I publish”, or whatever. It’s like, what the hell do you think academic freedom is? Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, you should be able to work on the projects that you really want to work on, and, and

Lee Skallerup Bessette
– with the people that you want to work with.

Jo VanEvery
Exactly.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And that, to me, is more important right now, to me…

Jo VanEvery
Absolutely.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
…is that, like, I will… Like, who, who…? How is this going to be peer reviewed? Who is doing the peer review? Who are the editors? You know, because, and because, even if it’s a topic that, like, I’m really… Like, I’d have to be so passionate about it to take a risk with the people who are, who are also, who are sort of editing it, or whatever. Because, like, I I’ve had too many experiences where writing has been, and research has been punitive, right, or struggles, or all that. I mean, you might… you coach, right? You know, all of these things. And so like, my, my way now, of of coping is, is really being picky about who I work with, and…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. And I think when you’re early in your career, it’s harder, because you don’t really know all that about yourself. And sometimes you aren’t… Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, and the other people! Right? Like…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. But the… And the other people. But the other thing is that you should set that as a goal for yourself is that you’re trying to find the people you really like working with. You’re trying to like work as much as possible. And I think sometimes going in, people are really scared they’re not going to have enough projects to work on. And that, in my experience, of all the people I’ve worked with, is hardly ever the problem. People do not run out of things that they’re interested in, especially if you are neurodivergent, that doesn’t happen. You don’t [run out]. Right? There is always more things right? And so, it is ok…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
So much more..

Jo VanEvery
…to say no to projects. because while you could do them, they aren’t the thing you’re really passionate about, or the people you’d be working with would make it, like, that you would dread to work on it. Like, you just really want to think about, like, everything that’s going on, like this stuff is important to you. Like, centre that, and work out how to make… Because there’s parts of your job… It’s okay. Like, 100% of your job is never going to be super enjoyable, but there should be something that’s meaningful and enjoyable in this job, or it’s just not worth fighting all this stuff.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And that’s true for any job.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s true for any job.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Academia or otherwise.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but like the idea that somehow you have to give up on the idea of liking any of it, that’s not right. You know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no.

Jo VanEvery
It’s better to kind of find your way gradually, gradually, to kind of build a bigger and bigger space where you’re all… You know? So that you get to the point, like you are, you know, 20 years in, where you’re like, “No, now I know I know what I need, and I know enough people that I trust, that I can be picky about projects. And even though I’m a little bit antsy right now because I don’t have three projects lined up, I know one will come up.” – and like trusting there will be more opportunities and that. And I think that’s one of the things I’ve said about ‘saying no’ before, which is, you know, a lot of, there’s a lot of advice about saying no to too much service [work] or whatever, but the thing people really struggle to say no to is too much research projects. And you do… Like, the thing that’s really hard to say no to, are projects that seem like they might be okay, but you don’t have enough time or energy to do it, or with somebody that you know it’s going to make it hard to do the way you want, or whatever it is. And you know, like you just really have to trust yourself that you can figure that stuff out, really.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Anyway. Okay, so the book, again, is Of Many Minds by Lee Skallerup Bessette and Rebecca Pope-Ruark, and it’s published by John Hopkins. And it’s like, it’s, it’s a good it’s the kind of thing you should probably like put a request in with your library to get so that some of the people that you really feel wish understood you better, will might come across it in the in the library, and yeah, and it’s, I’m really glad you’ve done this work.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
All right. Well, thank you again, Jo, like this was, this was wonderful. And again, this project is near and dear to my heart. I will take every and any opportunity to go on a podcast or wherever and talk about it. So if anyone in the UK is interested in this, doing this as a reading group, or having Rebecca and I Zoom in to talk to your reading group or to talk to your group, we are really happy to do that.

Jo VanEvery
Okay.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, thanks again, Jo,

Jo VanEvery
Thank you for listening!

 

[End of transcript.]

 

Related Posts, Podcasts & Books:

• Get your own copy: Of Many Minds now
• All The Things ADHD – Podcast
• Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal (book) – by Rebecca Pope-Ruark, PhD
• Lee featured on an episode of Rebecca’s podcast too: S5:E1 – the agile academic

Plus some of my posts from the Library:

• Creating A Satisfying Academic Career – Part 1
• Creating A Satisfying Academic Career – Part 2
• What an academic career looks like

This interview took place via Zoom on Sept 17 2025. Sent to newsletter subscribers Nov 14th 2025. It has been substantially edited, as mentioned in the introduction, for ease of reading/listening and reference.