A Tale of Two Workloads: Pedagogy and Research in Academia

If I haven’t shouted it from the rooftops enough, I am a graduate student, and have happily worn that title for 3 years. While I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and am usually quite happy working in academia, there are some obstacles that I (and others) have faced. It can be pretty easy to complain about issues in the system while simultaneously feeling that we are too small, too insignificant, or too tired to navigate or confront those issues. 

It can also be daunting to face the number of issues that are present in academia: namely, systemic racism, sexism, treatment of adjuncts, and exploitative labor.

But I am breaking every writing rule ever and am not going to explicitly talk about any of the issues I just listed above. Though, almost inevitably, I will touch on exploitative labor since graduate students almost unanimously feel this phenomenon like we feel hunger (and maybe, perhaps, those two feelings are linked!). 

Instead, I’m going to be talking about an identity crisis. Not a personal identity crisis, as I’ve written about that to death, but an institutional identity crisis. Academics must wear many hats, which is unfortunate, because many of us cannot afford hats. As we continue throughout our careers, the hats get more complex: we move from part student, part teacher, to part teacher, part researcher, part committee member, part article reviewer, part advisor, part circus performer. 

I’m kidding. No one really teaches in academia. 

I know I am lucky to only have to wear two of these hats at the moment. I go to school, I cry over some article rejections, and I teach. Over the course of my graduate career, I have felt that I haven’t been able to fully embrace the 50/50 split between student-ing and teaching; it has more so felt like an either/or phenomenon. I had many moments during my first semester of grad school that I forgot I was a student and instead poured all of my energy into bestowing knowledge onto a group of 18 year olds who stared at me like I had five heads. Part of this stems from the fact that I know how to be a student—I’ve been one for 20 odd years, after all. Teaching was a wildly foreign practice, and I had to put hours of planning, re-planning, and freaking out to even begin to get it right. Even then, it was a rocky semester. 

But as teaching has gotten easier, I still find myself either primarily identifying as student or teacher at different times. And it largely depends on the tone of the program, of the faculty, and of the cohort.

Take Rhetoric and Composition for example. I got my Masters in this field, and it was intensely focused on pedagogy. This makes sense, given that the “composition” part of this program is all about teaching. I was lucky in that I could combine my teaching and research practices, and in fact, was encouraged to do so. I was supported and given the tools to develop as a teacher. I learned about active learning in concrete and enriching ways. On the flip side, it was difficult to devote attention to my research interests that existed outside of pedagogy. 

Fast forward 3 years, and I’m in my first year of a PhD in Communication Studies. While pedagogy certainly is a focus in the field, it is not the focus. So much of that first year is focused on learning how to write for journals in the field, preparing for conferences, and developing niche research interests. I have improved tremendously as a new media scholar, but have often felt my teaching slide to the wayside. 

It can be easy not to reflect on these dichotomies, as that is just how things are. You move through the program in the ways the faculty tell you to. You feed off of the priorities and energy of the program. A lot of times, you just try to get through the days to survive. But now I’m in an interesting space, as I am spending my summer teaching for an entirely different program where students are the sole focus, and I am also working on research for my PhD program. And, because of this, these two previously separate priorities are colliding. 

This has partly made for a very confusing, very intense summer. But there are also some lessons that I’m (slowly) learning that can promote equal attention to pedagogy and research. This is especially important for folks who maybe don’t have their heart solely set on a teaching university or a research 1 institution. 

Plus, even if you are set on primarily focusing on research, we owe it to our students to offer them meaningful time and growth in the classroom. 

So what are some ways we can navigate academia with (semi) equal focus on pedagogy and research? 

1. Bring your research into the classroom.

This is probably the easiest and most-used strategy. Especially in upper-division classes, we can start to introduce articles we’ve been reading to facilitate discussion. But it doesn’t necessarily have to stop with simply assigning articles. Even if you’re teaching a class that isn’t ready for or has very little to do with your research, you can still make a class come alive by showing your passion for what you do.

I’ve brought up feeding off energy a few times—while this can sound like some hippie-dippie bulls***, students can tell when we feel excited about or driven by something. I am currently teaching high school students, so while I can’t assign them scholarly articles on feminist rhetoric, I can talk about how much examining feminism on YouTube means to me. I can assign them a YouTube video I’ve been analyzing, and, more often than not, they will make observations that I never would have noticed on my own.

We need to challenge ourselves to give students more credit in regards to things they’ll be interested in. We also need to recognize that discussing the messy, human parts of being an academic in the classroom might actually work in our favor. During my freshman year of college, I took a science class—I wasn’t particularly interested in science, and dreaded being in a giant lecture hall. After a few weeks, I looked forward to coming to class, as the professor talked through the article writing, peer-review, and rejection process. He had a course blog where he wrote about both scientific and pedagogical issues. He talked about his team’s research in an exciting, accessible, and engaging way. 

A lot of us are pressed for time, so even if we don’t have time to create and run a course blog, we can still implement the principle of the blog: passion, reflection, and connection with students.

2. Collaborate with and learn from students

We might think about collaboration as more of an upper-level thing: graduate students collaborate with each other, or with faculty. I wouldn’t try to collaborate with a student on writing an article, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from them. Since my research is centered around media, I might ask students to bring their experiences with Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube to class. As someone who has never downloaded and doesn’t understand Tik Tok, I know that I can learn a lot from the next generation of media-consumers. 

Even if you’re not studying something that is “young people”centric, you can still incorporate lessons that will be mutually educational. Our department head, for instance, studies space, place, and memory. He has an article about the rhetoric of Starbucks. Imagine how much analysis one could gain from student input: while researching a certain space, we might consider bringing students there and hearing their observations.

There’s nothing wrong with recognizing that you’re an expert in some areas: especially for women, that’s how we get taken seriously as researchers. But as teachers, we might leave room for learning from our students—not just because it makes them feel more open to discussion, but also because it’s genuinely helpful to our growth as scholars and as humans.

3.Collaborate with and learn from each other

A lot of productive discussion happens in the “in-between times”: between classes, when we’re shuffling to our desks, in the break room, in the café where we’re downing our 4th cup of coffee. Those “in between time” discussions can be an opportunity to talk research, pedagogy, or the art of balancing the two. You might ask a colleague how they’re applying active learning to a citation lesson. You might ask an advisor how they’re incorporating their research interests into class (that’s another thing: advising meetings don’t (and shouldn’t) have to be just about you). The point is, if you start to get intentional about those in-between conversations, you’ll be more likely to get candid and insightful answers. 

Much more than in other professions, we are very reflective in academia, and we do have difficult conversations. But oftentimes, those conversations are quite performative and stilted, just by sheer nature of arranging meetings, having guest speakers, etc. The in-between conversations are a chance for us to get real with each other and hear about a variety of strategies without adding so much external pressure or expectations. 

There are obviously far more strategies we can implement to balance research and pedagogy, but this is just a starting point to get the conversation going. Academia is hard, and no one is expecting anyone to be perfect at everything. But we might find that merging research and teaching is mutually beneficial and can enrich our little intellectual corners.