Episode 9 - Balancing Equations and Life: A Conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Brown

Welcome back to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, where we explore the ideas, experiences, and challenges shaping academic life. In this episode, math educator Dr. Elizabeth Brown joins us to talk about becoming a teacher, connecting with students, and navigating the balance between professional and personal life. 

Elizabeth Brown shares: 

• The journey to becoming a math teacher and what inspired that path 
• Approaches to building authentic connections with students inside and outside the classroom 
• How hobbies like rescuing dogs and competing in Ironman races bring perspective and balance 
• Strategies for maintaining well-being while meeting the demands of teaching 

Tune in for an engaging conversation about teaching with heart, sustaining balance, and bringing one’s whole self into the classroom. 

Transcript

Always be growing, always be evolving, and also not to indulge in revolution for revolution's sake. And then for service, right, the different sort of showing up for the service that is appropriate to your situation. So I really see myself in the supporting growth of people's agency business.

There are no extra obligations that are going to show up. So unstructured, uncommitted time.

Sounds like peace. Welcome to the CFI Faculty Lounge Podcast, an outlet created for continuous learning and actual insights for faculty. I'm your host, Eric Magrim, inviting you to join us in conversation with dedicated educators who share their experiences, challenges, and effective solutions.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Brown, professor of mathematics and general education's coordinator for the natural world area here at James Madison University. Welcome Elizabeth, and thank you for being here with us today.

Thank you for inviting me.

Can you walk us through your journey as an educator, how it all began, and what brought you here today?

So, first of all, I was brought here today because in your very nice invitation, you said that my peers had suggested me, which I'm very flattered by, so that makes it an easy yes. I really appreciate the colleagues that I have here at JMU, both within my home department of mathematics and the people I've gotten to meet through the general education work. To a person, they're motivated and really driven by what they see as their important contribution that they're making for students and for JMU more broadly.

It's a nice group of people, an inspiring group of people to work with. So, my personal journey is that I always really enjoyed learning things, and I went to very rural schools where that was not the expectation. So, like 3% of my high school went to 4-year college.

Wow. Which meant that I was often in the position of, by the time I got to high school, I had it down. I was a very polite waiter, but if the faculty member in the room or the teacher wanted to have a 50-minute conversation about whatever it is we were supposed to have read and nobody else was going to participate, that was fine with me.

I would have that space. So, I approach it as always offering, wanting that positive experience to be available to my students. So, despite that nice thing I just said about being in high school, I didn't love it, as many people don't, and I was able to get out, time off for good behavior.

So, when I went to college, I wasn't sure what I wanted to study. So, I thought I would start with philosophy, the laws of thought, and then maybe a specific discipline would suggest itself to me. So, I went along, philosophy, analytic philosophy, epistemology, and I was interested in philosophy of math.

So I thought, well, you know, we should really understand it, have some sense of what it looks like internally. So as a senior in college, I took pre-calculus, where you move parabolas around, and then calculus, and I loved it. So the day I was cast, I was already going to graduate school in philosophy.

But once I got there, I had the opportunity to take a couple mathematics courses at the graduate level, and I loved them. So over three years, I took more and more mathematics, and then I completed a master's degree in philosophy, and started a post-bachelors PhD in mathematics. And that's how I came into the classroom.

I was a teaching assistant in philosophy just for a couple semesters. And then, of course, in mathematics, they need graduate students to be teaching assistants in a way that they didn't have so much support in philosophy. So even when I was still a philosophy graduate student, they said, hey, could you support our business calculus course?

And the answer is yes, because I knew there were lots of philosophy grad students who wanted that stipend that I would be vacating. So that's really how I started being an instructor. So I was a teaching assistant and then an instructor in the summer term, and then I had a postdoc, and then I came to JMU.

So I was always meticulously prepared because I knew I was on thin ice. I didn't have the same background as the other teaching assistants. So let me just tell you, I did every problem the night before.

And I think it made me able to be very sympathetic to the students because I had also learned whatever it was pretty recently and under some pressure, right? So I think it eased the way for me in the classroom. And also, this was the 90s, right?

To be a mathematics teaching assistant or instructor who appreciated that it was legitimately work and took the student seriously already put you ahead of the game in some ways, right? It wasn't a super high bar to be an accessible instructor. For me, a graduate student to being a postdoc, to coming to JMU is how much institutional culture is real even at the student level.

So something I appreciate about JMU students is that they often own their own process, which especially comes out when that process hasn't been great. And how willing they are to work together and how interested they are in sort of the group atmosphere in the room. Those were things that were new and that I appreciated.

So I post-talked at an Ivy League school where people would come talk to you about their B-. What is this? I've never seen this.

I'm like, well, you're welcome, because it was a good day and a generous curve. They're like, what do you mean? And then after I'd been in the math department for some time, just as a faculty member, the growth for me and my places where I personally could make a contribution that maybe not everybody else would have.

And from my philosophy background, I'm genuinely interested in the disciplines across the university. I'm always fascinated to find out, like, what is the particular thing that really matters in literature or performing arts, right? So when we, the math department, moved from one building to another, there was a huge to-do because our old building, Burris Hall, has these beautiful slate chalkboards, and our new building, ROOP, did not.

And said, well, we could give you these nice whiteboards. And we said, no! We have a white, a loyal whiteboard contingent, but many of us are chalkboard people.

And it took some back and forth for everybody to understand why this was important to us, how it could work out. So I love that kind of thing about other disciplines. So I thought that working in general education would be a nice opportunity for me.

I should say, too, that I feel like my liberal arts degree, my undergraduate degree in philosophy, has worked out great for me. I use it every single day. So I'm an enthusiastic proponent of the liberal arts in general, and especially of encouraging students to reach across sort of the humanities, social science, physical science categories.

People often talk about students like they're born with their major stamped on their forehead, and I wish we could find ways to do that less. I understand that many majors, especially in the sciences, are tightly sequenced. So if as a junior, you suddenly said, oh, engineering, yay, that would mean another two years on top of what you've already done, on top of the four that you've already committed to.

But I really like the idea of encouraging students to expose themselves as much as possible to very different ways of thinking. One of my real successes as an advisor, I feel like, was a student who came in, declared as a math major, Trayvon Beavers, and he completed a math major and then he did a PhD in statistics. And he's now a primary biostatistician at a pharma firm.

So very classic, super successful STEM career. But he also got an undergraduate degree, or an undergraduate minor, excuse me, in creative writing while he was here. To me, that was awesome.

I haven't had a chance to talk with him since he graduated about what that might have given him in his trajectory, but I'm confident he didn't think it was a waste of time. So anyway, so those are some of my motivations for coming into the general education space. And since I've done it, I really enjoy it.

I really like the people I work with, both in general education and the unit heads that I collaborate with.

Yeah, and I want to come back to something you said, because I think this is often assumed that as a faculty member that, from our student's perspective, that yeah, you knew exactly what you were going to do, and you studied this, then this, then this, and it was A, B, and C, and it was that simple. But if you actually dive into the details of most faculty members' journeys, it is not like that. And yours is very much, you were going straight philosophy at Seen, and then you made a sort of a right hand turn, and then went up a different sort of stream, if you will.

Can you talk about that process? Because I also went through a similar process, but I'd love to hear yours.

Oh, so it was a confluence of factors. I really appreciated the resolution of mathematics. So something I didn't understand getting into philosophy is that, I would say, and I know anytime one makes a general statement like this, it's a terrible red flag, so philosophers who may be listening, I feel you.

But that it is in many ways a dialectic discipline, and that it's a conversation that's been going on for centuries. And I had naively at the outset had more of an idea of, oh, we're going to figure this thing out. So mathematics is also a conversation, but there's some more sense of accumulation, right?

So with my late colleague Edwin O'Shea, we revisited something in Foundations of Euclidean Geometry, that is building off that work, right? It's taking it in a new direction, obviously, but when one feels that Euclid in the afterlife would say, oh, that's pretty cool. So that was part of it.

I felt like somehow the environment was more suited to me personally. There's sort of a specific mathematical sense of humor, which I really like. And also, the mathematics that I came into is very much foundational.

So by which I mean, it's sort of the sub-basement of the basement of the discipline. So that's something where my lack of an undergraduate degree didn't hurt me as much as other areas of mathematics where there's like all this assumed example. And if you haven't seen it, then you're going to just be climbing a steeper hill than everyone else in the room.

So as an undergraduate, I'd been a grader for the logic course. So I could like manhandle the quantifier. No idea what a continuous function might look like, but I could deal with quantifiers.

So it was easier for me to come into that area. So there was a, I guess, had I wanted to enter some other area of mathematics, it would have been much more difficult and probably would have just required some serious undergraduate coursework. I was fortunate enough that there was an advisor in mathematics who did that area and who was willing to work with a graduate student who had lots of odd peculiarities, right?

So very much it's about the content and it's also about the people who were there who were willing to support me and give me a chance. It was funny, after my PhD defense, I thanked my advisor and then two other people who were on the committee who had assisted as TAs, but they weren't in the area of mathematics. I said, thank you so much for all your support.

And one of them looked at the other and said, did you support her? I didn't do anything. So, that was, he was just a funny person.

And also, in my mind, I was like, well, you didn't tell me no. And I mean, they were personally welcome. So, yeah, I guess that's a long rambling answer to how it came about.

But that's okay. That's, again, you could see, you could forecast your own success in that particular area and you had the foresight enough to know that a different area you might not have as much success in.

Yeah. Well, I didn't know that then. I just knew that I really liked doing mathematics and that there was a way to keep doing it.

And one great thing about mathematics is about most of our disciplines is you're never going to run out of interesting things to think about, right? It will never be boring.

So you truly pursued your intellectual passion or curiosity.

Yeah.

That's excellent.

And I was lucky enough that there was a teaching stipend available so that I could actually do it.

So there was a desire, but there was also a practical pathway towards that.

Yes. Yes.

And I think that's really important on my journey because I had passions and I wanted to go do things. But I was also very practical in knowing that if there wasn't a graduate teaching assistantship in some way, shape, form, or fashion, that wasn't going to happen for me.

Right.

So those things sort of have to fall in line, don't they?

And it was increasingly clear to me that the job market for a mathematician is different from the job market for a philosopher. Even within the Academy and then if it doesn't work out outside. So that mattered too.

Yeah, I think that's helpful in the calculus of forecasting what you want to go do.

Yeah.

So, switching gears just a little. In your view, what does it mean to excel in your role?

So, that's an interesting question because there's so many different levels at which you might answer it. So, I would say at the most global level, it's to always be growing, always be evolving, and also not to indulge in revolution for revolution's sake. So, what the right evolution is changes at different points in one's career.

So, for the first, I don't know, 10 years that I was teaching university mathematics, I was trying to do the expected thing well. And then at some point, I thought, you know, I've been doing this for long enough that I might have a particular point of view now. Especially, again, remembering that I was a fresh immigrant to the culture and country of university mathematics.

So, I wanted to understand how it was done. And then someone was like, I do understand that. And now I'm in a position to think, okay, this is where I believe we can lean forward.

So, I guess cultivating a core of successful practice and also never stagnating.

And was that post-tenure or is that the process you're talking about after you've been there for a certain amount of time or was that a different timeline?

It was post-tenure. That wasn't, I wouldn't say that was my main mode of thinking, okay, now I have tenure, now I can innovate. Okay.

It was more, all right, I've gotten to this point. I feel stable in this point. What's the next step?

And that's also part of my seeking out the general education opportunity, too. That I was ready to try a new challenge and make a new contribution.

Anything else related to excelling in your role? You talked about the global level. Anything?

Yeah. So on the, I don't know, so then this is the very minutiae level.

Yeah.

It is, right? To keep pushing as a faculty member on my scholarship, on offering good courses, right? So teaching is a little, well, not a little bit, it is Sisyphean, right?

You get this class and you start pushing it up the hill, right? You're trying to make a sense of community, excitement, some sense of accomplishment, like you're trying to get all of this stuff to gel. And it usually, at least for me, usually takes six weeks for them to learn that I'm not mean, and I will be delighted if they ask questions.

And there's some dynamics of who in the room, and hopefully at that point we gel. And then we start to have a really good time, and maybe we do for the next eight weeks, and then the semester ends, and I get a new crop of people who I'm going to push up the hill. So just to keep doing that, right?

Because the people are new, it's new to them every time. It's my zillionth whatever course, but it's their first one, and to always be remembering that. And then for service, right, the different sort of showing up for the service that is appropriate to your situation, which is both where the department and the university are, and where you are as a faculty member.

And I treasure the memory of actually a CFI invitee who had done all kinds of work in writing courses in the University of Pennsylvania system. And she said, I realized last year that I needed to retire because I heard myself say, oh, we tried that 20 years ago and it didn't work.

So, yeah, one needs to never be that person.

On the other hand, as you go along in your career, you do have more institutional knowledge, which instead of saying, we tried that and it just didn't work, maybe, okay, what is different now? And what could we do differently so that that might work? So that same bank of knowledge can have a positive impact on what one is doing today.

And then in the general education role, we're in this interesting space because the university is having this big evolution of the program. So for right now, for me, excellence is keeping the trains running and there's a lot of minutiae in that. And also trying to cultivate a conversation among, especially the faculty who teach in the area that I'm coordinating.

What does wonderful liberal sciences education look like? So that's both in the abstract and also that we can deliver. Many aspects of JMU as an institution have changed since the program was first developed in the mid-90s.

So we're a little bit bigger and R2 is new. And class sizes have changed. We have an engineering program that we didn't have before.

We have a very highly subscribed computer science program that we didn't have before. We had computer science, but it was just in its beginnings as a department separate from mathematics. So to both steward the day-to-day operations and then also help frame the most positive evolution that we can.

Those are, I would say, are the categories of excellence in the general education space.

So what unique qualities or perspectives do you bring to your role that helps you strive towards that excellence that you just talked about?

So this is a perplexing question. I'm not sure how unique it is, but a genuine enthusiasm for it.

I would say in today's society, that is, though. That would be my personal purview.

Okay, well, thank you. And a sense of mission, right? To me, one of the things that we might have learned out of the last four or five years is that general public's understanding of science matters.

It's relevant. And also that people in the sciences really profit from understanding history, from understanding politics, from understanding how an aspect of science might appear in the general culture. So just the idea that our emerging colleagues, namely our students, will really benefit from strong liberal arts exposure, which is both, you know, serious breadth.

So, by which I mean an encounter with the discipline on its terms and also interdisciplinary things. So I'm not trying to plant a flag in that particular debate when I say that. And by serious, I mean not like taking this learner seriously as a person who is capable and will have a legitimate perspective, although they may not go very deeply into this subject.

I think that's true on every level. So I have some students who have become mathematicians, even in my area, right? And that's lovely.

And I have other students who I value equally, right? Who are going to be outstanding business leaders or teachers or ecological activists, right? All of the...

The world needs good people. And yes, the world needs good mathematicians, and I'm delighted to help recreate that. That's not the only kind of energetic, capable, educated person we need.

Yeah, I think that's quite a laudable ambition on your part. And I think that says a lot about you and your approach, is that you obviously care about the person who wants to go into mathematics. But to then extend that enthusiasm to somebody who does not want to go into mathematics, I think that is...

might be the ultimate compliment, if you will.

So there's this mathematics... the Nature of Mathematics course, Math 103. So that's a course that we have for people who don't need any specific mathematics.

It's really a beautiful vision, because your agenda as a faculty member is to give them a legitimate mathematics experience or statistics, but you don't have any specific content. So you're just trying to show them what is this thing, how is the argumentation unique, why is it interesting, why is it useful, why is it beautiful. So there's one kind of teaching evaluation that I've gotten several times.

It always makes me happy. It's not unique to me. The student will say something like, I came into this course hating mathematics.

I still do. But now I see why some people think it is interesting to me. Like when that person is, I don't know, in the state house, they'll say, you know, actually, we do really want to have good mathematics teachers in our K-12 system, or whatever it is.

And while I'm on that subject, I just want to mention that our Attorney General, Jason Meares, a Republican, and then maybe Mayor Richmond, LaVar Stoney, a Democrat, are both JMU alums. Neither one of them majored in the sciences. So whatever they know about mathematics and science, they got through the General Education Program.

And they're both in positions where they affect policy, what they think matters. What they understand, what they understand about the limits of their understanding. It's all really important.

Wonderful. To this point in your career, what are you most proud of?

So this is another big question. So answering from the faculty slash educator point of view, I think I'm most pleased that the posture I bring to the classroom has landed with students, which is centering the agency of the learner. So they're the people who actually learn this, right?

And it's work. It's hard work learning. So I can make it more or less appealing to them.

I can make it more or less likely of success for them. But they're the ones who actually do it. So I'm always really touched and flattered and feel like a success when students mention feeling that they were respected in my classes.

And again, that's about the entire range of student. From the people who walk in, like obviously terrified, day one of Math for the General Public, and the hot shot future mathematicians who've known that since they, before they set foot on JMU campus. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of.

In part, because it's the least sure of success, right? I know I can put together a well-designed syllabus, and write a fair test, and give a good math talk at a research conference, and write a paper that at least I think is interesting. And if it gets published, somebody else thought that too, right?

Those are more linear endeavors, if you like. So the landing with other people, that's a more subtle problem, and it changes over time. I remembered very clearly one day when I was talking to a class, it was in the aughts, and I said something that Gen X students would have been like, yeah.

And the class all looked at me with big guppy eyes. Oh, I'm not talking to other Gen Xers anymore. So what I said was, don't take my word for it.

This is mathematics, right? There's an argument behind it. And Gen Xers have been like, yeah, down with authority, man.

I'm going to decide. And they all looked at me like, what do you mean? You mean we can't trust you?

I was like, oh, oops, I need to rethink this.

That's something that resonates with me. The posture you approach the classroom with and the ability to connect with folks and have them feel respected. I think that might be like a transformative learning experience instead of simply a content-related learning experience.

Yeah. So I really see myself in the supporting growth of people's agency business. I had an interesting conversation with a couple of colleagues last week where I said empowerment.

And my one colleague said, I don't like that. It's still... he was saying, if I understood him correctly, that to him it still had a flavor of a thing I'm bestowing, which is exactly what I don't want.

What I mean is that I'm helping be the conditions for the learner who's actually doing the transforming, the growing, the understanding.

What drives you to continue growing and thriving in your role?

Okay, I'm sorry. Now that we just said that, one of the things that I'm proud of...

Yeah, absolutely...

.is in different areas having looked at what is the situation on the ground and come up with something that is genuinely additive and expands the mission of where we are. So, an early example of this is working with a colleague to develop the Shenandoah Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics Conference, which is still going. Other colleagues run it now and they've made it better and awesome.

But it was specifically to fill a hole in the undergraduate research cycle, which has always been really important at JMU in general and in the College of Science and Math in particular. So we had really good summer research programs. We didn't have a way for students to communicate that work.

So that's one example. But to me, it's part of this general picture of what I'm doing when I show up to work is, okay, what's going on right now? Where do we want to go?

And is there something that I can add to that space? Which sometimes is like a shiny undergraduate research conference. And sometimes it's writing a very thorough report that three people will read, but it's important that we have it.

You know? Okay, sorry.

No, no, no, no, no, that's okay. So now, Eric, ask the question. What drives you to continue growing and thriving in your role?

So to borrow a phrase that I learned from Keila Yurko, who's also part of CFI, so the poll is that it's just endlessly interesting. So people change, the tenor of like generational, I don't know, zeitgeist changes and the discipline changes, and there's all this new social science of how people learn, that just wasn't a thing. Wasn't a thing in the 90s when I started teaching mathematics.

There were still people then who had the shake hands with people on either side of you approach to, especially the sciences. I don't know if you live through this in kinesiology also. The idea was that if you don't fail a third of the class, you're not doing your job.

Oh.

So we moved on from that perspective in the sciences, thank goodness, right? So it's just interesting, right? What is the conversation?

How do things change? And there's always some new buzzword, and it's often taken to an extreme or distorted or doesn't solve every single problem known to man, shockingly, right? So, but you also don't want to just turn your back on that because that's the way to stagnate.

So what is, where is the conversation shifting? What is the gold in it? How does it make sense in this setting?

That's always an ongoing challenge. Mathematics itself, like we've said, it's like an island. The more landmass you have, the longer the coastline is, the more you know, the more you don't know.

So those are all sort of the pole things that encourage me to keep growing. Coming into the general education space is there's a whole body of national literature about liberal arts education that I hadn't read as a mathematician. So getting to learn that has been really interesting.

It's fun when you're sitting there reading, you think, no, this is actually my job. I'm not just indulging my curiosity here. I'm really learning something that's important for what I'm doing.

And so that's a big pole. And then the pushes, we've all had that colleague or that instructor who didn't do those things and who ossified. And at some point, I became a person who's been here a long time.

And I don't want to grow up to be that ossified, cranky person.

That's a laudable ambition right there. Okay. Do you have any hobbies or personal interests that bring fresh energy or insights into your work?

Absolutely. So for one thing, my household has included rescue dogs since the first year after I came here and was able to buy a house. So they're German shepherds.

I've had four now, not all at the same time. I think because when I was just a baby baby, our downstairs landlords had had a shepherd. And so that's always like printed on me as the dog.

Anyway, they're a breed that keeps you honest, right? They're smart. They have their own opinions.

They want a lot of attention, but they'll also always challenge the rules, right? Like, oh, do I have to sit right away this time?

And I mean, that thing that's right there where I could probably get it, right? Doesn't that mean I should maybe get it? And they're different.

And as you, I don't know if you have rescues, but they have a back story that you don't know always. And so they can be extra quirky. Like one of my dogs now is crazy about water.

Like you can't turn on the hose around him. So anyway, having them keeps you honest about boundaries. And they're very, very tight observers of emotion.

So I'll be sitting at my desk even if I'm just reading something and starting to get upset and the one dog will come storming in and try to sit on my lap to distract me. It's fascinating. But it doesn't work out so well because he's a huge dog.

But it's interesting. It took me a while to realize that he's that sensitive. That's also an inspiration, right?

How do they pick up on it? How could I bring that level of awareness to my interactions with people? Like obviously I can't be, like they can probably smell it.

I'm never going to be a German Shepherd in that respect, but that level of sensitivity is inspiring. And sort of the other big feature of my personal life is that I like to do long course triathlon. So that's a project that requires many of the same habits as making progress in mathematics, doing some all the time.

So if you take a week off from training, that's not good, right? You'll be behind. Persistence, the inevitable setback.

So I'm not a person of extraordinary athletic gifts in any way, shape or form. And in fact, part of the reason that I was drawn to long course triathlon was because the longer the race, the more the mental game is relevant. I was like, well, okay, I've never been a fast runner, but I do have a good mental game.

So I've at this point completed seven iron races and some larger number of half irons.

And can you, for listeners, can you explain what that means, what that entails just very briefly?

So an iron distance race is what's called Ironman, but that's a company that's trademarked the name. So iron distance just means anything at that race. So it's a two and a half mile swim, or 2.4 mile, 112 miles by Kride and then a marathon.

And I should say that alluded to the fact that I'm not a great athlete. So there's many opportunities to be in this dark place. So like, oh my gosh, one, two, three.

Like, in one course, I was literally the last person to make it through the, past the time cut. So like they were closing the aid stations behind me. It's like, it's okay, guys, you can go home now.

I'm the last one. But it's a nice laboratory for developing the habits that I need also for this work. And also the physical aspect of it is a really important balance to how much faculty work could be sitting at a desk.

I always notice it when I go from the semester where I get to walk back and forth during class to summer teaching, which is Dell Online. So you're just sitting looking on Zoom to the summer where it's desk, where it's all desk. But you don't have to be trapped for three hours at a pop.

So rescue dogs and long course triathlon.

Wonderful. This is the second time I'm going to say this on this podcast, but dogs and cats for listeners, because I have a wonderful cat, wonderful animals. How do you balance your personal life with your faculty responsibilities?

So that's a hard question. And I'm going to talk about experience with it, because I think it's not uncommon. I drove really hard in graduate school and as a post-doc.

So there were some particular reasons that made it more challenging in my case, switching disciplines. There's a really good reason people don't usually do that. And I was also a parent, and a single parent for a lot of that time.

Again, really good reasons people tend to wait to have children. Anyway, that's not what I did. So, and just have a general idea of trying to be useful as a faculty member means like show up and get after it.

And I just spent years in the on-ramp to a semester would be okay. And then there'd be a point after which my rest, my basic state, my default state was that I was furious and upset that I wasn't getting more done. And that would go on until the end of the semester.

And then it would start up again the next semester. And when I say years, I mean like 15, 16 years, it took me a long time to say, you know, not just me. I'm, you know, this can't be a reasonable baseline.

I think a lot of us come into this having pushed really hard in graduate school, not understanding that that push is not something that you're going to be able to do for a 30 year career. So toward Balancing, okay. So that's the long living with imbalances.

And then I should say, another motivator for my re-think was seeing colleagues who didn't know in any favors by being sleep deprived and wound up. I'm like, for the love of God, like do one less thing, sleep four more hours, we'll all be happier. So for now, what I try to do is number one, accept that there's seasonal rhythms.

So I'm not going to make big advances, say in doing something at home until June, because the semester will go until May, and then I hope to teach a summer class. So realistically, June is the time that I can do some big project at home. I do not get wound up about that or try to do it anyway.

Part of making that real on a week-to-week basis is doing something that's not an obscure piece of mathematical logic. It's widely discussed, but it's nevertheless hard to do. Namely, have what's often referred to as the Sunday meeting, where you sit down for half an hour or an hour and just think about all the things that need to happen in a week and figure out when they will happen.

I find that helps me have clarity, because I think of all of the things, and then I start putting them in the time, and there's always more things than there are slots. And so it helps me say, okay, this thing needs to be on hold, because this thing has to happen right now. As part of that, I think it's really important to reflect on what happened previous week.

How did that work? So that I, for example, love to underestimate how long things will take. Oh, that letter of recommendation that I absolutely want to work out for this student.

I want to write my best possible letter. That will take an hour. Ha ha ha.

So it's helpful to me to look back and say, okay, you had a good estimate there, you didn't have a good estimate there. So that when I'm making this plan, I'm making a plan that can actually happen. I would say those are the big key elements.

And as part of that, being sleep deprived on an ongoing level, it's not how people do their best work. It's not how I do my best work for sure. Certainly not how the people around me have the happiest time in life.

Yeah, I would say score two to nothing for sleep and score two to nothing for planning out or having the Sunday meeting. I've been doing that rather recently and that's been way more successful and given me way more clarity and focus than previous years. And I'm just getting into this, but score two there.

It is hard to do. Like, I'm too busy. Like, no, no, no, you're not.

Yes. Yes. Okay.

So this is sort of a bonus question. And I can give you some time if you need. If you could gift every faculty member one resource to elevate both their personal and professional growth, what would it be and why?

So if I could, I would gift people a weekly snow day. By which I mean a day in which nothing is scheduled. So, yeah, with apologies to people who have small children for whom the snow day is anything but this that I'm describing.

But I would gift people a day in which nothing can be scheduled in advance and there are no extra obligations that are going to show up. So unstructured, uncommitted time.

Sounds like peace.

Yeah.

Sounds like 100 cc's apiece.

Yes. And here's a funny thought experiment. So what would it be like if everybody as a default got here well rested and well fed and undistracted by other things, by which I don't mean that other things aren't happening, but just that they're like, okay, that's going to be okay until I come back to it.

So our work has a lot of flexibility, which is lovely. And the vast majority of colleagues say, oh, well, it's flexible. So because of that, I need to give more and more and more.

And they put out so much more that if you're working 70 hours a week, but it's flexible, I don't know if that's really a great resolution somehow. So that's what I would give people, unstructured time.

Wonderful. Last question. If you could go back in time and meet yourself before your first day at JMU, what advice would you give yourself and why?

So first of all, I would say make a practice of systematic reflection at the week and semester and year level, if not more. So the week level is important because after that, you forget what happened. Oh, I wasn't effective on Sunday.

Why was I not effective on Sunday? Oh, because I let this family member who's a complicated person invite me to breakfast and I went for it, which I didn't have a plan. So you'd forget that kind of granularity if you waited too long.

You're just like, ah, didn't work. Systematic reflection and planning also is a check-in because there is a lot that comes at us every day in our email. I think, think about how much this work has changed since the 80s when there was no email.

Right then, if you wanted a faculty member, you had to go to their office hours. Right now, all kinds of people on campus can send you an email and they have an expectation of a response. So that can eat a lot of time, like half an hour a day.

That's a lot of time out of the week, actually. So I guess the other piece of advice I would give is that there will never be an end of worthwhile projects that could use someone's time and attention. So choose wisely.

Those are very wise words to end on. Today, we've been speaking with Dr. Elizabeth Brown. Thank you very much, Elizabeth.

Thanks so much.

It's been fun.