5 More things Rugby taught me about Academia
Today’s post is the second one in the series about lessons from rugby for academia, focusing on how being an athlete helped me tackle my PhD (and beyond!) sustainably and creatively.
In my last post, I wrote about four lessons from rugby I implemented in my academic career. Having played and coached since 2009, rugby is a very important part of my identity, and has invaded every aspect of my life, including my academic career. The four lessons mentioned in that post were:
Periodisation
Planning ahead for non-work time
An adversary is not an enemy
Receiving feedback
In today’s post, I discuss five more things I learned from rugby that have helped me tackle the PhD creatively and sustainably.
Having a fair assessment of oneself
I once saw a video where Neil DeGrasse Tyson said that it was paramount for academics to have a fair assessment of themselves and the place they occupy in their research fields and in society. I cannot, for the life of me, find the video again (if anyone knows its title, please let me know so that I can link it!). I realised that is something I had learned as a rugby player, and then worked hard to translate that into my academic career. Academics usually have a good idea of what their position in the field is, because occupying an innovative space is at the core of the very definition of the PhD, but the other elements of the fair assessment are less prevalent, especially amongst precarious postgraduate and early-career researchers. As an athlete, if you think you are better than you are, you stop learning and underestimate your opponent - ultimately, you become unprepared. On the other hand, if you are too humble and think you are worse than you actually are, you lose the confidence that is fundamental for performance. So part of the psychological training for rugby is to know what you are good at, play to those strengths and keep training them, while also recognising areas that you are less talented in, that maybe need improvement, or that will simply never be your thing. The same goes for academia. I sometimes think there are types of academics: those who believe they are the best in the world because they got a prize/published in a big journal/went to a high-ranking university and those who suffer with crippling imposter syndrome, as well as combinations where you act as if you were the best while having really low confidence or pretend to be humble while actually having a pretty high opinion of yourself. These are all detrimental and will not help you tackle the PhD creatively or sustainably. It is okay to acknowledge that you are doing a really hard thing and that maybe you are a very good researcher - you’ve made it this far after all! It is also more than okay - mandatory even, given the nature of research! - to have doubts, to question whether you are the right person to be doing this project, etc. Both things can coexist, and you need to examine yourself just like you would any kind of data in your research: factually.
A training session is a game. A game is a war.
“Treino é jogo e jogo é guerra”. That is what my coach used to say when he wanted us to go full strength at training. As a researcher specialising in armed conflict, I am not sure I approve of the word “war” being used so lightly, but he did have a point. If you want to perform when it matters, you need to perform when preparing for it. Transposing that to academia, I believe I must live my day-to-day as the academic I want to be, showing up for work with the same focus and intensity my coach expected me to have at training. This does not mean wearing myself out, or having one of those regimes where you need to write 3 thousand words every day. I have a life outside of work just like I did outside of rugby, and I did not train for hours on end. But when I did train, and when I do work, I am present and committed. If I only have 30 minutes to write, I will not scroll on social media, because having a regular writing practice is the equivalent of having a training routine, and you train like you want to play.
On a more practical note, this also means that I practice every conference paper I give and every class I teach, timing myself and anticipating some of the tough questions I may get asked.
There is a difference between pain and discomfort
One day, I was coaching scrums, and one of my locks said “I have no idea how to be comfortable while I am pushing”, to which I responded “scrums are not made to be comfortable, they are made to test if you can still be strong while doing something the human body was not meant to do - you will never be comfortable!”. That is true of so many sports! I doubt a ballerina would say they are trying to feel comfortable in their pointe shoes, for example! Academia is the same, you will never be comfortable because it was made to be uncomfortable: in order to discover new things, you have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing them in the first place, and you have to be in the very vulnerable position of coming up with a “how” (a methodology) when you don’t really know the “what” yet (the gap in knowledge, the thing you want to study). Discomfort is normal. But athletes are quick to find out the difference between discomfort and pain. That same lock needs to be able to tell if she is not only uncomfortable in a scrum but rather her neck is being bent in a dangerous way. The ballerina needs to know whether it’s normal pointe discomfort of it she has damaged her tendon. As an academic, you need to know if what you are feeling is normal discomfort of if you are suffering the consequences of precarity, abuse, and burnout.
“It’s not about winning, it’s about deserving to win”
This is what the coach that led the men’s team of my first club to the national title said in his end-of-season speech. He had achieved national glory, but instead of focusing on the result, he focused on the process. This means that, if he had done exactly the same things and had lost that one game, those 80 minutes would not have defined his season and he would have been proud anyway. Given the state of the academic job market, where there are not enough jobs for everyone and where department closures mean that new doctors will be going for the same jobs as former professors with 20 years of experience, it is safe to say that we will likely lose more games than we will win. I have lost count of how many jobs I have applied for! Unfortunately, we cannot determine the outcome of a job application any more that we can determine the final result of a game, the only thing we can do is ensure that we did enough, that we are proud of what we did, and that we deserve that win, whether it comes our way or not. This leads to an acceptance that the job market is really tough right now, but acceptance without resignation: it is the opposite of crossing your arms and saying “well I am not going to win anyway” - it is focusing on the process and ensuring you are giving it your very best shot every time you put yourself out there.
RECOVERY, RECOVERY, RECOVERY
Every athlete knows how important rest is. It is part of the job. Every academic should learn that too!
The next and final post in this series will be all about how coaching made me a better teacher, so keep your eyes peeled for that! In the meantime, if you would like to discuss more about the RHYTHM framework or about how I can use my rugby experience to support you, get in touch!
