Andy here-

A few weeks ago an undergrad tweeted that their professor had told them they shouldn’t go to grad school if they were having anxiety attacks because they wouldn’t be able to handle it. I replied that it’s doable but difficult. I want to elaborate. I’m trying here to be as specific and open about my experiences as I can. The beginning of this post is a narrative about how my disorder has impacted my career and life, and the bottom is hopefully some helpful tips I’ve found over the years.

I was diagnosed in undergrad with a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, as well as Scholastic and Social Anxiety disorders. When I was diagnosed they said that in part it was because of life circumstances but also because “some people just have jumpier nervous systems”. I have a family history of extremely severe anxiety; mine is not as bad as that relative, though it has impacted my life and career. I’ve been on anti-anxiety drugs (SSRIs, which are also used to treat depression) twice, once in undergraduate and I just restarted them a few weeks ago. I’ve been in therapy and counseling twice, once in undergrad and then again starting soon.

Educational & Professional Life

I failed out of college when I was a freshman/sophomore. This was largely because I had never learned to actually work in high school because I could just coast through. I was advised as a college freshman, because I was good at science, to take the extremely accelerated track at the University of Wisconsin (UW). Taking Organic Chemistry as a freshman with no study skills is a bad idea. After failing out of college I took a few classes at a community college, worked a job where I was stuck in the back of a large room entirely by myself, and retreated into online gaming. Coming back from all that was difficult. I went from not socializing for a full year to being back in large 300 person lectures. The only reason that I ended up in graduate school was because my advisor at UW took a chance on me; my grades were below the minimum for admission. Months of therapy (talk and group) helped some. A part of this experience failing left me with intense impostor syndrome which amplifies aspects of the anxiety disorders (Impostor Syndrome in Graduate School)

I had my first migraine in graduate school. I had just given a presentation to my group that I had been really worried about, and got a migraine on the way home. It became a thing, a massive release of stress and then a migraine. The second one had me go to an Urgent Care facility and put on morphine because of the pain. Medication has helped, but also meditation. My anxiety and stress levels are linked, and so the migraines seem like they’re a manifestation of the anxiety.

One of the things about academia is that every new level brings an additional layer of stress. During my PhD things became more intense again. I never felt like I was accomplishing enough each day, even though I would get to work at 7 or 8 AM and then leave at 5 PM, working once I got home. I was working flat out during those days as well, trying to accomplish as much as I could. I couldn’t shut my brain off once I was trying to get to sleep, so I would be awake for hours. Susanna (my wife) eventually suggested that I stop working at 8, force myself to shut down and take time before going to sleep. I also started to meditate before bed, repeating the thought, “I got enough done today.” It helped. I also accomplished more during the day. Your brain needs downtime, just like the rest of you does.

One persistent feeling is that my accomplishments are not my own. This is a part of impostor syndrome, but it’s also a part of anxiety. I still cannot shake the feeling that the postdoc I had at the National Museum of Natural History was because the curator I worked for wanted a specific speciality and he was friends with my PhD advisor, it wasn’t because of me as a researcher. I know that’s not the case because I got another prestigious fellowship 10 days (Newton Royal Society) after I accepted the NMNH fellowship, one that I can’t figure out how to tie completely to another’s success or rank. I remember having thoughts, though, trying to figure out a way to make it not my victory, but something I got because of another person. My second postdoc I got because I had the specific skills in data analysis they wanted. I know that’s an aspect of me as a researcher, but it feels like luck. Something outside my control. My fellowship feels like it was because my postdoc supervisor is a part of the committee, but I know she was out of the room when they discussed my ranking and selection. I either feel that my accomplishments are because I knew somebody that thought I needed help or I was lucky.

Conferences & Meetings

Networking at meetings is tough. My social anxiety is strongest with people I perceive as ranking above me. As a graduate student, talking to prospective advisors was next to impossible. So is doing the talking with mid or senior level scientists as an Early Career Researcher. It means that my involvement in certain projects is behind where it would be if I were able to network better.

Being at meetings is also exhausting. My social anxiety is best explained in analogy to a chemical reaction. I can switch to a more extroverted person temporarily, it just takes a lot of energy. If you think about a chemical reaction, there’s a certain activation energy needed to promote the reaction. If the reaction is initiating a social interaction, for an extrovert it’s lower, in an introvert it’s higher. For me, a person with social anxiety, it’s higher still, because I can feel my fight-or-flight reaction start when I am meeting another person in a meeting context. Because a meeting is a sustained version, I haven’t come back from a meeting in years without catching some kind of cold. Being in therapy makes this even more apparent. After a first session describing previous issues, why I was seeking help, I was ‘keyed-up’ and having an anxiety attack for the next several hours. I was unable to even look my wife in the eye without having an anxiety/adrenaline response.

If it feels like I’m describing all of this in an over intellectualized way, I am. I’ve done this for years to try and take all the emotions I can out of thinking about this because it helps reduce my anxiety levels. Just writing about this is difficult.

Interviewing & Teaching

Having anxiety means that your self perception is off, at least for me. I almost always feel that job interviews go horribly. The worse I feel the better they seem to go. I was completely convinced that I had made multiple fatal mistakes during my most recent interview. I repeatedly went over all interactions in my head. I spent hours mulling over all the answers I had given. I worried over what exactly to send in my emails. A lot of that is normal. What isn’t normal is that I had a feeling of panic the entire time. Weeks of utter dread. I felt as if I had let down my family, that I was never going to get a job. I told everyone that there was no way that I got that job. I ended up seeking medical help because I thought that my anxiety was going to cost me another job after this.

The first question I received after my talk is a good example. I had just finished and my first question was about the underlying driver of one of the topics I’d talked about. I have spent the last two years working on this question and have supervised three MSc students on it. I 100% knew the answer to this question. As soon as the question was asked, my mind went blank. The answer I finally gave, in my memory, made no sense. I remember not even speaking in complete sentences, instead in phrases or just words. It actually took me a week or two after the interview to have the answer reappear in my head, it was like my mind decided to protect itself by temporarily hiding that information. It really did just pop right back in my head like it had never been gone. This phenomenon happened again after a trip to the doctor discussing my anxiety. I was biking, made a turn, and ended up biking towards an oncoming car because I could not figure out which lane I was supposed to be in. I’ve been living in the UK for nearly two years and commute via bike every day. It happened last week when my group was talking about minerals somebody asked me what the hardest mineral was other than diamond. It’s quartz, but I made a joke because I didn’t want to say that in case I was wrong. Of course it’s quartz, I know I’m not wrong, but I can’t trust my self-perception of my answers, so I hide behind humor.

I got that job. I had completely given up on it and spent two weeks after they told me I was their top candidate feeling like they had made some kind of mistake. I know that my interview can’t have gone as poorly as I feel like it has, simply because if it went as poorly as I think it did there’s no chance I would be their top candidate. I know some of my competition for that job, they are amazing scientists! That’s really the bottom line of having anxiety in academia. You will intellectually know what’s going on. You’re in a grad program, so you fully know that you’re a smart, hard working person (you are). You will, however, feel that someone has made a massive mistake. In graduate school, I knew that nothing hugely bad would come of having a conversation making small talk, but even right now, as I sit at my kitchen table, I can feel some amount of adrenaline building just thinking about it.

All this might sound like me teaching could be a problem. Because my inability is situational however, I can teach just fine. If I know I’m the most knowledgeable person in the room, all of this goes away. If I perceive I’m the top of the hierarchy or an equal, then I don’t have a problem. My issues also recede as I get used to a new person, or while I’m actively suppressing them. Finding the limits of your disease can help figure out where you can and can’t be at ease. Storing up that energy when you can is vital.

Anxiety can also be useful, with some huge caveats. I have figured out how to use it as a tool in certain situations. When trying to get a grant finished, for example, if I can ride the balance between being worried about getting it all done and devolving into a complete panic, I can be exceedingly productive. It’s hard on me, it means that I work really quickly but can miss important details, and it does not work well if I do it over too many days.

It’s also, lastly, important to recognize that a basic truism of academia: there are not enough jobs and we face constant rejection. The constant threat of the complete impossibility of winning this lottery will be felt constantly. I, my family, went through 5 years of instability with constant worry about where we were going to get a paycheck from in a year, two years, three years, in the future. Anxiety issues are going to make that worse. Having a family means there’s even more riding on everything, because it’s not just you, it’s dependents as well. It’s worth it, but go into all of this with thought. Consider support systems, make plans (that’s what we do well, right? Plan to deal with anything that happens?).

Managing Stress & Anxiety

I want to end this with some things that have worked for me to help manage stress and anxiety. I’ve culled these from discussions with therapists, reading, and talking with other people. I hope they help you as well.

Find somebody to talk to that you trust: I would not be in the same mental state if I didn’t have Susanna to talk things through with. If I’m feeling anxious about something, I talk things through with her. She’ll give me an honest but supportive take on whatever it is. She pushes me to find professional help when I need it. For somebody that finds asking for help to also cause anxiety, that’s important. I know this seems like me saying “oh, just find somebody you love. That’ll fix it.” but it doesn’t have to just be a spouse. Find a trusted friend to confide in, or a parent. A support structure is important in graduate school or academia for anybody, but it’s even more important for somebody with anxiety.

Many universities have counseling services that offer a certain number of sessions with student or credentialed therapists. That’s what I started with at UWisc. The University of Bristol even also has a free staff counseling service. Seeking professional help is incredibly helpful. If you are in graduate school, you should recognize that expertise is important. Just because it’s your head, doesn’t mean that you are the best person to think your way out of your issues. I’ve tried. It does not work, a professional can guide you through the process better than you can do yourself.

Stop working: It’s really easy to fall into the trap that getting more stuff done will solve anxiety problems. It won’t. You’ll get more done for a day, then your productivity will begin to drop off, and that’ll cause more anxiety. Having a firm time everyday that no-matter-what you will stop working lets you take space. You cannot work all the time and be productive. People that say they can are wrong and dangerous. It’s not healthy for you or the others around you. I play first person shooter video games (the modern Wolfenstein series is a favorite), it takes me out of the things that are worrying me at the moment and lets me focus on something external. It’s been an effective catharsis for me. Find something that works for you to distract you from constant barrage of thoughts about work.

I now have two kids, and I trained myself to have fairly intense guilt about working from home. While that’s not great at the moment because of the pandemic, it’s been an effective deterrent to working constantly.

Breathe: I meditated for 15-20 minutes before my PhD defense. I put on a specific song that helps calm or center me, closed my eyes, sat cross legged, and tried to clear my head. I’ve been doing this since therapy after my panic attack. It has helped. I have no idea if I’m even meditating correctly, but find something that works for you. You just need to create some mental space from yourself and your stressor.

Give yourself a break: Recognize that this is going to make graduate school harder. It’s going to make being an academic harder. You will feel the lows more than the highs, and academia comes with all sorts of lows. Rejection will feel sometimes like a gut punch, it’ll make you want to leave. Yes, everybody feels this, but you, a person with anxiety, does not have an accurate self perception of your personal successes. I’ve had several really prestigious positions, PI’d a large multi-institution NSF grant as a postdoc, published in Nature, Nature Ecology and Evolution, and a bunch of other really good journals. I just got a research heavy Assistant Professor position, picked from over >100 people. I constantly feel I will need to leave academia imminently because somebody is going to figure out that I’m not as good at something as I should be. I don’t even know what that thing is. You’re going to feel this too. It’s a part of us. Sit with that thought, identify it, and realize that it’s a feeling and it’s not true to what you intellectually know. But then recognize that it sucks to constantly feel like this. It just does! It’s not your fault.

Figure out your triggers: I mean this in both a positive and negative, find things that make your mental state less and more anxious. Figuring out how to calm yourself down is just as important as figuring out what might lead to more anxious feelings.

I listen to a lot of very fast music (the more I think about my disorders the more I realize it’s completely interwoven into every part of my life), which many people have told me would make them feel anxious. A good example is Animals as Leaders – Tempting Time or Daughters – The Hit. This is what I (used to) listen to when I work. It’s quick, layered, and helps clear out the rest of the thoughts that I have rattling around in my head. But the cacophony can make things worse, so sometimes I have other music (e.g., Imogene Heap) which I can use to calm down. For me it’s about finding that balance between using the anxiety as a tool to get things done and not over doing it.

Drugs: I recently went on Sertraline (Zoloft in the States). So far, it’s helping. It’s tough to say, as I got over the initial increase in anxiety the Covid-19 pandemic really gained speed, the UK went on lockdown, and I received my job offer. While it’s tough to say what’s going on for any of us emotionally, both I and Susanna think that the drugs are helping. Taking drugs isn’t a weakness. Some of us (hello!) literally have nervous systems that react stronger to our experiences. Getting help is important.

If you also suffer from Anxiety and want to talk with somebody who has made it through, please do reach out to me. I’m on twitter (@macromicropaleo) or via email (andy.fraass (atsymbol) gmail.com), or anywhere else you can find me. I’m more than happy to talk or write with anybody about my experiences, your experiences, or just to listen. If you want 5 minutes or several hours, please, really do reach out.

Andy here-

Political polarization, the ever-widening divide between Right and Left in the US, is an obvious problem. We have lost our ability to communicate with one another: using different sets of ‘facts’ to back up our arguments, with the ‘facts’ depending on our side of the political spectrum. The internet has in large part facilitated this fracturing. One can spend 10 minutes on Google to find support for anything that they believe. For example, Youtube videos link to increasingly conspiratorial videos, pushing us farther apart. This loss to our collective conversation is damaging in most arenas, even in the classroom or lecture halls. When a collection of outright lies masquerading as facts meets science, it causes problems. When a student population has firmly-held beliefs in concepts that are simply not true, as a facet of their personal values or beliefs, this presents a difficult and unique challenge for an instructor. I was a visiting assistant professor in a conservative area, dealt with these issues, and hope to provide some help for those who are walking into a similar task in this post.

I loved teaching at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), enjoyed my time with both my students and colleagues. Some of this is going to read as if I was combative the entire time I was at SHSU. I wasn’t. I truly enjoyed interacting with my students (and most liked interacting with me, from reading my evaluations), especially the ones who thought about topics differently than I do. College is supposed to be about exposure to new ideas, after all. I find it difficult to let people believe in materially incorrect things however, especially when they’re detrimental to their lives, and to my own or my family’s lives. SHSU is in a very conservative area in East Texas, and my introductory, general education course covered both climate change and evolution. Covering these subjects meant that the students signing up for “Historical Geology” as an easy science credit got a more ‘controversial’ course than they expected.

To say that climate change or evolution is controversial is imprecise. Both subjects, scientifically, are not controversial, especially at the introductory level. Evolution is a multifaceted theory that is accepted by scientists and there are no competing arguments; this has been understood for 150 years. Scientists also agree that the climate has been changing for decades, and that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a potent greenhouse gas since Svante Arrhenius calculated the extent to which increases in CO₂ can cause heating in the atmosphere (he was alive in 1859-1927). Both subjects, unfortunately, are controversial in the public’s eye. Today, 29% of the American public believe scientists do not agree that humans have evolved over time, and 32% reject the scientific fact that is human-caused climate change (and 24% are uncertain!). Walker County, TX, which SHSU is in, has 7% lower acceptance rate than the national average. When I asked my students if scientists agree or do not agree that evolution is a fundamental process describing change through time, ~20% said scientists did not agree. To say that my classes were comprised of more conservative students, with strong personal beliefs, than an average introductory science course in the US is probably accurate.

Teaching these particular students about climate change isn’t simply because it’s course material–it’s vital for them specifically. My second week of teaching was canceled entirely by the university because of the impact to the region by Hurricane Harvey. SHSU is a 45 minute drive from Houston, and areas of the town were closed. Many students were commuting from the south, and some had to miss additional classroom time. One individual had to miss many Fridays that semester because he was working on fixing his mother’s house. Climate change has a direct impact on that region, will continue to have a direct impact, and these students should be fully cognizant of their choices when acting as consumers or citizens. There is an irony to a region economically-driven by oil production reaping the consequences of climate change. That, however, doesn’t mean that the population should suffer. 

Educating a student population with strongly held personal beliefs counter to course material doesn’t work well with traditional teaching methods. We not only have to teach students the material that they need them to understand for the course (past greenhouse gas changes, radiative forcing, proxy data, feedback mechanisms, etc.) but we also have to convince them of barefaced reality. We have to convince them that, no, scientists aren’t lying to them or the public. We have to convince them that we’re not in the pocket of ‘big-environment’, reaping the benefits of ‘big’ grants. We have to recover their idea that there can be legitimacy of the scientific process. If you say the words ‘climate change’ to someone of a Right ideology, they are likely to not listen to what you say afterwards because you’ve been written off as ‘far-Left’. How do you teach when your students might react that way?

A Hybrid Teaching Approach

Instructors, professors, and educators have to engage in science communication rather than teaching. Not entirely, but to a degree that can be uncomfortable. To explain: Science communication is sharing scientific results with the non-expert public. It relies heavily on a ‘values-based’ model, which is empirically more effective than the older ‘information-deficit’ model. The information-deficit model said that “People just don’t know enough, so if I explain what I know, they’ll agree with me.” That’s standard teaching. The professor explains the subject, the students take notes, everybody agrees the professor is telling the truth and that the professor has the most thorough understanding and information. The information-deficit model assumes that facts win, which simply isn’t the case.  We resist facts that don’t conform to our strongly held beliefs. It doesn’t work if everyone does not agrees that the professor has authority in the subject. If a large enough number of the class think the professor is a member of a global conspiracy of attempted wealth redistribution, then the information deficit model falls completely apart. If the information-deficit model worked, then no one walking out of a (properly taught) high school biology course would believe intelligent design or creationism. That’s simply not the case.

The values-model says that the communicator (professor, instructor, educator) establishes shared values with their audience and communicates with them in a back-and-forth exchange.  They then explain why a scientific concept is important to them, and why it should also be important for those who share the same values. That’s not teaching, in the purest sense, because it’s broader than just pure information conveying. That’s also not possible in the lectures we frequently find ourselves teaching.

Let’s assume that our goal is to take students who are uncertain about climate change, or don’t believe that evolution has occurred through time, and get them to accept scientific truths. Information-deficit isn’t going to get us to students accepting the truth, if we’re dealing with a resistant population. While not all of my students were resistant, I like to ‘swing for the fences’ and get everybody to understand concepts. Past students said they liked the ‘nobody left behind’ classroom ethos I set out. The values-model is uncomfortable for scientists, in particular. A scientific-upbringing, like one has while you get a Ph.D., prizes the ultra-rational and eschews ‘values’ for data (click here for a discussion about science being inherently political). 

Blending both the values-based and information-deficit models of teaching might be the right approach. We need to communicate information, but if we demonstrate to students why the subject matters, how it fits with their previously held ideas, or even provide space for them to blend their faith with known biology, then we move them away from irrational, ill-placed skepticism.

I had these concepts gnawing at the back of my head while I was teaching my introductory course (Historical Geology). There was one particular moment that help me see a blending as the correct way forward. In class I occasionally asked students to submit anonymous questions to me on note cards about either impending or just-covered subject material. I’m one of the only research-centric scientists these students might ever meet, and I know from conversations with students that they have questions that weren’t covered in the course. Sometimes I answered the note card questions in lecture alongside the regular material, like in my climate lectures. Other times they exchanged cards with 5 other people, then the last person decided if they wanted to ask that now-anonymous question right then. At the end of my evolution section I got the question “What are your values?” from a student. I used my answer to that question as my first slide when discussing climate change.

That’s me sharing a value that most folks should share: that truth is important, something that we should respect. I used it to set the stage for a series of lectures on climate change that talks primarily about the mechanism and past examples, but also talked about climate models, future projections, and why we’re still arguing about it.

The following are my suggestions for how to teach a subject that folks in your classes think is controversial.

Basic Structure

I opted for an overt structure to the roughly two weeks that I discussed climate change. I went methodically through a series of questions, going from “What can change climate?” to “Has climate changed in the past?” and “Why might it matter?”. Touching back to the objections that folks have to climate change and systematically explaining why they are wrong is useful, and makes a really compelling way to organize your lectures. Just be sure not to reinforce the incorrect material by stating it as a statement, rather phrase them as questions. So, you shouldn’t say things like “‘Climate changes all the time, so it doesn’t matter if it does now’ is wrong”, instead it should be “Has climate changed in the past? Yes, but here’s why that’s important”.

Spend Time with Contrarian ‘Evidence’

I had a student bring up a conspiracy theory: the Rothschilds were funding research in climate change and if the research came up counter to human-caused climate change they’d bury it. The student then brought up a ‘fact’ which I’d never encountered before, which they said had been buried by the Rothschilds company. The fact was counter to a huge amount of real research. All I was able to do in the moment was to explain the way things really are, but if the student has decided that the underlying data is falsified it’s difficult to counter. Since then, all I’ve been able to find is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the Napoleonic Wars and a Democratic DC Council member talking about how the Rothschilds control the weather. I still do not know where the student got their ‘fact’. I feel like I was under prepared to handle that interaction.

The index card activity that I mentioned above allowed me time to prep for these kinds of questions from my students, when I ask them for questions for the next lecture. I prompt them with “What’s a question that you’ve always wanted to ask a climate scientist? Something you heard about that sounds wrong or is confusing?”. On the spot, it’s difficult to do the due-diligence of tracking down the source of the student’s misconception. A student in another class wrote a question about Al Gore’s prediction of a sea-ice free Arctic Ocean by a certain deadline. The student missed several key points; it was about Arctic summer ice, Gore is not a scientist, the actual analysis Gore got that from was correct, Gore just used the most pessimistic number rather than the scientists preferred value, etc. Those aren’t facts I keep in my head, but I was able to collate them and present them one-after-the-other as a way to dismantle that piece of misinformation.

One way to view the interactions is as an accidental “Gish Gallop”. Dwayne T. Gish was a debater of evolutionary biologists. He was infamous for his rapid-fire objections to evolutionary science. He would place a simple objection, “There are no transitional forms,” and then another and another, then the scientist would need to explain why that’s clearly not true. The explanation requires a great deal more time. Any unanswered objection is then assumed by the audience to be correct. Such is the way in these classes. If you don’t clarify or correct a student’s point, that point is assumed to be correct, at least by the students you’re trying to reach the most, the ones that don’t accept the legitimacy of climate or evolutionary science.

In an ideal world a student would say, “Did you know crazy-thing-X?” and you respond, “I saw that somewhere, but that’s completely wrong because of A-B-C-D, and have you considered that person-backing-X does so because of E-F-G?”. It’s easier to catch something out of left field if you have some knowledge of the outfield.

Consider Your Approach

Telling somebody to their face that they’re an idiot for voting for somebody might be both cathartic and true sometimes, but it’s not that effective. Changing minds doesn’t involve hurling epithets, even if the president and his supporters are doing it (please see section My Perspective below for an important caveat). Scientists have facts on our side. Proving your point without literally cursing the name of the current president during a lecture in class is more effective than adding “*&@^ Trump”. Are you just venting your own frustration or are you trying to actively convince these folks who are wrong to join the correct side? By all means, force your students to grapple with the underlying long-term consequences of their voting choices, if they voted for him, but do it in the most effective way possible. Yelling at them is just going to stop them from listening.

An example: three students and I are having a conversation that explicitly turns to voting for Trump*. One student voted for Trump because Trump was going to redistribute wealth to the little guy, the other voted for Trump because Trump was going to engage in trickle-down economics (a failed style of economic policy that gives taxes breaks to the ultra-wealthy that then increases economic benefit down the class structure [it fundamentally does not work]). I tried to make sure they realized that they voted for him for polar opposite reasons, and that at least one of them had to be wrong about what Trump would do in office. Just like we try to do in education: making them walk down the path themselves, providing a guiding hand when necessary, and not just telling them, is more effective than yelling it at them (I’ll admit I laughed at the idea that trickle-down economics would actually be effective, but it took me by surprise).

I also spent a lot of time thinking about how the students perceived me as the messenger. I am originally from the Northern Midwest, where “hey guys” is a gender-nonspecific greeting for a group. In Texas it’s “y’all”, which is actually gender-nonspecific, unlike guys which is just used as nonspecific while being male. It’s very easy to adopt regionalisms accidentally or when it appeals to you for good reason. I’m living in the UK now and I’ve no reason to start saying trousers but I have. I fought the “y’all” change because it felt like the students would perceive me trying to co-opt their language to be more like them, which if you add me trying to push them away from strongly held viewpoints, would lead to resentment.

*This happened without me trying to get the conversation there. I try to discuss the political issues with my students, not the individuals involved in politics, when possible.

Talk Politics

One of the questions that stuck out in my mind most from the folks who already accepted and had seemed like they might have a solid understanding of climate change was “Why do some people not believe in climate change?”.

Besides the word ‘believe’ in there, it’s a really astute question. Why is it? The physical basis is solid and fairly simple. The question ends up being more of a social science question. Leaving that unanswered though, falls into a serious trap. If you’re presenting the physical science of climate change you leave questions in your students’ minds. They know there’s another side to the ‘debate’. While the ‘there are two sides to every story’ journalism trope has plenty of faults, we’re conditioned to expect to hear the other side’s opinions. So cover it! Without it you seem like you’re trying to obfuscate.

Explain how the Pope, the U.S. Department of Defense, and all oil companies have statements affirming that climate change is real. Go to Open Secrets and show them where the lobbying money goes (mostly Republicans, with the occasional Democrat from an Oil state like North Dakota). Talk about the fight to remove lead from gasoline (which has a great connection to the age of the Earth), or talk about cancer and tobacco litigation.  I also try to explain to students about the Dunning-Kruger effect and how confident non-experts can be when discussing topics (which explains the bulk of the internet). Explain how you can simply say the words “Climate change” to someone on the right and they erect a mental wall, not hearing anything after. Explain that the divide on climate change acceptance can be attributed strongly to political party. It is scientifically shown that climate change is a a political issue . By ducking the question you’re doing a disservice to your students.

Judging Pseudo-scientific crap (fact checking?)

A basic understanding of how to engage in sniffing out pseudoscience is useful these days. There are folks peddling all sorts of incorrect information, and students should be inoculated to that. It’s certainly relevant to climate change, where on social media stories about how climate change is all faked go viral very quickly. Giving students a primer on how to suss out lies, misinformation, and disinformation is important in your class and literally every other!

Individual Actions vs. Community Actions

Lastly, while this might lose your conservative students, it’s important to discuss with your students the actions that can be taken. While individual actions are useful and important, we all have our roles to play in conservation, those individual actions aren’t going to solve anything by themselves. The issue in climate change isn’t solved by one, two, or a hundred people starting to recycle (though that is a good end), it’s systemic change that is required to fix this problem. The end goal of doing this is to motivate the students to vote or to engage with their policy makers in some fashion. Them driving less is important, but the impact is not of the magnitude that we need.

I’m deeply uncomfortable with advocating for individual solutions. As a physical scientist teaching a physical science course at a public institution, it’s not really my purview to go into what solutions are politically feasible, unless asked. I explain the situation, I go through some of the solutions we have, and the implication is that the most effective one is to get involved politically. Because it is. That’s the solution to the community action; to involve the community in solving the problem.

My perspective

All of this has been from my individual perspective. I’m a straight white dude in my thirties. I look, and probably outwardly project, a more traditional set of values than I actually hold. That affords me a whole lot of privilege in certain situations. Particularly in conservative areas there’s a baseline respect that comes with students having to call you ‘Sir’, ‘Doctor’, or ‘Professor’. It works, I think, really well to act as a Trojan horse for these students as someone who is not immediately othered within their views. For example, I don’t appear as and am not queer, so there aren’t quick barriers thrown up that my views or perspective is from ‘one of them’, similar to how when the words “climate change” are used, conservative individuals ignore the rest of the argument made.

So your mileage may vary. This advice may not work, some might actually be horribly counter productive for somebody who doesn’t have a similar background or the assumed respect that goes with being a white, male professor. I chose to keep my preferred pronouns out of my email signature while at SHSU, because that’s a clear sign I’m a lefty. Part of my privilege is that it’s not a life-and-death or job-or-no-job situation for me to fight for those rights. I don’t have the level of righteous anger of someone marginalized, targeted, or worse by our government, which allows me the privilege to not having to worry about getting into many possible unsafe situations. I opted to not engage on some issues in my first semester teaching, and to only deal with very specific battles. Making sure that I taught my course material, including those viewed as political, as effectively as possible seemed like a good first step.

Andy here –

I just finished my first semester at Sam Houston State University (Sam for short). My position is a temporary one. I have a contract to teach there for a single academic year (Visiting Assistant Professor). The ‘load’ is a 3/3, three sections each semester. I teach two sections of Historical Geology, together about 90 students. In the fall I taught about 23 students in my Stratigraphy & Sedimentation course, and in the Spring I’ll have 20-30 in my Paleontology of Invertebrates course. I’m also the instructor for the upper-level labs. Sam treats labs as a part of the same course, while many other places consider the labs a separate, so in another University or College this would be a 4/4 (four classes taught per semester). I have not taught any of these courses before, though I was a teaching assistant (TA) for a course at the University of Massachusetts that was essentially a combination of all three courses I’m currently teaching.

Preparing 11 hours of lectures or activities a week, a total of ~165 hours (that’s roughly a week) of talking and guiding folks through science, is a brutal non-stop experience. Here are a few things to expect:

You are going to be seriously bad at it.

I was the top TA at UMass in Geology for a while, at least according to the award and recognition I got. When I lectured for Physical Geology I had students say “He’s the best professor I’ve had at UMass”. I was invited to talk to the incoming TA cohort about how to be a good instructor by the University one year. I am really good.

I was not good this semester. I know this. More than just an ‘aw, I wanted to do better’, I was just an acceptable instructor. My Sed/Strat class barely got to Stratigraphy even though I personally am a stratigrapher.

You will make some really harsh choices.

I knew that I had to spend more time on one course than another. I could either do a boring, mediocre job on both, or do a passable job in one and a crummy job in the other. I have 90 students for two semesters in my intro class (~180 total) and only 23 in Sed/Strat. Historical is the last time many of these students are going to be exposed to science in a classroom. Therefore, I view it as a moral imperative to do a decent — no, a good — job on that course.

I chose to spend more time crafting a Historical course. Making that choice was horrible, and I could tell that that my upper-class students knew I was phoning in some days. There were occasional times where I managed to work far enough ahead in Historical that I could spend time developing an interesting day in Sed/Strat. When that happened, the difference in the room was noticeable. I had students come to my office and tell me that it was a much better lecture and fascinating. It sucks to realize that you are failing a certain section. Make your peace with that, because it will happen. Maybe not catastrophic, but significant issues will happen, even.

You will burn out long before the students.

Before Thanksgiving I was just destroyed. In a single day four or five different students told me that I looked tired and asked if I was ok. It’s honestly hard to write about that because the burnout was so bad. I have never experienced that level before. One evening I went basically catatonic on the couch. It was, frankly, scary.

The only reason I’m still standing is that I made time for my family and slept over our Thanksgiving break. My wife and I went to a movie, the three of us went to the zoo, had a nice Thanksgiving. [Note: this was written in between the last lecture and finals.]

You will fail your family.

I, with all the stress, was a less patient father, quicker to loud frustration with my four year old. My daughter picks up on that and has become more quick to loud frustration as well. I was also, equally as apparent, not the husband that my wife deserves. I wasn’t able to listen to her problems as I was constantly going over new tactics to reach students, or designing activities, or worried I was not communicating important ideas. Even while not actively working, you’ll have enough of a stress level that you aren’t shutting down. It’s a tough thing to live through, but it’s apparently equally difficult to cohabitate with it.

Yes, it can be harder than the end of your dissertation.

Remember graduate school? Remember the push to your dissertation, when you didn’t sleep, you got heart palpitations because of all the caffeine? When you stopped taking care of yourself because you just didn’t have the willpower or time? When you got writing tunnel vision and all you saw when you slept was the blinking cursor of Word?

This is that, but instead of just your partner, your family, your advisor, or whomever, if you fail you aren’t just letting those about 10 people down, you’re letting down the hundred or so students, the professors that get them next who need to clean up your mess. The students don’t understand the stress that you are under. It will not occur to them, even if they personally are naturally disposed to empathy.

“Dr. Fraass, why do you look so tired, it’s almost finals. We’re stressed, but aren’t the professors basically done?”

“…. No, I have two interviews to prepare for, a conference that I’m presenting at and organizing a session, and I also need to write two exams, grade them, then figure out final grades.”

“Oh.”

Your students will hate you.

I am a friendly person; I like to think of myself as very personable. If departmental culture didn’t dictate me using Dr. Fraass, I’d have all the students call me Andy, just like the departments I was in as undergrad and grad. I have students in classes that come and sit down during my office hours to chat, or make appointments for mentorship.

I was shown a private chat thread some of my students had going about the class at one point. Many of them hate me. I’m too hard, I don’t explain things, I don’t care, on and on. For the record, I hold nothing against those folks, at all.

With more than 200 people making an impression of you every year, many of them are going to hate your guts, particularly when you control their grades. Yes, some of it is griping or venting, or simply individuals dealing with stressful situations, not everybody likes everybody else. Nobody is 100% likable. With an N of >200, even 1% means somebody is going to be mad for a full semester. Factor in that when you start you’re going to hold folks to a standard different than other faculty, and it’s probably well over 1%.

Sit with that feeling. It sucks, but that’s part of the job.

What is this thing you call research?

I got the tiniest bit of research done. Even that was overly ambitious, but with a Geological Society of America talk and an invited American Geophysical Union talk to prepare for, I didn’t have a choice. I read a single (1!) paper this entire semester. It described the creation of a database, but didn’t have a strong analytical aspect to it, so it wasn’t like it was even a complicated paper to read.

I doubt I’m a unique case. Just accept that there’s a pause and you can’t do anything about it.

Advice

Create set pieces.

I am a stratigrapher, a paleoceanographer, a paleontologist, and a member of a number of other little subfields of geology. The most important issue of our time, and in my classes, is climate change. I carved out time to develop impactful lectures on past and modern climate change. I also spent time throughout the semester preparing for a week long mock-UN climate negotiation game.  It isn’t ideal, but by deploying a really intense, interactive game in a confined window, it minimized the amount of time I needed to prepare, while still giving the students an experience. I had them fill out cards, so I know it made a heck of an impact on several of them. I plan on developing a game for evolution myself (a significant minority of my students come to me as creationists, due to a lack of understanding science and evolution itself) since that worked so well.

It also feels great to really nail the ever living hell out of something. You are good at what you do, but much of the semester is going to be spent feeling like you’re not doing a good job. Doing a lecture about something that you really care about is going to remind you that you can be a good, or even great, instructor.

Get into a faculty writing circle.

Getting your next job, or tenure, requires publishing. Without the faculty writing circle I got in, I would have gotten no research done. A faculty writing circle is a group of faculty that come together once a week and meet to talk about research and writing. It helps to provide some accountability to be productive during the week. I still only managed 30 minutes on a really good day, but that’s more than nothing. Teaching is a massive time suck, and there is always more work that can be done to do better. Having a group of folks that constantly encouraged me to do more writing, more research, helped with the pull from the students and my department.

You have to look out for yourself. You won’t be active in publishing, but try!

Manage your stress.

Ride your bike to work. Do yoga, play video games to shoot some Nazis for that cathartic release. Find something that you can do to help manage stress because this is going to be rougher than you expect.

And I’d expect it to be really, really rough.

Have a shutdown time.

There’s been a 8:00 PM work-stop time in my family since my time working towards a MS degree. I can’t sleep for hours after I stop plugging hard on something, so if I stop at 8 I have some time to slow my brain down. It also gives me time with my wife, even if it’s just watching Brooklyn 99 or The Defenders. Work will be there in the morning, and you’ll be able to teach better if you sleep.

Teaching isn’t writing. Your students will be able to tell if you aren’t in the moment. If you’re on 4 hours sleep, you won’t be in the moment. You’ll be on autopilot. They will be too.

Be as specific as possible when writing exam questions.

Technically amphibians are ancestral to a dinosaur, but the answer is archosaur, man. Give me a break. Also make your answer keys as you write the test. It’ll save time in the future.

Be OK with a bad lecture.

They will exist. They will happen. You’ll have bad weeks or a bad month. Students will stop showing up, even after just one. It’s ok. My attendance was ~50% when attendance wasn’t a part of the their grade (Normal Sam attendance with it being a part of their grade is much lower.) You are there to do your best, no matter how many are in the room. I gave mine 5% of their grade just for showing up to the last week of school, which I told them about for the entire semester. Only 58% showed up for the full week. You can only do so much.

You have some time to fix things that come up. There is time, because you’re creating this material on the fly, to revise how you’re developing materials. I changed the format of my exams after my first in Sed/Strat. I changed how I was giving out review materials too. Don’t go overboard, though. Think of it as refining your aim, rather than shooting at a different target.

That said, strive to do better. A bad lecture is something to fix next time, and to try to do what you can to not have it happen again. But it will. Keep notes on what didn’t work, or what did. I wish I had, it’d be worth the time.

Lean into the lecture format.

They’re faster to prepare. It just is. They aren’t the most effective, the students don’t react well to them as they’ll bury themselves in their phones.

Do what you can. Don’t lecture when you have something great, but be ok with them. You are in survival mode.

I want to leave you with one thing. I was talking to a friend a little while ago. She, being far smarter than I, told me:

The first year isn’t about hitting a homerun. It’s about getting on base.

Survive. Learn from your mistakes if you can, but most importantly: Survive.

That’s the best you can do.