we all have a lot of parts.
do you have places where parts of yourself are seen and heard and recognized?
community does important work. community reminds us that we’re not alone. community helps us spread the burden of the work and the rewards of the work around so that we can do and celebrate more.
but we often don’t give ourselves enough time, or enough credit, for the hard work of building, maintaining, and even ending communities. lots of us have been socialized into thinking that this is less important behavior, especially the femme and female folks among us. many people think that this is something that can happen, and is great, but should come after the more productive parts of our day.
i challenge you today to think about some of the following things:
what communities are you a part of?
what identities, roles, aspects, skills, and beliefs are represented in those spaces?
what work do you do to find, start, nurture, and maintain these spaces?
what benefits do you get out of being with these colleagues, peers, friends, comrades, and connections?
what work is easier to do in community?
what things would be easier if there were more people who were invested in you, your work, or your ideas?
whose spaces, ideas, projects, goals, and values are you investing in through your community work?
what would change if you reframed the work you do to “network” as work that you do to build community?
academia, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, tells us that we need to produce all the time. our connections must be strategic. we must move forward with every task we complete. but so often, this turns academia into a place where actual community connection and work is replaced by strategic networking:
“I’ll read this but only because it could be useful to teach with.”
“I’ll join that project because it’s good for my CV.”
“I’ll say yes to this request because then they’ll owe me.”
“I’ll do this so I can get a job one day.”
“I don’t have time to help unless it moves me forward too.”
of course, we have to be strategic sometimes. doing things because they help you is a fine reason to do things. but if we only ever view our spaces as places to take from, or our connections as a place to extract resources, we never normalize the work of putting back in. we can come to view everything as something to maximize, instead of environments where we both give and take.
community is more than just networking. community is hard work. but community can care for you in a way that LinkedIn never could.