March 1, 2006

Academic AWOL

By Mary McKinney

In theory, I send out my “Successful Academic” newsletter every other week. In practice, I skipped January this year. I was Absent WithOut Leave (AWOL) from late December until late February. In the military, this unexcused two-month absence would be grounds for court martial.

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Fortunately, my newsletter readers have not been punitive. No one has taken me to task, much less to trial. The busy academics who subscribe to my newsletter have probably not even noticed its absence. Yet, as I returned to regular publishing schedule, I longed to resume with a zinger of a story, one that would make my readers exclaim, “These tips were certainly worth the wait.” The longer I procrastinated the more grandiose my goals became. As January slipped into February, it got more and more difficult to sit down and write.

How had it become such a chore to produce a few paragraphs of academic advice? A military quote came to mind as I battled with my own resistance: General Norman Schwartzkopf once said, “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”

How true. And while wallowing in guilt at my own delay, my mind wandered to the many academics who go AWOL. I thought about graduate students who avoid campus to hide out from advisors, the professors who leave advisee e-mail unanswered, the peer reviewers who neglect reading manuscripts they’ve agree to refereee, the research collaborators who delay returning phone calls, and the purported authors of book chapters who ignore frantic pleas from colleagues compiling edited volumes. AWOL academics are rampant. Late manuscripts are endemic.

These disappearing acts lead to pernicious cycles. The longer you are out of touch with someone, the more difficult it feels to resume contact. The more you worry about resuming contact, the higher your standards become for the promised project.

AWOL cycles seem to occur most often between graduate students and their advisors. The avoidance usually begins when the student promises a piece of the dissertation by a certain date.

“I’ll have the first draft of my proposal to you by the end of January,” said one graduate student I work with to her professor. The deadline passed and the student resolved to get in touch as soon as the draft was finished. She told me that she was too embarrassed to send him an e-mail without the promised attachment. Weeks passed, and guilt over the missed deadline increased her belief that the manuscript needed to be “really, really good” to make up for being late. Intensified anxiety and heightened expectations led to difficulty working. She spent more time polishing old sections than writing new ones. Writer’s block set in. Right now, the proposal feels further from completion than ever.

I also see professors go AWOL. For example, a few weeks ago, one of my clients confessed with great guilt that he had told a journal editor that he would resubmit a revised draft of his article by September. So far, he’s had difficulty reading the comments, much less picking which of the many changes to tackle. Although he hasn’t begun the statistics analyses that will be needed to tweak the results section, he does wake up in the middle of the night with bad bouts of overdue manuscript angst.

Going AWOL may lead to almost comical extremes of guilt-laden avoidance. Graduate students avoid the halls of their department. Professors consider skipping conferences for fear of running into colleagues. Requests for reimbursement never reach the desks of administrators who could process a check. Manuscripts are never resubmitted despite generally favorable reviews. Time passes. Meanwhile, almost half of all graduate students never defend their dissertations. Many adjuncts never get full-time academic jobs. Some faculty members never get tenure.

But the state of AWOL can be avoided or overcome. And the first step is to do an “About Face!”

If you’ve ever been missing in action, you know that the longer you’ve been gone, the harder it becomes to work on that late project. What can you do to break the cycle of avoidance and delay?

How Can You Return Gracefully From Being AWOL?

1. Realize that your absence weighs heavier on your mind than the other person’s. Advisors are not losing sleep over late dissertation proposals and journal editors aren’t agonizing over missing manuscripts. The project is more important to you than anyone else.

2. Remember, when you do get in touch, the person is unlikely to be angry and punitive. We tend to be much harsher about our own tardiness than we are about other people’s delays. Advisors know it is difficult to write dissertation drafts. Journal editors are accustomed to academics who take a long time to turn around R&R manuscripts.

3. Lower rather than raise your standards when you’re running late. Don’t try to make your work more polished to make up for taking so long. Just try to get something sent out for feedback. End the cycle by chanting to yourself “A done dissertation is a good dissertation” or “A published paper is the only paper that counts.”

4. Get in touch even before you have the “completed product” ready for review. Try to get in touch as soon as you know that you are going to miss the deadline. Let the person know that you are working on your project. Facing your fear of the other person’s disapproval and re-establishing contact, will help lower your anxiety so that you can get back to work

5. Beware of setting deadlines you won’t be able to meet. If you are running late with a project, and you decide to resume contact, try not to set yourself up for another failure. Don’t tell your advisor or an editor “I’ll have it to you by next week.” Instead, tell the person what you’ve already accomplished, explain what you still need to work on, and say that you’ll have it to them as soon as possible. If appropriate, ask the person if they’d like to review what you’ve written so far.

6. Sidestep going AWOL in the first place. Set up a meeting with your advisor with the plan of having the entire proposal done. If you realize, a few days before the meeting, that a complete draft won’t be possible, ask whether you can turn in an incomplete draft annotated with specific questions you have about the gaps. If a journal editor asks for an estimated date for the revision, reply that you’ll try to return the manuscript within a month unless there are unforeseen problems. Then, if glitches arise, you can contact the editor with a revised estimate of completion. Give yourself some leeway. If you tend to run late, you might want to adopt the policy of “don’t ask don’t tell”: many academics I work with volunteer deadlines even when it is unnecessary to do so. Perhaps you should keep your completion goals to yourself.

7. Take extra steps to avoid AWOL when your absence will affect others. If you are late with a dissertation chapter or a single-authored journal article it usually only hurts you. But when you are late with a group project, going AWOL has consequences for your colleagues. Put special effort into promptness in these cases. For example, when you are writing a chapter for an edited volume, be sure to keep in touch with the editor. Most savvy academics set their deadlines for chapters a couple of months early, because people are notoriously late. Try, however, not to be the laggard who holds up publication. Being late damages your reputation and reduces your credibility. If you’re delinquent, you may not be asked to contribute again.

8. Assume a matter-of-fact stance when you get back in touch with people. Don’t be overly apologetic when you return from AWOL. A polite but professional tone is usually appropriate. Almost everyone goes AWOL sometimes, and even those punctilious people who are never tardy have to interact on a daily basis with the vast majority of us who are less prompt. No one is shocked by missed deadlines. This is not to say that you should be glib about it. Apologize just don’t belabor the point. You’re late. You’re sorry. You’re now doing your best to complete the project.

9.Try a “practice run” before clicking on the send button. I often advise coaching clients to write a draft of a difficult email without typing in the address to prevent sending an unfinished message accidentally. Often, clients report that once they’ve drafted a short ‘hello’ it feels surprisingly easy to send the email.

10. Keep in mind that even if you get a negative reaction when you revive contact, at least you’ve faced your dread of the unknown. Anticipating how the other person may respond to your missed deadline can feel like a black hole of potential admonishment. Even if your advisor or colleague is angry, at least you can begin to repair the relationship rather than allow resentment to fester. Get in touch and get it over with. You are likely to experience relief.

What Happens When You Return From Being AWOL?

The outcome is usually better than you anticipate.

Dissertation advisors are accustomed to late drafts and usually react with understanding and support. I recently convinced a graduate student I work with to get back in touch with her dissertation chair, even though it had been six months since they’d been in touch, and she still hadn’t completed the dissertation chapter she’d promised him for October.

“I’m still struggling with the chapter,” she wrote to him in an email. “May we meet to discuss the areas where I’m stuck? Would it be helpful to see a partial draft before we get together?”

She was pleasantly surprised by his response. He told her that glad he was to hear from her and set up a meeting for that week. A few days before their appointment, she e-mailed the “disastrous mess” and was very surprised that he thought many of her ideas were clear and on target. His generous response relieved her anxiety, and bolstered her self-esteem, making it much easier to sit down and write.

If you have the type of dissertation chair who says, in effect, “Don’t bother me until you have a polished draft,” then get help from someone else. Seek early feedback from a dissertation group, or a talented friend in the department, or even a hired editor. Don’t endlessly agonize over revisions. Get external feedback and move on.

Journal editors are used to R&R papers that never reappear. At my suggestion, the junior faculty member with the late R&R manuscript sent a short e-mail to the journal editor.

“I’m sorry that we were unable to resubmit manuscript X this fall,” he wrote “but this month my colleagues and I have carved out the time to make the revisions. Do you need the article by a certain time in order to place it in an issue focused on a specific topic?”

The journal editor responded that he’d be glad to see the manuscript as soon as it was completed and that it was not targeted for a specific journal issue. Relieved the article would still be considered for publication, my client was able to face looking at the comments of the reviewers and sort through which suggestions were necessary, optional and unreasonable. He also contacted his co-authors and asked for help in answering the complicated critiques of the reviewers. After some arm-twisting, his colleagues have agreed to tackle some of the changes, and he no longer feels so overwhelmed by requested revisions.

What Is the Most Important Result of Returning From AWOL?

Ending your state of AWOL reduces anxiety, breaks down writer’s block, and lifts the burden of guilt. Getting back in touch with the people you’re avoiding has obvious career benefits. However, perhaps the most important payoff is the increased mental energy released by resuming contact. Author and time management expert Kerry Gleeson writes: “This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.” Return from AWOL and you’ll get back mental energy that can be better applied elsewhere.

Another well-known efficiency expert, David Allen, uses the felicitous term “psychic RAM” for the mental space taken up by the “shoulds” and “to dos” that haunt us. When you are worried about the repercussions of being AWOL, it sucks up mental and emotional energy from more productive preoccupations. Fortunately, you can free up “psychic RAM” by erasing the nagging guilt of being AWOL. Renewed vigor is the result of facing the person you’ve avoided. Get back in touch and it will be easier to get back to work.

If you are AWOL right now, why don’t you try an “About Face!” Return that phone call. Answer that email. Knock on your advisor’s office door. Stop polishing that manuscript and send it out. You’ll be glad you returned to duty.

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