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Becoming a B+ Academic
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Becoming a B+ Academic

Why lowering your standards is essential for balance

Jenn McClearen, PhD's avatar
Jenn McClearen, PhD
Dec 14, 2023
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Publish Not Perish
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Becoming a B+ Academic
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brown wooden blocks on white table
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Many of us were A+ students in undergrad, so anything less than our best effort makes us feel like failures. We believe we must give our all to teaching, research, service, and any other aspect of our lives that we value. The reality is that we cannot give 100% to everything all of the time in order to manage the workload of graduate school or a faculty career. Instead, we have to allow ourselves to be B+ academics on certain projects and tasks to maintain sanity and equilibrium.

I actually only ever try to get my research articles to about 85%.

Why?

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