#139: How to say no (and be heard)
You've done the inner work, the soul searching, the assertiveness training. You're no longer a people-pleasing pushover who agrees to anything anyone asks. These days, you're someone who's not afraid to guard their own boundaries. You know the word 'no', and you're not afraid to use it. Go you! But there's a problem. Sometimes, saying 'no' doesn't work. You get pushback. It feels like sometimes people don't hear you. You don't understand why this happens. And while you've learned to be comfortable with saying 'no', you're out of your depth when it comes to fighting your corner against people who go all-out to get a 'yes'.
I've got you covered, my friend. With a dollop of philosophy of language, a side-serving of sociolinguistics, and a sprinkle of sociology, you can understand what's going on, and what you can do about it.
References:
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987: Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Goffman, Erving. 1967: Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Pantheon Books).
Grice, H. Paul. 1975: ‘Logic and Conversation’, in Cole, P. and Morgan, J. L. (eds.) Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press), 41-58.
Episode transcript:
There’s more to saying no than saying no.
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and in this podcast I draw on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hey there, imperfectionists! It’s been a while. Thanks for bearing with me while I got over my summer cold. It wasn’t even a bad cold. I just felt marginally less energetic than usual (not that anyone has ever, to my knowledge, described me as ‘energetic’), but it was bad enough to ensure I fell behind on a few things, but also not bad enough to make me feel like I had a good excuse for falling behind. So, if you’ve also had to contend with a not-even-that-bad spell of illness that has undramatically knocked you off course for a bit, I see you. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m ill, my inner critic always accuses me of milking it a bit, and even making the whole thing up. I’m not sure my inner critic even believes in the established science around infections - at least, she doesn’t believe it applies to me. Normal people believe that when you hang out with someone who has a cold, and a few days later you have a cold too, this is because that person’s invisible cold germs found their way into your body and infected you. My inner critic knows better, though. According to her, my hanging out with someone who has a cold results in my being influenced, by the power of suggestion, to believe (or pretend to believe) that I have a cold too. I’m completely fine, biologically, but being an inherently lazy person, I’m basically always on the look-out for reasons to lie around doing nothing. It’s not illness, it’s moral failure. At least my immune system is rock solid, I guess? Even so, it can be difficult living with a conspiracy theorist inside my head. It means that, every time I am allegedly ill, I go around simultaneously telling myself to stop pretending to be ill while also wondering why I feel bad and have no energy to do anything. My inner critic is silent about why that might be. I wonder if she’ll come up with something eventually. 5G, maybe? Chemtrails? Microscopic mind-control robots that were injected into my body when I got my covid vaccinations? But maybe it’s unfair of me to expect her to be able to explain everything. All she knows for certain is that whenever I’m less productive than I ought to be, it’s due to my flawed character, and definitely not to silly excuses like infections.
Ok, now that I’ve finished pretending to have a cold, let’s get on with this episode’s topic. Disparate forces have aligned to bring you this one. In part it draws on some stuff I’ve been mulling over for a while, and which relates to the book I’ve been working on, which is about indirect communication. In part it draws on some discussions I’ve had with coaching clients. And in part it draws on an emailed suggestion from a listener. That email was really what prompted me to bring it all together - so, thanks to that listener (they know who they are), and a reminder that you can use the contact form on The Academic Imperfectionist website to get in touch if you have a request or a suggestion for a topic.
Our topic for this episode is: saying no. ‘No, I won’t join that committee’. ‘No, I won’t organise that event’. ‘No, I won’t give up the only afternoon I’ve set aside this week for my research so that I can attend your meeting instead’. Lots of us have problems with saying no to things. I’m talking specifically about saying no to things that you’re not obligated to do - so, not things like carrying out the work that you’re contractually required to do as part of your job, or obeying the law, things like that. I’ve worked with many clients who struggle with saying no to things, for a variety of reasons. They worry that they’re selfish if they say no. They think it will make other people view them as difficult. They’re troubled by FOMO, because what if that thing they decline turns out to open doors for them? Some people really do behave as if they have never incorporated the word ‘no’ into their vocabulary, and as a result they end up living lives that are defined by other people’s priorities. It can be really liberating for them when they finally learn to say no, to push back against other people’s suggestions, requests, demands. I’ve spoken before about a client who really came to delight in saying no. They realised that they could say no, and nothing bad would happen! It was like watching one of those movies where a young superhero first discovers their superpowers.
However. There’s more to say about this. Some people have a different struggle with saying no. It’s not all about discomfort with asserting themselves, or anxieties around what other people will think of them if they say no. Some people find that saying no is not enough to push back against unwelcome requests and demands. They find that, for whatever reason, other people won’t let them say no to things, and when this happens, they’re not sure what to do. It might go something like this: you get asked to take on a new admin role, you decline because you are already at capacity, the person who asked you pushes back and pesters you and talks you round and maybe suggests accommodations to make it easier for you to fit in this new commitment, you still want to say no but you’re worn down by the discussion and maybe uncomfortable with the way it has escalated, and you don’t know if it’s possible to continue to refuse without souring your relationship with colleagues, and you’re worried that maybe you’re being unreasonable, so you end up agreeing even though that means other things in your professional or personal life are going to get squeezed. All that exhausting back-and-forth, and you still end up saying yes. What was the point? Why did it even happen? And so the next time, perhaps you just say yes right at the start. I mean, you’re going to say yes in the end anyway, so why waste time and energy pushing back?
Wow. There is so much to unpack here. So much going on. We’ll get to that in a moment, but let’s start by noting how damaging this sort of dynamic is. From what I’ve seen, overburdened people who try to say no often come with a history of finding it uncomfortable to say no, for whatever reason. That’s part of why they’re overburdened. At some point, they realise something has to change, and they work on being more selective about what they agree to do, while turning down the rest. All that soul searching and inner work to get to a place where they are able to say no - but then it doesn’t go well. They say no, but they’re not heard, or their refusal isn’t accepted. They end up feeling powerless and perhaps even invaded. They feel like they have no autonomy. They may as well just say yes straight away next time. Less stress all round. They end up overburdened, but at least they can pretend that they took on this new thing of their own free will.
If any of this resonates with you, what’s going on? Why does this happen? And, is there anything you can do about it? How can you say no and have people accept what you’re saying to them?
Let’s set the scene here. The problem I’m describing isn’t unique to academics, but it is something that plenty of academics struggle with, and academic culture doesn’t exactly help the situation. As a culture, academia is really, really into the value of excellence - in research, teaching, strategy, vision, and all those other buzzwords - but much less into allowing its staff the time, support, and peace to do things excellently. The culture claims to laud quality, but demands quantity. The result is harried academics fighting a losing battle to fulfil their duties to the high standard that they believe (and are repeatedly told) are required. Something is always getting squeezed and deprioritised to make room for something else. And, of course, those squeezed and deprioritised parts - and, more to the point, the people who expect them - are often not very happy about being squeezed and deprioritised. If it’s your teaching, your students aren’t happy. If it’s admin, your colleagues and fellow committee members aren’t happy. If it’s your research, your head of department isn’t happy and your CV suffers.
All of which leaves us with two important insights about saying no to things. The first is that saying no to some things is absolutely necessary. Even the smartest and most efficient and hard-working person in the world can’t do it all, and there is nobody - except for you - who is monitoring all the demands on your time and energy in order to ensure that you don’t end up taking on more than you can manage. The second insight is that getting some pushback when you say no is to be expected. The latest request has arrived at your door because the person making it has a problem to solve and hopes that getting you on board is going to help solve it. If you say no, they don’t have their solution. Of course they’re not going to be thrilled about you saying no. You might even be the third or fourth person they’ve asked. They’re going to want to make it work, if possible. For you, that means that being able to say no is not always enough. You also need to be able to stick to your no in the face of resistance and displeasure from someone who wants you to say yes. That can be a really tricky balance. We absolutely need to be able to say no to things, but we also need to maintain positive relationships with our colleagues. That’s a tricky balancing act when there’s a conflict between what you want and need and what they want and need. At least one of you is going to go away feeling dissatisfied, and that’s when relationships can suffer. So, let’s have a think about what can be done here to minimise damage both to the time you’re trying to protect, and to your relationship with your colleagues.
Let’s throw a bit of nuance into the mix. You know how much I disapprove of binary thinking, and that applies here too. It’s not always a binary choice between a wholehearted yes and a firm no. Exploring the middle ground can be a great way for both parties to get at least some of their needs met, and offering a compromise instead of a no can be a way for you to signal that you’re a nice, cooperative colleague who takes seriously the problem that the other person is trying to solve. So, perhaps you say no to joining that committee, but offer to look over and provide feedback on the notes from the meeting occasionally. It might be a no to taking on supervision of a new student right now, but feel free to ask again next term, when you expect to be less stretched. Or a no to joining that meeting on that day, but happy to participate at other times, and here’s when I’m available, perhaps we can find something that works.
However. You need to be careful with nuance, because it can be a great way for people uncomfortable with saying no to avoid saying no, while also feeling assertive. Sometimes you don’t need to offer a compromise, and doing so can be appealing to people who feel like they’re the worst, most selfish person in the world for not giving their colleagues exactly what they ask for. People like this, who are too ready to compensate for their unforgivable (in their mind) guarding of their own boundaries, end up overcommitted despite trying to do better at saying no. What’s more, if word gets around that they’re a bit of a soft touch when it comes to agreeing to stuff, they can end up with more than their fair share of requests and demands, just like those people who always say yes.
So, how do you know when it’s appropriate to offer a compromise? How, for that matter, do you decide what it’s reasonable to say no to? Here’s a crucially important point that you absolutely need to take seriously if you care about creating boundaries around your own time and energy that you are confident about the need to defend. You should not be making decisions about whether to say no, and whether to compromise, based on vibes. You need information. Facts and figures. You need to get clear in your mind how much time you have available, and how much of it you are already spending on your duties. Where do you get this information?
If you’re an employee, a good place to start is your department’s workload model, if you have one (and if you don’t, consider pestering your departmental head about getting one). The workload model - assuming it’s correct and up to date - will show how much work you’re doing compared to your colleagues. If you are already doing more than other people in your department, then that’s a pretty clear signal that you are under no obligation to take on any more. I say ‘pretty clear’ because it doesn’t tell the whole story. Perhaps you have special expertise or experience that your colleagues don’t, and that’s why you’re being asked to contribute in this particular way. That doesn’t mean it’s tough luck for you, though, and that you have to take on this latest thing. But perhaps, instead of saying no, you could say something like: ‘If you can find someone to take this other commitment off my hands, I would be able to help with this request.’
Besides your department’s workload model, you need a very clear idea of how much time you have and what your priorities are. Honestly, you stand very little chance of knowing how best to respond to requests unless you have this, so sit down and work it out, if you haven’t already. Map out every hour of your life, and decide how much of that time is off-limits because you’re sleeping or commuting or enjoying time away from work or doing other things that your professional life shouldn’t be encroaching on. (It can be helpful here to ask yourself how much of a friend or colleague’s non-work time you would set aside and protect, instead of thinking about your own case - for many of us, that makes it easier to ringfence non-work time without feeling selfish.) Looking at the time that remains, work out how much of that gets spent on non-negotiable aspects of your job, like your teaching, and how much time you need to set aside in order to do those things competently. So, factor in things like teaching prep and time to read the information required for meetings. This might be different for different people, even when their commitments are the same. Some people read faster than other people, for example. Some people need less time to prepare for meetings because they have more experience with the process in question, know what to expect, and need less background. All this stuff takes time, so work out how much, and don’t be a perfectionist about it. Beyond that, what are your priorities? Here, you should be looking to your goals and your values - what research projects you want to complete and in what timeframe, what jobs and grants you want to apply for, what you care about investing a little more effort in to do your best work, and so on. Try to get a sense of how much of all this has a non-negotiable claim on your time, and where there might be some wriggle room. None of this needs to be 100% accurate and final - it can’t be, given that things sometimes take more or less time than we anticipated, sometimes unexpected problems or opportunities crop up, and so on. But your aim here is to arrive at a picture of your life in which time and energy are not unlimited resources, so that when a new demand comes your way, you have a clear idea of whether you can fit it in, and if so, how and where. If you care about protecting your time and your priorities, it is absolutely not good enough to take an approach of ‘I suppose I’ll find a way to fit this new demand in somewhere’. You need, instead, to be able to react with ‘If I agree to this, I will have less time for X, and that will have the following consequences.’ And you need to be able to judge whether that’s acceptable for you.
If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘How on earth do I calculate all that while someone is standing there waiting for an answer from me?’, there is no rush. Don’t let yourself be rushed. It is completely fine to say, ‘I will need to work out whether I have capacity for that, let me get back to you this afternoon or tomorrow or next week’. If, having said that, you get pressed for a quick answer, then you should probably err towards saying no. You’ve made clear that you don’t currently know whether you can take this thing on, and you’re being pushed to take a guess, or just to take it on and move something else out of the way, or stretch yourself too thin - which is no big deal for the person applying the pressure, but it is definitely a big deal for you. Better to be able to get back to the person in a day or two with, ‘I’ve realised I might be able to fit this in after all’, having initially said no, than to say yes and find yourself overcommitted and frantically spinning plates for someone else.
Arming yourself with this information is completely necessary in order to make informed decisions about what you agree to do. What’s more, in my experience, people who have a very clear idea of what’s going on in their life, and how much time it takes up, feel more comfortable with saying no. Compared to people who have only a vague sense of their schedule, they are less plagued by thoughts along the lines of ‘Maybe I should have agreed’. They have a clearer idea of what the implications would be if they’d said yes, and that helps them feel secure in their decision, even if they’ve disappointed a colleague.
Right. So, knowledge is power. Now, imagine the following scenario. You get asked to do something and you politely decline. You’re confident - based on your knowledge of your obligations, what you’re already doing, your goals and priorities - that this is the right response for you. The person who asked pushes back. You push back. You start to feel uncomfortable, because you’ve already said no, and at this point you just feel like you’re repeating yourself. You’re not even sure what’s going on. Did this person not hear you? Do they just not care about your existing commitments and priorities? Are they just intent on bullying you into doing what they want, regardless of what might be going on in your life?
Now, it’s possible that you’re dealing with a tyrant who simply has no intention of accepting anything other than a yes from you. Some people really are exploitative bullies. Some workplaces really are toxic. But it’s also possible that there’s something else going on - something more benign. It’s possible that what you’re trying to convey is not what the person you’re speaking to takes you to be communicating. Understanding how this happens helps us work out how best to assert ourselves when we want to say no to things.
Let’s start by returning to that point I mentioned earlier: that saying no can be uncomfortable. We feel bad when we say no to people. We worry that doing so might sour our relationship with them, and especially when that person is a colleague with whom we want to get along well, that matters. Turning down people’s requests threatens their face. Face is the image of ourselves that we present to the world, and it crops up in familiar expressions like ‘saving face’ and ‘losing face’. The sociologist Erving Goffman thoroughly explored the concept of face, and his work inspired Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson to develop their ‘politeness theory’ in the 1980s. According to Brown and Levinson, politeness is largely about protecting face - our own, and that of other people. An important way that we achieve that is through using indirectness to take the edge off potentially face-threatening acts. This is why, if you care about being polite, you’re more likely to decline a friend’s invitation by saying something like, ‘Maybe next time’ or ‘I’m sorry, I already have a commitment that evening’ than with a blunt ‘No’. It also explains why, when we turn someone down, we’re often keen to create the impression that we’re declining because it’s not in our power to accept, rather than that we just don’t want to accept or that it’s not important enough to us. It’s less face-threatening to someone we turn down if they can go away believing that we’d help if we could, compared to believing that we just don’t want to help or that their needs just aren’t a high enough priority for us. For this reason, it’s very common to turn down a colleague’s unwelcome request with something along the lines of ‘I can’t’ rather than ‘I won’t’. ‘I’m sorry, I’m teaching at that time’, ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be travelling’, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve just agreed to X and don’t have the capacity for this at the moment’. And while sometimes it really is a case of ‘can’t’ rather than ‘won’t, we do often cast our ‘won’t’s as ‘can’t’s in order to soften the blow of rejection.
As polite and tactful and normal as all this is, there are risks attached to this approach. Wherever there is indirectness, there is ambiguity. Are you really unable to agree, the person asking you might wonder, or are you just trying to let them down gently? Are you mentioning that obstacle to your agreeing because you’re hinting that you want help removing it so you can agree, or is it an FYI only? Are you actually saying no, for that matter? Because that last one is surprisingly common. You might have had the experience of someone saying to you - or saying to someone else - something along the lines of, ‘So, just so I can be sure I’ve understood - that’s a no, right?’ All of which is to say that this ambiguity - which is a normal and predictable consequence of the indirectness we use in the course of simply politely interacting with other people - can lead to misunderstandings, and sometimes those misunderstandings explain the pushback you might have experienced when you try to say no to things. It might be that your reason for mentioning the thing that stands in the way of your agreeing to the request was to take the edge off your rejection, but what your colleague might hear is: remove the obstacle, and you’ll agree to the request. So they come back at you with ‘well, what if you did this’, and make some suggestion about how that obstacle could be removed so you can agree. You feel pressured and uncomfortable, but there might really be no ill will here. It’s just that sometimes, especially when we don’t explicitly say all that we mean, what we mean gets lost in the noise.
In fact, you might underestimate just how much of our communication with each other is like this. The 20th century British philosopher of language, Paul Grice, wrote about this. Conversations, he believed, are best viewed as cooperative efforts. They involve two (or more) people working together to realise a particular purpose. That purpose might be explicitly mentioned - as when we say something like ‘Do you have a moment so we can work out which train we’re going to catch tomorrow?’ - but often it’s unspoken and we just kind of work it out from things like context, tone, our history with the person we’re speaking to, and so on. Perhaps it’s something like ‘catch up on each other’s news after the weekend’ or ‘try to decipher this cryptic email from university admin’ or ‘convey sympathy after the other person’s divorce’. Understanding purpose of the conversation can sometimes be crucial if we are to make any sense at all of the things that other people say to us. So, for example, when your friend invites you to an event and you reply with ‘Maybe next time’, your friend easily understands you to be declining their invitation. But it’s actually quite impressive that they are able to do this. Your reference to next time doesn’t address anything about your availability this time. It’s not even relevant, strictly speaking. How does your friend manage to work out what you mean? Well, because your friend takes the two of you to be cooperating in a conversation whose purpose is to establish whether or not you’re going to be coming along to this event they mentioned. So, assuming that you really are cooperative and that you’re not just throwing some random, unrelated remark in there, the most sensible way that your friend can find to interpret your response is as a rejection of your invitation, along with an expression of willingness to be involved in similar events in the future. Simple, just as long as you don’t overthink it.
Let’s return to that request from your colleague. Perhaps they say to you, ‘Please would you join this committee? We meet on Tuesday afternoons,’ and you reply, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t - I’m teaching at that time’. That’s a refusal, but it requires a bit of Gricean unpacking if your colleague is to understand it. To do that, your colleague needs to identify the purpose of this conversation, which is to establish whether or not you’re going to be on this committee. Assuming you’re cooperating in moving things along, how can your colleague interpret what you say? Well, as does often happen, in this case there is more than one reasonable way to interpret you. It’s mistaken, though understandable, for them to view your reference to your teaching not as a device that enables you to refuse politely (which is what you intend), but as an indication that you’d be happy to join the committee if only it were not for your teaching schedule. So, they come back with, ‘Oh, I’m sure we could reschedule the meeting so that it works for you!’ They think they’re being helpful, but you feel pressured to accept.
One way to avoid this is to keep things vague when declining an invitation. It’s understandable that, for politeness, you want to say something to convey a sense of ‘I’d love to, but no’, but you don’t need to go overboard with the details. ‘I’m unable to make space for this among my existing commitments’ is better than ‘Gah, if only I were not teaching at the exact time you’ve scheduled this meeting, I’d be a thousand percent on board with this!’ You’re much less likely to prompt the colleague making the request into ‘Hey let me solve this problem for you!’ mode with the former, vaguer response than with the latter, for two reasons. The first is that you simply give them less to work with when you use the vaguer response. The second is that, when you provide a ton of detail, you risk signalling to your colleague that you really do want to say yes. That’s because, in order to understand you, your colleague will try to work out why you’ve provided that detail. And since they take you to be a cooperative contributor to the conversation who would not throw something irrelevant in there, that detail must be doing something. Given that, it’s reasonable for them to take you to be appealing for their help removing the obstacle you describe, so that you can say yes. If you really don’t want to say yes, then that’s a bad outcome for you. By contrast, when you decline with a vague reason for why you can’t accept, you signal the opposite: you can’t accept, and you don’t want your colleague to try to make it possible for you to accept.
Now, there’s a problem here, and it’s this. I know, because you’ve told me, that there are plenty of you out there who say way too much in situations like this, where you want to decline someone’s request. You give way too much detail, but not because you want to agree to the request, even though that’s the impression that the other person understandably forms. The reason you give too much detail has to do with the fact that you want more than for the other person simply to accept your ‘no’. You also want approval or validation from them. You want something like their blessing when you say no to them. So, you lay out all the reasons you’re refusing in unnecessary detail because you’re trying to signal something like ‘Look at how very justified I am in saying no to this request! How can you not recognise these absolutely excellent reasons I have for not doing what you want, and agree with me that I should absolutely not do this thing!’ The problem is, they don’t know you’re doing that. They don’t know you’re after validation. Why would they? You might not even know yourself that this is what you’re doing, and anyway nobody in the entire universe, except you, thinks that carefully about your inner life. The person you’re speaking to is probably not even listening as you run through the many intricate logical steps of your denial. They just want you to do this thing, and they’re having to work hard to understand what you’re trying to say. The best they can do is to interpret all this detail you’re giving them as a plea for help with removing the obstacles that stand in the way of your agreeing to what they’re asking you to do. In this scenario, you might each take different views of the purpose of the conversation. You take the purpose to be gaining the other person’s approval for your turning them down. But the other person might view the two of you to be engaged in a joint attempt to make it possible for you to accept this request. Nobody is a bad person here, but you’re both likely to leave the interaction feeling dissatisfied. You, because you feel like your carefully justified attempt to assert yourself was not acknowledged and respected. And the other person is likely to feel puzzled and frustrated, because presumably the outcome is that either you accept their request but aren’t happy about it even though they’ve bent over backwards trying to make it possible for you to agree, or you are inexplicably resistant to any attempt by them to make it possible for you to accept. So much smoke and mirrors, and so much confusion. And let’s note that I haven’t even tried to throw neurodiversity into the mix, which makes things even more challenging. Dealing in hints and skirting around the main issue can make it especially hard for autistic people to work out what’s going on. And people with ADHD will have lost focus (and maybe also the will to live) after what ought to have been a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ended up going on and on and on.
I’m doing a lot of generalising here about what might be happening in situations where you find yourself struggling to push back against someone else’s request. Perhaps the main point I’m trying to make is that when this happens, it’s not necessarily because you’re dealing with a bully or with someone who is manipulative or who is otherwise hell-bent on getting you to do something for them, whether you like it or not. Sometimes people just misunderstand each other. I’ve already suggested that one way you can guard against this is to keep to a minimum the details you give about why you’re saying no to someone. Another strategy is to identify the main outcome you want from the conversation. If you had to prioritise one thing, what would it be? To protect yourself against another person’s attempt to add to your workload? To show what a good colleague you are? To have the decisions you make validated and applauded? Choose one, and ensure you’re clear about conveying it. That doesn’t mean you have to be rude, but it does mean that you need to prioritise your main message. And although your main message is to decline the request, It might be helpful to keep in mind that there are lots of other opportunities to do the other things you might be trying to do, like fostering positive relationship with colleagues and being seen as a team player. Honestly, if you’re anything like most of the people I coach, you’re already doing all that stuff anyway. The people who are preoccupied with a fear of upsetting their colleagues are usually already more considerate and respectful than average. As for validation - well, we’re all after a bit more of that, and academics as a group are better at criticism than cheerleading, but you probably get more validation and approval than you’re willing to accept already - it’s just that you’re very good at dismissing it, because maybe that nice feedback was insincere, or maybe they confused you with someone more impressive, or maybe they just don’t know enough about your many shortcomings.
It’s complicated, isn’t it? Saying no, and being heard. But I hope I’ve given you some ideas for how you can amplify your voice here. Next time, friends.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d leave a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You can find me on Medium too, as AcademicImperfectionist. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via the contact form on my website or via Medium. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!
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