162: How to Regain Creativity in Grad School and Beyond

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Welcome back everyone to the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. This is your host, Dra. Yvette. And today, I am going to be doing something a little bit differently. If you can tell by the sound of my voice, I'm a little under the weather. Not so under the weather that I can't function. But just enough that I am reverting to my plan B.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

If you've heard me talk about productivity, sustainable productivity in particular, you may know that I'm a big fan of setting minimum and maximum goals. I also have my plan A routine and workload and plan B routine workload. So plan A is assuming that everything falls into place, I'm feeling well, what are the things that I need to get them to be thriving? Plan B is more about what to do when life happens. And we know that life just really, really can happen. And sometimes in the most unexpected times, and sometimes it's an entire season that we're living through of life happening and having to revert to a plan B.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

You can, you cannot always put everything on pause. You cannot always kind of take extended breaks. And so what do you do when you're, in my case, not so sick, that I need to completely take a break, but sick enough that I am not at my best. That's my plan B. My Plan B are the minimum goals to help me stay afloat. And make sure that I can kind of sustain myself, my family, our lifestyle, our health.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And so what's been going on for us just to share a little bit more about my personal update is we've been probably, we've had more sick days than we've had days where we haven't been sick. And by sick, I mean, cold flu type of illness. I do have a chronic illness. And I feel sick everyday because of that, but in different ways. And that's a different type of illness that I've learned to kind of manage on my own. But with cold and flu season, it really started when my daughter started daycare in September. And so it's been over two months of just vacillating between starting to get better getting sick again, starting to get better getting sick again, and this is four people, you're talking about myself, my husband and my two kids, but especially my little one because she is a COVID baby, we had been in a COVID bubble for over two years, very careful. We're one of the odd novid families where we have not gotten COVID We have tested ourselves, we've kind of sick but not COVID. And so my daughter is developing her immune system.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Something similar happened to my son when he started daycare was he got sick a lot, and it was rough. And this was when my son was a toddler. And so this was seven years ago. And it's really interesting to me to be going through different life cycles where you have occurrences that happen that may bring back old memories that resemble or are somewhat parallel to previous experiences. So for me, that previous experience was my son being a toddler getting really sick. Me being a struggling grad student, really, really struggling with my physical health, my mental health was doing things to stay afloat. And then on the outside, everything seeming like it things are okay. I've been told by so many people for so long that I always seem to have things together, like I seem so put together. And so you know, one thing that I like to do and share in this podcast is to kind of take off that mask or that facade and to share when I am struggling. And so right now I'm struggling with my with my physical health, which sometimes also triggers my mental health. So I'm trying to be very careful with managing my symptoms and also doing the things that I know that helped me to get by and for me having that plan B, having a set routine, doing things to make sure that I'm taking care of myself and also remaining functional, those are all essential for me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So going back to the podcast, this podcast is not just about reminding you to have your own form of plan B when life happens for you. It's also to share a little bit more about a kind of my podcasting process and today I'm going to be sharing an excerpt of some of my writing that I've shared in my newsletter. Why? Well, I do have several episodes in that have been batch recorded. But I have a system I have a process that I follow for ensuring that these episodes get released in the way that I prefer that they get released. So I create fliers, I reach out to guests to share information about when and how their podcasts episode is going to be released. I make sure that each podcast episode has a transcript. So all these things need to happen. It's at least four hours of work every single week for that no one pays me for to get this information out to you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But today, I thought, well, you know what I have, I have my newsletter that I've kind of revamped. And in that newsletter, I am sharing my insights on grad school, on sustainable productivity, and personal development because I had this aha moment. Recently, you know, within the last couple of months, that those are the things that really light me up, those are the things that I really, really love. And so those are the things that I'm thinking about a lot. And I'm writing about, about my thoughts when I'm learning when I'm reading what I'm listening to, related to those three topics.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And so in my last newsletter, which I released last week, I shared how to regain creativity in grad school and beyond. That's kind of like the main topic of that newsletter post. And I'm also so if you want to hear more about my thoughts on those topics, definitely sign up for my email newsletter. But if you don't want to sign up I'm going to be sharing these thoughts in my writing a few days to a week after I release my newsletter on my blog. So first release it in the newsletter, you'll be the first one to find out about all my updates, so email newsletters, the best place for any most recent updates. Then after that I'll be releasing the writing in my blog because I do have a blog on my website that I have not been putting to good use and so you know me I love creating systems making things, kind of simplifying things, working smarter, not harder. And so how am I doing that I'm gonna be sharing my writing first on my newsletter and then on my blog post. It's just another way to make the information that I share more accessible. So yeah, I'm gonna be reading that the excerpt if you like it, sign up for my email newsletter, or check out my blog post to learn more.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Okay, so for today, how to regain creativity in grad school, and beyond. I lost my creativity in grad school, creativity was once my solace, my refuge. As a child, when things seemed to be crumbling at home, I could always turn to a pen and paper. I could stay after school and participate in drama club, I could turn to reading about other people's lives and pretend they were my own. And for those brief moments, I felt empowered.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But in grad school, I suddenly lost my creative voice. Theater practice was discouraged, and research on critical theory was encouraged. Creative writing was frowned upon, and academic or scholarly writing was praised. Reading about anything other than foundational scholarship in my field list scoffed at, and reading work that would push my scholarship forward was a requirement. In my drive to produce groundbreaking scholarship about Mexicana and Chicana theatre, I lost my voice and my passion for the topic altogether. Everything was about playing the game. It was about doing the work necessary to get a coveted tenure track job at an R1 institution rather than doing work that mattered, which to me meant work that would directly and positively impact others like me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

To my surprise, my shift into entrepreneurship is helping me rediscover my creativity. I get to write, I've got my forthcoming Grad School Femtoring Guide. This newsletter and blog post content creation, brainstorming, children's book topics and journaling for fun. I get to perform vis a vis my podcast recordings, guest interviews and public talks. I get to read for fun. I'm enjoying reading about social justice, productivity, personal development, entrepreneurship, personal finance and first gen immigrant stories. For this newsletter and blog posts, I thought I'd share four easy ways to read aim your creativity no matter where you are in your schooling, career and life.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

How can you be creative while simultaneously working on improving your efficiency at work? Believe it or not being creative can improve your productivity by among other reasons, encouraging you to try new things, and giving yourself permission to make mistakes and then learn from them. Getting creative within your academic workload can mean one, allowing yourself to free write about anything that comes to mind before getting started on writing for your manuscript to getting curious about how you do what you do, and consider there are different ways to do things. Three, leaning on collaboration to mutually learn from each other's strengths for identifying a problem, and then coming up with several options to solve it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Okay, now, number one, free writing is the act of writing nonstop and in a stream of consciousness way for a delimited period of time. free writing is a helpful tool for writers because it helps us release our thoughts. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to know what you are writing about to get started. You also don't need to have all your thoughts gathered and organized to begin. The act of writing itself can help you to clarify your thoughts. Remember, it's okay to make a mess. It's okay to write the way you think or the way you speak. It's okay to make countless grammatical and syntactical errors. That thing about writing in a creative ways that you allow yourself to do what comes naturally to you and see where it takes you. Me share a personal example. The first time that I started intentionally free writing was an undergrad. My faculty mentor at the time encouraged me to do it and to send her my messy notes on all things related to my undergraduate research topic. I would free write about books and articles I read about performances, I watched about concepts I learned in other classes and so forth. And I cringed at the thought of sharing my notes with her. I also felt ashamed each time I walked into her office to receive her feedback. That shame brought to mind the six year old me that was an ESL English as a Second Language classes, and struggled with language arts. But it worked. This free writing exercise helped me to combat my writer's block and produce enough ideas to write a senior thesis. to changing the way that I approached writing transformed my relationship to writing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Similarly, getting curious about how about the how of anything that you do can be a transformative act. Have you ever wondered, Is there another way to do this? How can I make this easier? Do I have to keep doing things in this way? You actually do not have to do things the way they've always been done? Yes, we all have things that we do to meet our basic needs, pay our bills and survive. But there are so many decisions in our day that we make subconsciously without realizing that there are other ways to do it. For instance, I once had a client who struggled with her email inbox. He got so bad that she developed email anxiety and dreaded opening her email, and responding to 1000s of unread messages. Her inbox also served as a metaphor for feeling like her life was a mess. But in actuality, her life wasn't a mess, she was doing the best she could given her circumstances. Not only that, but she was also rocking other areas of her life. But she had not considered that perhaps there was another way to approach her email inbox to help manage the overwhelm. In our coaching sessions, we brainstorm some options and co-created a system that worked for her. And guess what, her inbox isn't perfectly clean. Mine isn't either, by the way, but she's meant to maintain the system and no longer feels the heavy weight of anxiety that she used to experience.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Three, you can learn a lot from collaborating with others, whether that's a peer mentor, a mentor, or a coach. Collaboration can also help you to regain your creativity because we all have different strengths, approaches and perspectives to offer. I have been working collaboratively with the Chicana Motherwork collective since 2014. Through this collective I gained valuable experience and how to work laterally in a grassroots way and without needing to be tied to a particular institution. Learn how to be patient, how to make decisions slowly and deliberately, deliberately, and how to hold space for all opinions before taking action. Ultimately, it has resulted in us presenting our work at multiple conferences, creating a podcast and blog to share our work in a more accessible way, and co-editing a best selling anthology. Unfortunately, in many disciplines, including my doctoral program, collaboration wasn't praised. What was praised was individual scholarly research projects and sole authored publications. But years later, my relationship and collaborative work with this collective remains. I continue to learn from my wise, artistic, lighthearted and brilliant comadres.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The tie in here is leaning into curiosity and being willing to try new things, especially in community. You don't have to do things right the first time. And if you give yourself the time to reflect and assess your creativity in grad school and beyond has the potential to help you do things in a way that works best. With that in a way that works best with you in mind, in light of your body, your mind and your spirit.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Four, this is what I do in my coaching sessions, all my clients approached me with a problem or outcome they are seeking. For example, I am feeling stuck and need to change, or I need help with time management, or how want to submit strong applications. After that in our coaching sessions, we brainstorm possible options to help them come up with their own solution and form a plan. I also share strategies based on my expertise, and I asked key questions to help them gain clarity on the topic, problem or project that they're working on. The point is not for me to give you the answers and tell you what to do. The purpose is to use the coaching session as an opportunity for you to have someone that will hold space for you. That will listen as you make your own decisions that will co create a plan with you. And that will hold you accountable to making a positive change in your life.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

This week, I encourage you to set aside 20 to 30 minutes for creativity and creative thinking, then see where it takes you. If you're enjoying reading my newsletter and blog posts, please check out my other latest posts on micro forms of self care, which is again on my blog, gradschoolfemtoring.com/blog. And if you want extra support on setting and reaching your academic and personal goals, you can always schedule a coaching consultation with me. That's it. That's the excerpt. That's my newsletter and blog writing. I hope you found it helpful. And hopefully, by this time next week, I will have another brand new episode with a guest that you'll enjoy. And these cold symptoms will start to lighten up before we have another round of illness. So thank you for bearing with me and I will talk to you all next time.