Academic support educators are helpers. It’s one of the reasons we came to this work in the first place. We like solving problems, and we like working with students. It’s thrilling to be a person that students trust enough to turn to when they don’t know what to do next.
But that also means that there’s almost always someone who needs something from us. A student needs a meeting. A faculty member needs assistance supporting a struggling student. The dean needs data. There’s an orientation session to redesign, a program to assess, a committee to join, a paper to write, a conference proposal to submit, and approximately 47 emails waiting to be answered (but who’s counting?)
So, we do what helpers tend to do. We say yes.
There are plenty of reasons to say yes. The work genuinely matters. We might be the only ones who know how to do a task. We might say yes because no one else would. And sometimes we say yes because saying no feels like letting someone down.
Over time, though, there is a danger of becoming the person who can always be counted on. Your responsiveness to each call for help is valuable, but it can create an unintended career pattern: the better you become at solving problems, the more problems people bring to you. Eventually, you become really good at crisis management, but at the risk of burning out.
Your Capacity is NOT an Infinite Institutional Resource
There is a particular challenge in ASP because our work is relational. It is uncomfortable to think about capacity, especially when the thing competing for our time is a student that needs help. However, sustainable boundaries are not the opposite of student-centeredness. If an academic support educator is consistently overloaded, eventually something suffers. Maybe meetings become shorter. Maybe there’s less time to assess programming. Or maybe there’s no time for scholarship.
When we don’t protect our own capacity and hold boundaries, our work suffers. We might stop enjoying our work entirely. It’s not a question of whether we can do one more thing (we probably can). It’s a question of what the impact is when “one more thing” becomes the operating model of our career.
Holding the Boundary
It’s really hard to hold boundaries. It’s hard to say no. I’m still learning how to do it, but I wanted to share some things I’ve been thinking about as I learn this new skill.
First, a key task is separating capability from responsibility. You may be able to do something without being the person who should do it. I think of this as the difference between “I can” and “I should.” Before saying yes to a request, it can help to ask:
- Is this actually part of my role?
- Is this something only I can do?
- Does this advance an important goal?
- What would I have to stop doing to make room for this?
- Is this a one-time request or the beginning of an ongoing responsibility?
- Am I taking this on because it’s strategic, or is it just difficult to say no?
- Is there someone else who could learn to do this?
These questions will lead each of us to different answers, even if presented with the same task. What might be very valuable to me may not fall within your goals. That’s okay. The answer should still be “yes” sometimes. There will be opportunities worth stretching for; students who need us; and projects that excite us. The goal is to make the yeses intentional. As long as we take on new tasks strategically, we are doing the hard work of protecting our own capacity.
Second – and this one is hard for me – stop measuring your value by how needed you are. There is certainly an emotional reward that comes with being needed. It feels good when someone says, “I don’t know what I would have done without you” and “We really need you on this project.” But there is a danger in allowing being needed to become the primary measure of professional value. If you are only valuable when you are solving problems, you’ve created a career that requires you to remain available to every request.
A different measure of success is whether your work makes the institution more capable without you having to personally touch everything. Did you create a resource that students can use independently? Did you teach faculty how to recognize and respond to a common student challenge? Did you build a process that doesn’t entirely depend on your memory? These are signs that you have multiplied your impact!
Third, remind yourself you are building a career, not just a workload. What do you want to build throughout your career? Maybe you are becoming a scholar or building expertise. Perhaps you are developing into an institutional leader. Maybe you want to specialize in online education or become a stronger all-around teacher. There’s no single correct answer – and the answer you give now might change in a year or two – but having an answer changes how you evaluate opportunities. With each decision, you can ask: “Does doing this help me become the professional I want to be?”
Learning to Say No
This is great and all, but how do we actually say “no thank you” to request once we decide it’s not aligning with our goals? It can seem like the end of the world to say no. I couldn’t even figure out how to say no to a colleague and ended up performing a parody of “All Star” by Smash Mouth at a student event! (It ended up being super fun, and I would do it again in a heartbeat)
But my blossoming career as a singer aside, saying no doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can sound like:
- I don’t have the capacity to take this on this semester, but I’d be happy to revisit it next term.
- I can take this on, but I’ll need to deprioritize X. Which would you prefer?
- I don’t think I’m the right person to own this, but I can help identify someone who might be.
- This is a great idea. I can’t lead it right now, but I would be interested in contributing to a future version.
These responses make capacity visible and are a professional way to protect your own priorities, as well as the institution’s priorities.
The Long View
Academic support is demanding work. It asks us to teach, advise, mentor, assess, collaborate, write, present, advocate, troubleshoot, and the million other things that won’t fit here. There will always be more that could be done. This is exactly why we have to decide what we should do. We are building careers that allow us to remain in the profession long enough to make the impact we hoped to make when we started.
The goal is not to become a person everyone needs for everything. The goal is to become the kind of professional whose work matters and who has the capacity to keep doing it.
(Dayna Smith)
