Moving from survival mode to wellbeing in academia

In this autoethnographic visual-textual narrative, I reflect on pivotal experiences in my early career while transitioning from learner to academic in changing institutional landscapes. I explore changes to my beliefs and self-managing behaviours as I move from survival mode into recovery and towards wellbeing. Five themes emerged from the visual-textual data, including social expectations, a commitment to ‘hard work’, setting boundaries, competition, and crisis readiness. Overlapping challenges across the themes is research time allocation, our sense of belonging, and precarity. To foster wellbeing at an individual level, I suggest radical self-care such as redefining your workplace expectations and practices, boundary setting with self and others, the celebration of rest, and precious care of your time to avoid burnout. At a societal level, we need to address the negative impacts of performance metrics, exploitation of casual and fixed-term staff, and discrimination in the workplace – before wellbeing is possible for all academics.