Lifelong Learner

The first factor that I believe sustains one over the course of their academic journey is being a lifelong learner—this is about being humble and open to new learning (Li, 2016), and exercising the willingness (Napoli, 2007) to embrace the risks and surprises that come with new adventures. Legend has it that after becoming an esteemed teacher sought after by many students, Confucius was impressed by a 7-year-old prodigy who responded to Confucius’s questions with quick wit and also posed questions that outsmarted the master. Subsequently, Confucius acknowledged Xiang Tuo as his teacher. Whether this legend has historical accuracy is beside the point; the real appeal is that even the “exemplary teacher of all ages” (萬世師表) had room for further self-improvement in learning and that he was the first to recognize this personal need and to seek learning even from a child (Li, 2016).

I can relate to this legend in the sense that I find that I am constantly in the presence of people that are smarter or wiser or have different life experiences than mine, and that when I am open and listening, I can learn so much from each of them. As I think back even over the past year, I have learned so many things from people of all ages and walks of life.

I have learned so much about resilience from my son Justin, who continues to persevere regardless of the limitations people want to put on him. I have learned about flexibility from my son Cody, who is constantly adapting to different situations and demands from coaches, teammates, and friends. I have learned about altruism and friendship from my daughter Avery, who endlessly supports her friend group and helps champion each of their distinctive gifts. I have learned so much about listening and loving people from my husband Stuart, who sacrifices daily for our family and for the kids in our community. From my friends Sam in India and Salim in Kenya, I have learned about capacity building—how they find a need like rickshaw driving or guest transport, and build whole livelihoods from there. I’ve learned much from grassroots sport program leaders like Dennis Orek, Emma Owiro, Torrey Bates, Gideon Ochieng, and Irene Waite about perseverance and creativity, about staying the course in overwhelmingly difficult situations. My former doc students have taught me so much. From my first student, Jarrod Schenewark, who has pursued a career that honors his family first, to my most recent graduate, Arden Anderson, who is doggedly true to her identity and values. My current doc students continue to help me learn new things—Baykal has taught me about institutional voids and about blending strengths from multiple fields. Daniel has taught me a ton about student development, all things Aggie, and all kinds of Excel tricks. Ashlyn has given me an incredible global perspective; she helps me question a million assumptions, and always pushes me to be my most authentic self.

In academia, it is easy to get caught in a success orientation mindset—I just need to finish my dissertation, and then I will have arrived. I just need to get a good job, then I will have arrived. I just need to get a JSM or an SMR publication, or Research Fellow. I just need to get tenure, or associate or full, then I will have arrived. George Napoli (2007), successful entrepreneur and business educator, argues that “in order to be fulfilled and to grow personally and professionally, we need to change our success orientation and develop a growth orientation where we constantly establish new goals and challenges for ourselves based on learning and growing.” I couldn’t agree more.

In my experience, while there may be markers and milestones, there is not a destination, and we need to continue to find new avenues for growth and learning that will help us continue to build success in ourselves and others. If we are going to thrive over the long haul, we must remain teachable and humble.

Humility, teachability, and openness to experience can look different to different people and at different life stages. It may look like learning a new literature base, a new technology, a new leadership or relational tool, new approach to organizing or managing, or new relationships themselves. Ultimately, learning is complex and requires people to face different challenges at the individual level, which also depends on the societal and cultural norms associated with their environment (Regmi, 2020). It may look like a new job, a different aspect of a job, teaching a new class, or heading research in a different direction. It might be something nonwork-related like a new hobby or sport.

The challenge with remaining teachable and open to new learning, however, is that it makes one uncomfortable. It can be stressful and requires both effort and agency in the process (Boyadjieva & Ilieva-Trichkova, 2018). I often find myself wanting and thinking that if my life were more ordered, predictable, and within my control, it would be better, maybe easier, and certainly less convoluted. However, I’ve often found that the best things in life come with risk, surprise, and within the messiness of the unexpected and the discomfort of putting oneself out there to try something new.

In my life and career, I have taken a few risks (e.g., travel, new jobs, partner organizations, grad students, new theories, teenagers) all requiring a level of challenge and the insecurity and awkwardness that comes from novelty. But with each challenge, I have found renewed vigor, increased capacity, the joy of adventure that not only keeps me thriving, but also reminds me how very much more there is to do, learn, and grow. I challenge you to take the risks and to never feel that you have arrived.

Authenticity

One of the most important aspects I have also found to longevity in this academic journey is authenticity (Wayne et al., 2019). In fact, I think over the last year, the concepts of authenticity (Cha et al., 2019; Javed et al., 2021) and vulnerability have resonated with me in new and powerful ways that continue to compel my thinking and action. Maybe I’m just old. Maybe I’ve watched one too many Brené Brown Ted Talks. Maybe the pandemic helped distinguish for me what I really see as important. But, over the past year in particular, the need and desire to be me (dumb jokes and all), and to lead and write and study in ways that give proper value to the things that are important to me, has really become integral to all I think and do.

As I have moved through this career, and as I have watched the careers of really great scholars unfold, one thing that I found is that it is absolutely essential to study things that are important to us. I think of Wendy Frisby and her examination of grassroots sport for women. This grounded work that involved the participants in ways that Frisby had long deemed essential both to process and outcome brought her great purpose and joy, and the lasting impact of the inquiry and the programs themselves followed. It has inspired me to do the same in my work in Kenya.

I think of Janet Fink and her unwavering pursuit of improving sport visibility for women. The more she studied the issue, the more powerful her voice became in speaking toward the problems and the solutions. I think of George Cunningham and his pursuit of social justice in sport. I love how he knows why he studies what he does, even if it is not apparent or understandable to others. And Laurence Chalip, what a privilege it was of mine to work with such a visionary and deep thinker. I still remember having to look up words after every conversation and meeting with him. Laurence is the only person I know who can actually say salubrious socialization, and mean it with all his being.

The pursuit of knowledge and problem-solving in areas that resonate with us does amazing things for a career in academia. It brings a richness, a voice, a durability, and a purpose. I’ll never forget Chris Green’s consistent prompting in my early years at Texas. She’d say, “Marlene, you can cite 30 sources on this and tell me in detail what all these other people think. But, what do you think?”

At the time, I didn’t really have thoughts, but as I found the things that were important to me—creating new and better opportunities for girls and women in sport, fighting for work–life balance, building sport that enhanced life quality, mentoring—I found that I actually had ideas, and theories, and questions. I had a voice in the work.

So, while I understand that there continues to be enormous pressure to publish in quantity, which can drive us out of our core, and that there is also increasing pressure to do “fundable work,” I have found it and watched it be a painful grind to do work that is not very meaningful or authentic to who one is as a scholar or a person. If you are young in the field or maybe burning out a bit, I encourage you to turn off the pressures to do “projects,” to do things that are “good for your CV,” and focus your study, hone your efforts on the problems that resonate with you. As your questions are authentic, so will be the answers.

Relational Mentoring

A third aspect that I have found to be essential in this academic journey is the need to cultivate relationships and live within community (Dixon et al., 2020). As Confucius teaches, “Human flourishing depends on the support of other people … therefore, human flourishing is not conceptualized primarily as an ‘individual’ process inside the skin, but is deeply rooted in the web of social relationships” (Li, 2016, p. 152).

In sport management, Dan Mahoney (2008) captured this well many years ago in his inspiring Zeigler talk about community—No One Can Whistle a Symphony: Working Together for Sport Management’s Future. In this talk, he emphasized the need to work together within and across universities to build our field both in size and prestige. He said, “By working together, sometimes across institution types, we can produce more and better research. In fact, a recent comprehensive analysis of over 20 million papers from a 50-year period found that collaborative research was more successful than solo authored work, and this difference was increasing over time” (Wuchty et al., 2007, as cited in Mahony, 2008, p. 5).

Now, as many of you may know, I love to hike. Give me a mountain and I am on my way. I love to run, too. And for most days a walk around the neighborhood (Texas is a little shy on mountains) will also suffice. I do my best thinking when I hike. I feel joy when I hike—the mountains and trees, the pines and aspen, the greens and blues of the meadows and skies, and endless vistas. But as much as I do love to enjoy these moments alone, I have had some of my best adventures and most invigorating conversations and memorable moments walking with others.

When I was a kid, growing up in Colorado, on many a summer weekend, you’d find the Link family traipsing across a mountain trail, building a fire, scrambling over boulders, or playing a boundaryless game of kick the can. As a college kid and young adult, I hiked with friends. It has been the joy of my life to hike with a tall drink of Texas water, my husband Stuart. You know the guy with the long ole legs, a spirit of adventure, an incredible sense of humor, and patience to put up with my endless stream of wild ideas.

We added to the fun as I threw my kiddos on my back and hiked with them. Now, they haul me up the mountain (and race me down it). I don’t think I’ll ever be able to keep up with them, but it sure is a blast adventuring together. Some of our best memories are on a trail or around a campfire.

To Mahoney’s point, over the years, I have walked and hiked with many of you in NASSM, EASM, SMAANZ, AASM, and WASM destinations. From Canmore and Ottawa and Halifax, to Sydney, Melbourne, Warsaw, London, Langkawi, Seoul, Cologne, Bern, and even a crazy week in Santiago (tear gas and all), my career in sport management has led me to some amazing destinations. Even more so, it has led me to incredible opportunities for growth, learning, discovery, and friendship.

Indeed, there are times that serving in NASSM felt like work as we hashed out the operating codes for the 100th time, or painstakingly carved the WASM Constitution for 2 days in a windowless conference room in Malaysia, or restless nights grappling over tense conversations where resolution seemed impossible to achieve. But mostly serving NASSM, and the global sport management experience, has been a joy and provided endless stories of people’s lives and of sport-related issues that we have bantered and sought solutions and that drive us forward to continue pursuing answers. Janet Parks and Jackie Cuneen, you were right—I will never regret getting involved in this organization.

While collaboration and relationships in general are absolutely essential to surviving and thriving in academia and life, I’d like to address a particular type of relationship that has been paramount to my career. That is the relationship of mentor-protégé. Both roles in this relationship have been core to my longevity and fulfillment in the profession.

Darren Kelly and I have previously discussed the value to a protégé of having a constellation of mentors whereby one would build a “personal board of directors” (Kelly & Dixon, 2014, p. 509) that could be helpful in a variety of capacities—athletic, academic, emotional, career, and spiritual. This has certainly been true for me. I think of the many mentors that have poured into me over the years—incredible sport management scholars like Chris Green, Laurence Chalip, Maureen Fitzgerald, Jan Todd, Janet Fink, Chella, Karen Danylchuk, Marijka Taks, Bob Baker, Pam Baker, Paul Batista, David Shilbury, and Annalise Knoppers. They have helped me so much to grow and develop as a scholar and thinker and leader. And in my personal life, such wonderful people like my parents, my parents-in-law, Dr. Sheryl Tynes, Becky Geyer, Eric and April Nelson, Barbara Orr, and Eric Geary. Individuals who have imparted such wisdom across many spheres of life, who have seen me at my worst, but always help me be my best.

In her Ziegler address, my PhD advisor, the one and only, Dr. Buckeye herself, Donna Pastore (2003), discussed the value of mentoring in the field of sport management. Having the privilege of being advised and mentored (and still mentored) by Donna, brings to light the importance of this for development of individual strengths, navigation of power networks, career opportunities, and cultivation of fruitful research collaborations. Donna and I have discussed this at length over the years, most recently trying to understand more about how to transition people from protégé to mentor and to promote the incredible benefits of mentoring, especially to the mentor.

I’m not sure there is a more fulfilling relationship in all of academia than that of a mentor. Ragins (2016), in her most recent work, has described this as “Relational Mentoring,” which she argues is a focus not on mentoring relationships in general, but on high-quality mentoring relationships—how they are formed and the benefits thereof. I suppose in many ways much of what she has written has already been organic to my academic career, but I am going to borrow from her well-developed concepts to suggest a few lessons I’ve learned about the value and process of relational mentoring and how it can enhance one’s career both from the perspective of a protégé (Ragins, 1997), but especially that of a mentor.

Work–Life Balance

In that vein, the fourth major factor I have found toward longevity in this career is work–life balance. I know, no talk from Dixon et al. (2020) “the researcher” could be complete without at least a tiny dip in this realm. As most of you know, I’ve been doing work in the area of the work–family interface for many years. What started with my friend and colleague Jennie McGarry as a personal conversation over coffee became a full agenda that has grown to include a number of studies, co-authors, contexts, and continually emerging discussion.

Over the course of time, my thinking in the area of concepts like conflict, work, family, life, balance, enrichment has changed and has become clearer and nuanced in their meanings. Thus, I feel it is worth sharing a couple thoughts that have emerged from continual research in the area and from living it out as my own work and personal life have shaped over time. Most specifically, I think we, err, I, need to fundamentally shift my thinking in this area away from work–family conflict and toward work–life balance.

First, over time, it has soaked in that work–family implies a particular social construction and often implies a “family” that has children living in the home. Clearly, that is a restrictive notion to suggest that only people who have their own children living in their home deal with balancing paid work and other interests. Many people have significant life interests outside of work that they battle to find time, emotion, and energy to invest in. Many of you have hobbies or serious leisure pursuits like travel, golf, running, or skiing. Others of you, I hear your stories of volunteer interests in organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, the National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association, or Mobile Mutts. Some people have aging parents or family members who need a lot of assistance. Those life interests and their relationship to paid work need to be captured in a broader concept of work–life interface, rather than restricting our conceptualization to work–family.

Second, the notion of conflict is, well, frustrating. As Jennie and I have often discussed, using the concept of conflict frames the relationship of work and nonwork as constantly embroiled in frustration, where the best end one can achieve is no conflict. The best you get is survival. This mentality leads us and others to boost each other with platitudes like “Keep your head above water,” “Hang in there,” “Just keep swimming,” yet these connote the best we can do is keep up or not drown. The result is a cloud of incessant guilt that settles over the life of one who is endlessly caught in a juggling act of obligation and conflicting responsibilities, but can never hope to be enough to any of the people or tasks demanding attention.

While conflict is certainly one characterization of this relationship, it is not the only outcome. Building on the work of Garey, Hewlett, and others, our collective work in sport management—collective meaning the scholarly studies from many of you—such as Sarah Leberman, Farah Palmer, Jarrod Schenewark, Mike Sagas, Sally Shaw, Jeff Graham, Mike Newhouse-Bailey, Shaina Dabbs, Matt Huml, Liz Taylor, Erianne Weight, Soyoun Lim, and Arden Anderson—this body of work collectively suggests that conflict is certainly not the only outcome of holding multiple life roles. In my own life, in our continued research in the area, in my friendships and relationships across various life stages, it is obvious that work and life realms enrich each other, they enhance each other, they spill over in positive ways, they segment to build as separate blocks in positive ways. They complement to build upon each other and to, as Anita Garey (1999) said, “weave a life” (p. 15).

How can we not only get used up, but also build capacity? To not just get back to zero, but also to grow? Instead of just soldiering on, what if we actually made time for strategic retreat? To rest, to heal, to mend, to play? What if we actually made time for personal development to learn a new skill or broaden our capacity? In the end, if we are to sustain a thoughtful contribution, avoiding burnout in any realm, we must fight well to tend to the creative, the playful, the relaxing, and the self-care that keeps us lively, sustained, and truly balanced in our heart and soul.

Faithfulness

The final factor, perhaps a mediator in this model, is the concept of faithfulness. Faithfulness, I will define as simply persevering or being durable in the work and relationships presented to us over the life course. To that end, I’d like to tell you a story that has been of great inspiration to me as I think about my work and contribution to the larger body of science and to people’s lives.

I have found that over the course of my career there is much discouragement—the work is hard as a doc student balancing coursework, teaching, writing, and some semblance of a personal life. And to top it off, all your faculty advisors tell you that it only gets worse. As faculty, the grind is real—there’s always more to write, more to prepare, more to grade, and more students to wrangle. Our colleagues can be selfish, students are often thankless, and of course, there is always Reviewer 2.

And as I talk with so many of you—and I know for me—I have often felt discouraged in this journey for two reasons. One, is that the work rarely feels like it is making an impact, especially in changing practice. For example, I often feel like no matter all the work we’ve done in understanding and challenging the work–life culture in sport, that culture will not change. And for all the sport-for-development work we do, there is so much more to be done. It really feels like a drop in the bucket.

The second is that the judging is real. At every stage, there is someone to critique, and evaluate, and pick apart your work. There is no such thing as an “accept as is” in our teaching, research, or service. If you work in a business school, the kinesiology people frown upon that. If you work in a kinesiology program, the business school people look down upon that. If you are at an R-1, then you are not student-focused. If you work at a teaching institution, you are not a serious scholar.

I hear this in so many conversations with so many young colleagues, and I hear this in and about NASSM every year. People are anxious. People are frustrated. People are discouraged. And people feel this way because no matter what they do, they do not feel their work is valued. They do not feel that it is contributing, especially not in the ways they hoped it would, and they do not feel that they matter.

The word discouragement essentially means to take apart courage, or take apart heart. When we are discouraged, we lose heart, we lose courage, and we lose stamina to continue on the path. The opposite of discourage is en-courage—to give heart, to strengthen courage, to put the heart together. I hope today that this final word would be a word of encouragement for all of you to continue in your path toward the unique contribution in sport management that you are already making in the short and the long term.

Conclusion

Near the end of his life, J.R.R. Tolkien became somewhat despondent that he would not finish the magnum opus of his career and life, the Lord of Rings trilogy. As a deep thinker and philosopher, his writing often took tangents and bunny trails that were interesting and compelling to him, but made little ultimate contribution to the finished written work. Can you relate? As he grew older, he worried that he had spent too much time niggling about in details and in interruptions of life—things like conversation, and tending to friends and family.

In his afterlife, Niggle worked for a while at various jobs, and eventually came to a place of decision where two voices decided his fate for the next step. One was the voice of judgment. This voice that argued Niggle’s accomplishments were nothing, that he had been grumpy, and that he had not prepared for his journey. The first voice suggested maybe he was not so amazing at painting trees, but instead, he has a penchant for leaves. He loves the details of a leaf, the perfect sheen, the veins and details. But in doing so, he becomes discouraged at the progress of the whole, thinking that the small details are of importance to him, but of little significance or contribution to others.

I just want to remind you that, like Niggle’s tree, just because you can’t see the impact, doesn’t mean it is not there. Just because right now it is not all you hoped it would be, doesn’t mean it won’t someday be all that and more.

If you, like me, sometimes get discouraged or derailed by the challenge of it all, if you ever ask yourself in the midst of your stagnant or nonexistent H-factor, “Has the little leaf that I have painted really made any difference in this world of knowledge and in the lives and careers in which I attempt to contribute?” I hope this address is an encouragement to you regarding yourself and your work.

If you take away one thing from this address, I hope it is this: No matter your career stage, no matter if you are at a teaching school or research school, whether you are a clinical, visiting, associate, tenured, or instructional, whether you base yourself in Asia or Australia or Europe, Africa, South America, or North America, whether you sic ’em or hook ’em or gig ’em, whether you work on leaves, or stems, or branches, or dive into theoretical roots—when you bring your authentic self, and both give and receive in the community around you—

your work matters,

your contribution matters.

Your LIFE matters.

• Turn off the judging.

• Embrace the voice of mercy.

• Dig in right where you are at.

• Keep pursuing the problems that have value to YOU.

• Keep doing hard things.

• Keep finding joy in your journey.