Self-Compassionate Professor

214. Let your life speak with Dr. Chris Johnson

May 22, 2026

Drawing on the Quaker saying, “let your life speak” and Parker Palmer’s essays in a book collection by the same title, Dr. Chris Johnson offers suggestions for letting one’s life speak, including asking big questions (citing Sharon Parks), deep listening to body signals, relational messages, and career/life seasons. Chris also demonstrates the process of letting your life speak by sharing the challenges, questions, and triumphs of his own winter seasons in career and personal life.

213. The gifts of the inverse academic career with Dr. Melanie Peffer

October 15, 2025

In her third appearance on the podcast over a five-year period, Dr. Melanie Peffer tells us about the gifts of the “inverse academic career trajectory” where she moved from tenure-track faculty, to lecturer, and again to adjunct. While from a traditional academic perspective, she explains, this may look like an unsuccessful career. Yet, as her business has grown, she has found great success in entirely unexpected ways:We discuss her new biology textbook coming out in January 2026, her work as ...

212. Room to breathe with Tyler Martin

October 08, 2025

Tyler Martin shows that despite institutional demands and limitations placed on higher ed faculty, it is still possible for faculty to feel grounded in purpose, clear about personal values, and strong in their own sense of agency. He argues that as we allow ourselves to experience the tensions we all feel in relationship to our institutions as well as express and co-witness these challenges in community, we can begin to peel back the layers that keep us behaving outside of our integrity. And ...