🧯 Battling burnout
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Ken Schneck has learned to recognize the signs that he’s burning out. After all, he burned out before.
He was working as a dean of students at Marlboro College in Vermont, sitting in an October meeting for the following year’s orientation program.
“I just thought to myself, ‘God, I don't want to be here for this next orientation program,’” he said. “As it turns out, I said that out loud, and that was me giving eight months notice.”
I invited Schneck to be the guest for this month’s Navigator Q&A session because I was curious about why and how he made the move into journalism after 24 years in academia. He’s about to complete the leap, as this is his last semester working full-time as a tenured professor. After this, he’ll be fully focused on The Buckeye Flame, a statewide platform for LGBTQ+ news and views in Ohio he founded in 2020.
Read on to learn what Schneck has found “vital” to combat burnout, along with the link to our full Q&A recording — plus take advantage of his offer for subscribers to get his audiobook for free!
‘I was saying yes to everything’
After leaving the Vermont college, Schneck moved to Ohio to take an associate professor job. Along the way, he’d been pursuing journalism outside of his higher education roles. Some highlights from his “bizarre journey” into journalism include:
Writing columns for The Huffington Post
Starting a syndicated radio show called This Show is So Gay
Writing a travelogue called Seriously...What Am I Doing Here? (Schneck is offering free audiobooks to subscribers — email me at exploreyourriver@gmail.com to take him up on his offer!)
Freelancing for publications in Cleveland
Filling in as interim editor for statewide LGBTQ+ publication Prizm
And then, March 2020 came. Prizm shut down, and Ohio was without a statewide LGBTQ+ publication. Within a week, Schneck and a couple freelancers had started The Buckeye Flame. Since then, Schneck has been working full-time at both the university and the newsroom.
After a while in Cleveland, he noticed he was starting to burn out again.
“I was saying yes to everything, and I didn't care what I was saying yes to,” Schneck said.
“I was taught by someone to say yes to everything. ‘You never know where it's going to lead.’
“There's an asterisk there. Yes, say yes to everything that's on brand for you. But if you don't know what your narrative thread is, if you don't know what your brand is, you are going to burn out.”
His narrative thread? Storytelling to lift up underrepresented voices. When he’s considering opportunities, he asks if they use storytelling to lift up underrepresented voices. While this has been his approach all along, recognizing his narrative thread and applying it to decisions “really helped me out.”
💡 Schneck’s recommended resource to uncover what you offer: Elevator Pitch worksheet
When he notices he’s starting to juggle too many balls and burn out, that’s the time he stops to catch some of them, put them to the side, and reset. And now, he’s putting the higher education ball to the side for the first time in 30 years in order to focus on The Buckeye Flame.
“This is what I want to be doing,” Schneck said. “I do have the privilege of being able to pivot to solely focusing on what is making the world better, in my estimation.”
View the full chat with Ken (supporting subscribers):
Happy navigating,
Bridget
Up next: April Navigator Q&A: Moving forward when you can't make a career change
What happens when you’re ready to make a career change, but the conditions aren’t right?
Midwife Kristine Lauria wanted to leave the field. She had her own son and she was tired of being called away at all hours. But it was 2008, and the financial crisis meant it was hard to find a job. Then, she tried something new. She applied to Doctors Without Borders.
“Starting out, I never thought that I would be going to some of the most remote places in the world and practicing midwifery,” she said. Join me April 28 to learn how Lauria, the subject of an upcoming documentary, found ways to move forward in unexpected directions when she was looking for a change.