OH S01E03: A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Meade, Assistant Professor, Psychology

In this semester’s final episode of the Office Hours podcast Alex talks with Dr. Melissa Meade, Assistant Professor in Psychology at Huron. They dig into Dr. Meade’s background in the arts and the beauty that can emerge when combining interests from different areas. In Dr. Meade’s case, she discusses how her background in the arts and her own personal experiences of creating art influenced the types of questions she initially asked surrounding the act of drawing and how it might help to benefit memory performance in general and its influences on biological processes such as those associated with aging and cognitive decline.

Here at Office Hours, we also love the many other pieces of wisdom that Dr. Meade shares with us that aren’t directly connected to her own research, such as how she frames research in general and how, for her, the joy of research is found in focusing on the process:

• the process of developing questions you find interesting and meaningful
• the process of finding the best way(s) to answer those questions
• and how, throughout the entire time, there is the joy of discovery and learning undergirding that whole endeavor

Research seems much less daunting when broken up in this way.

When discussing the many competing demands that education and academia foists on students and faculty, it is refreshing to hear Alex and Dr. Meade talk explicitly about the need “to give yourself a little bit of grace … that you don’t have to do everything perfectly … like you have to sort of change your standards a little bit. And that’s okay to do,” or as Alex relates a friend’s similar take: instead of allowing any one particular result or activity define you as a person, perhaps it’s healthier to consider that submission or contribution as “the best you could do in that moment, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to define you … and isn’t a reflection of your overall capability or value as a person.” Given that we’re currently in the midst of exam season, it’s perhaps the most important time of year to hear and reflect on these points. So, many thanks to Alex and Dr. Meade for taking on this concept that is so strongly built into our academic cultures: that the mark of a good academic is someone who can be most obsessed with and consumed by their work.

Join Alex and Dr. Melissa Meade to engage with these ideas and many more. Then look out for our final episode of Office Hours: Student Spotlight (coming in the next week) before we take a break for the summer (which gives all of you the time to catch up on or re-listen to previous episodes!).