Embracing Your Inner Fox (or Hedgehog)

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Every year, my kids’ school puts on a talent show, and there is nothing more perfect on this planet than a bunch of tiny people getting up and showing off their skills. Kids dress like chickens and make math PowerPoints. It’s a whole thing.

This was an actual conversation on the way home from school this week:

Cyrus (age 10): “Alma, are you going to have a talent this year?”
Alma (age 6): “Yes! I’m going to breakdance.”
Cyrus: “That sounds pretty good. I might know a song on the trombone by then, so I’ll just play that.”

My friends, Alma knows not a single thing about breakdancing, and Cy has never held a trombone in his hands (though he has aspirations to play one in the school band, which starts next week).

But what my kids lack in actual skills, knowledge, or experience, they make up for in confidence, optimism, and plasticity. Why not assume you’d be a great trombone player, if only you were given two months and an instrument? Why not assume the world needs two minutes of you breakdancing, once you master a few basic moves?

In the stylings of Isaiah Berlin (I’m linking to the Wikipedia page because I think the list of historical foxes and hedgehogs is interesting), mine is a family of foxes: curious about everything, open to possibility, take a wide view of the world and its possibilities, but not slowing down to specialize. This is in contrast, of course, to hedgehogs: people who immerse themselves deeply, coming to know everything there is to know about a very narrow area or skillset. Academia needs both! And here’s why I think this matters for your research and writing.

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Are you a fox or a hedgehog?

Academia admittedly warps our self-perception of our knowledge base. Only about two percent of the population in the US and Europe, and about one percent of the global population, have terminal degrees. So you, my lovely reader, are most likely at least kinda a hedgehog. We all are. You are likely one of the planet’s experts in your discipline.

But academia is sly (like a fox?) and so plays tricks on us. Because the universe of people you know well, your peer group, is comprised mostly of fellow experts. So it’s very easy to always feel like a fox, and an ill-equipped one at that. To the outside world, I’m a political scientist. In my discipline, I’m a comparativist. To other comparativists, I study contentious politics with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe (even though my most recent book focuses on the US). See? we specialize. We become hedgehogs.

You may love your position as a hedgehog. You may be one of the four people in the country that know about your thing, or that teach in your field. You may love it so much, in fact, that you get thrown off your game when you’re asked to speak about anything outside of your niche (This is the problem with survey courses, right? “They asked me to teach a class about Renaissance Art, but I only feel confident talking about High Renaissance watercolor! How can I talk about Early Renaissance music in the same semester? There isn’t time!”) Some folks have published seventeen books about social-emotional learning in the early grades and still don’t feel like they’ve exhausted the subject. It’s amazing.

On the other hand, you may have decided that you wanted to be hedgehoggy (we’re going with this as an adjective) about a very specific skillset or method. This is great because it allows you to be foxlike about the content area you think about. I’m convinced that most methodologists or evaluation folks are (not so) secretly foxes. If you look at their CVs, they’re writing about everything (Wastewater remediation in Southeast Asia! Carbon sequestration in Brazil! Acid rain reduction in Namibia! ), and when you ask them they get all self-effacing: “yeah, I just did the stats for that.”

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Why does it matter?

I suspect that at least some imposter syndrome comes from feeling professionally compelled to be slightly more foxlike or hedgehoggy than suits our comfort zone.

I attended an amazing workshop this week about fear and writing, so I’ll tell you my fear: I spent my entire academic career worried I wasn’t really a serious political scientist and just “playing” one at work. I earned my PhD in political science, I published a book, I got tenure, I chaired a whole dang department, but I was never intellectually monogamous. I always wanted to dabble. I wanted to read philosophy and fiction and anthropology. I wanted to hang out with the poets and the mathematicians (and the political scientists, but only the cool ones). But because I couldn’t settle, I was always worried I was an interloper, never taken seriously by my peers, the “real” political scientists.

This realization changed my life: if I was a hedgehog about writing and editing, I could be a fox about everything else. I realized it was an asset that I read and thought widely, because I could work with folks from all kinds of disciplines—foxes AND hedgehogs. I love this. (In fact, one member of our writing community is also a skydiver and on the icemaking crew for the US Curling Nationals. He just sent me three videos about what he does, and you better believe that I will watch all of them to become a mini-expert on icemaking.) And I deeply love language and the written form, so editing helped everything click into place.

So, do you have the brain of a fox or the brain of a hedgehog? And does that mirror the kind of work you do, or are the two out of alignment?

What to do?

Foxes and hedgehogs, I have resolutions for you in 2024.

Foxes: Embrace your foxiness. This is what makes you fun at parties, and able to connect ideas in innovative ways! Find the interdisciplinary conversations you want to contribute to, and hang out with those people.

At the same time, there’s a lot to appreciate about the hedgehogs in your life. Find someone who loves soil or early-modern tapestry, buy them a drink, buy yourself two, and ask them to tell you about their research. The love, nuance, and depth of purpose will amaze you.

Find coauthors who complement your skillset, and write with them! Don’t be intimidated by the historians and the area scholars and the methods folks: let them help you. That frees you up to theorize, make surprising connections, and push the boundaries of your discipline.

Finally, set challenges that make the world interesting. For instance, my foxy family has a resolution for 2024: to eat our way across every continent without leaving New York City. On Saturday, we’re headed to Little Manila in Queens to explore Filipino cuisine (and candy).

Hedgehogs: Embrace your hedgehogginess. The dedication and concentration it takes to develop that depth of knowledge is impressive, and your enthusiasm is contagious. Allow yourself to explore the things that make life rich. Splurge on going to the one bookstore in the country that specializes in what you love. Let yourself import that sheet music from Indonesia. Arrange a monthly Zoom call with the four other scholars of Sanskrit slang.

At the same time, give the foxes in your life some love. At your next conference, spend some time at panels outside of your sphere of expertise. Civil liberties lawyers, go see what the tax law folks are up to. Ecologists, what’s going on with the urban planners? If there’s an interdisciplinary journal in your field, read it.

Most of all, develop swagger for your own work and feel comfortable talking about a slightly wider range of subjects, making connections to broader conversations happening in the literature. As my dad always reminds me, the talking heads on cable news manage to be experts on a whole lot of things.

And might I suggest dabbling in breakdancing or the trombone?

So my friends, which is it? Are you a fox or a hedgehog? And how will you be your foxiest or most hedgehoggy self in the new year?

Spring around here

You all continue to keep me busy, for which I’m always grateful and slightly stunned at my good fortune. If you have a project in the works that could use an extra set of eyes, here is what things look like this spring. If you and I have chatted about getting on my calendar, you’re factored into this mix, though it never hurts to circle back around to check in.

Writing Retreats: Know where it’s not snowing and covered in ice? Mexico City. Our Mexico City retreat is filling fast! It will be held May 20-25, 2024. We’ll be closing applications in early February. Start your summer with Mirya Holman and me in Mexico City, blocks away from Frida Kahlo’s house, getting all of the words written. Apply here.

Editing: Do you need a new set of eyes on your book project? I have room to edit new books starting in late April and this summer. August and September are filling up, so if you are the type who plans ahead, now is a great time to pencil in a spot for the end of the year. I have more availability for articles, grants, job materials, and things like that, and the sooner you tell me the more likely it is I can guarantee you the turnaround you need.

Coaching: I have no more spots for long-term consulting relationships this spring or summer, though I can schedule individual meetings here and there (if you want to talk about an R and R or your book proposal, we can find time to make that happen!). Again, if you’re the planning type, now is a great time for us to touch base about coaching this fall.

Writers’ Circles: These are full for the spring! Stay tuned for future opportunities.

In the Pipeline: Save the dates for a mini-AcWriMo the last two weeks in April, and an all-day, minimalist writing retreat on April 19.

Also! I am going to have exciting news soon about expanding the Epilogue Editing team to offer new services that I think will be particularly useful to international scholars, including drop-in editing hours and proofreading services (two things I don’t currently offer), so stay tuned for that information in February!

Finally: If there are things you’d love to see offered or written about, don’t be shy! Take my very short and painless survey and let me know what they are. I’m using this information to develop my next courses, so this is super valuable!