Keywords

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic and rapid changes in the world: in education, the economy, and society more generally. Changes that might otherwise have taken years (such as a complete move to online learning) took place within weeks. The COVID pandemic created conditions for the possibility of a “bold and brave mindset shift” (Sahlberg, 2020, p. 359). The rapid and extensive changes brought about through the global pandemic have highlighted for many that whole systems can be changed through collective action. As we move past the pandemic, it is time to consider how we might make the most of the changes that have already happened, and to work towards the changes that we might create going forward.

We invited a total of 30 academics living in Norway and Australia to reflect on their experiences during the pandemic, and what they now thought living well in a world worth living in might look like. For these academics, the COVID-19 pandemic involved working from home, changed ways of interacting with students and colleagues, and changed relationships with students, colleagues, family, and community (Sjølie et al, 2020; Variyan & Reimer, 2021; Windsor & Kitooke, 2023). In this chapter, we outline how these changed conditions influenced them in relation to their understandings of living well in a world worth living in. We also discuss the practice architectures that might support the world that these academics envisaged. But first we turn briefly to other studies that explored the experiences of academics during this time in these two countries.

At a broad level, all academics were impacted in some way due to the sudden and unexpected changes that the pandemic brought. Variyan and Reimer (2021) note that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was not experienced equally: “For some, the shift was welcome, creating more space for reflection, agency and work/life balance within their practices; for others, the shift represented a loss of space and agency, as home became work” (p. 322). Some studies report on academics who experienced social isolation (e.g., Leal Filho et al., 2021; Watermeyer et al., 2021), while others found that working from home provided more flexibility and more time to concentrate on their work (e.g., Sjølie & Moe, 2021). The personal and situational context of each academic influenced their experiences. For instance, those with permanent employment, a comfortable home to work from, and limited caring responsibilities had a different experience from those in precarious employment, with responsibilities for supporting the learning from home of school age children, or with limited workspace opportunities in their living arrangements (Variyan & Reimer, 2021). Broader country-level responses to the pandemic also influenced the experiences of people living there.

The experiences of academics during the pandemic influenced their actions in relation to the changes and also influenced their understanding of what is important going forward. One of the important changes for academics in Australia was an increase in workload combined with a decrease in employment security. McGaughey et al. (2021) found that a high level of health and well-being problems were experienced by academics and by students. Of the 370 academics participating in their study, 78% identified increased work-related stress, 76.5% feared losing their current job, and 80.7% predicted increased casualisation. They note that most respondents talked of long work hours, fatigue, and exhaustion. While the Australian Federal Government made available the JobKeeper wage subsidy for businesses and organisations, universities were explicitly denied this support (Spies-Butcher, 2020). McGaughey et al. (2021) found that respondents felt “the government appeared to abandon the sector and university leadership were seen to use the pandemic as an opportunity to cut costs” (p. 2241). They go on to say that the predictions made by respondents of university restructures, redundancies, pay cuts, and course cancellations were quickly borne out. Such outcomes necessarily impact academics’ lives.

In Norway, academics experienced an increased workload, although job security was not of concern. In a study that surveyed 4000 academics (with 36 in-depth interviews), Solberg et al. (2021) found that the increased workload was largely associated with planning and conducting teaching, which in turn resulted in decreased time available for research-related activities. They also found that the academics reported high satisfaction with the flexibility and freedom that was provided by the institutions, and that academics valued being able to work from home, although working from home was quite common before the pandemic as well. Overall, the study reported on academics’ experiences as having moved from shock and hard work (March–July 2020) to uncertainty and constant change (August–December 2020), to a phase of increasing wear and tear and concern for the long-term impacts on academic work life.

The Study

Findings in this chapter are drawn from a broader research project that explored the learning of academics during the COVID-19 pandemic. This broader project involved data gathered in four countries: Norway, Sweden, Australia, and Finland. The findings in this chapter, based on the Norwegian and Australian research, are derived from journals and two rounds of interviews as outlined in Table 15.1. The second interview included specific questions about participants’ thoughts on living well in a world worth living in. In the Australian project, the specific question asked was “As you know, one of the things we have been considering is the concept of living well in a world worth living in. After the year that we have all just had, what does that mean for you?” In the Norwegian project, the questions were “What is your main motivation as an academic?” and “As you know, our university’s vision is Knowledge for a better world. What does that mean to you, what is a better world?” While there were differences in the actual questions asked, the responses gave rich insights into living well in a world worth living in from the perspective of the participants after they had been through almost one year of the pandemic.

Table 15.1 Data collection
Full size table

The 16 participants in the Norwegian study were academics from one university, from different stages of their career, and a range of discipline areas: 10 from engineering, two from science, one from mathematics, one from interdisciplinary studies, one from applied linguistics, and one from education. 11 were men and five were women.

The 14 Australian participants were academics from six different universities, from different stages of their career, and all in the same discipline area: education. Twelve were women and two were men. Two lived and worked in Queensland, seven in New South Wales, and five in Victoria. In Australia, each State was responsible for health decisions including those related to lockdowns and border closures, so people in each of the States had varying experiences of the pandemic.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Participant journals provided details of the experiences of the participants. They also informed the development of questions for the second interviews.

Guided by the question of What has the pandemic taught us about living well in a world worth living in? we undertook analysis in stages and began with a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) of the data from each country. Next, we considered themes from each country in relation to the other country’s themes. All participant names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.

Findings

The findings revealed that there were global, community, and personal aspects to participants’ understanding of living well in a world worth living in. The global category identifies broader issues that were not necessarily closely related to new learning, or new areas of focus, during the pandemic. However, they were key global matters that were raised as important by many participants.

Although there were similarities, the findings differed between the two countries. There are some areas where a strong theme emerged in one of the countries but was not evident or was much less prominent in the other country. We also note the gender differences in the cohorts for each country (primarily men in Norway, and primarily women in Australia) as well as the differences in discipline areas represented (education only in Australia, and a range of disciplines in Norway). In the findings and discussion, we do not explicitly address these differences because the study was not designed to do so: however, where appropriate we do touch on these issues where we have the relevant supporting data. The national location of each participant mentioned is shown by a bracketed initial after their name: (N) and (A).

Global

Social Justice and Equality

Social justice and equality emerged strongly as important components of a world worth living in. For participants in the Norwegian study this was talked about in the sense of working towards a more equal distribution of resources in the world, but also that all people have the same worth. Knowledge and education were seen as ways to achieve equality and social justice, with several participants talking about the importance of educating people so that they can understand inequities and challenges in the world, and then work towards addressing them and creating a more just world. Alex (N), Gina (N), Robert (N), and Simon (N) all noted that their main motivation for being a university teacher was to empower students to use their knowledge to solve pressing sustainability challenges, to discover “fake news” and to make informed decisions. Adrian (N) stated that “only knowledge can make the world a better place”, while Simon highlighted the need for free education as a prerequisite for social justice. Some of the participants also emphasised the essential role of the welfare state in the Scandinavian model. In their view, this model takes care of everyone and not only some, regardless of position or financial abilities. Other words and phrases that participants used which related to the topic of equality and social justice were “fairness”, “global citizenship”, “to feel safe in the world”, and “a more righteous world”.

Similarly, supporting the most vulnerable people in society was identified by many of the Australian participants as a crucial part of living well in a world worth living in. Key groups identified were older people, those in precarious employment, people with mental illness, and those living in poverty. Participants noted that people in these groups were most heavily impacted by changes that happened due to the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. Some people noted their hope that the massive changes wrought by our response to the pandemic could be built upon to increase protections and support for these groups. Olivia (A) raised her concern that once life “returned to normal we won’t really have learned anything”. Others identified the strong support for the Black Lives Matter and climate change protests during this time as important indications of some possible positive outcomes of the pandemic. Jocelyn (A) noted:

I think that those things have been enabled because of the increased use of technology that’s been brought about by also having developed online. And so that has made more people more aware of what we can do to work together to achieve a goal such as strong climate change policies, or making sure that Black Lives Matter is not just a passing movement, that it needs to end up with significant social and cultural change and legal change.

This hope that the experiences endured during the pandemic might result in some positive change in the world was referred to by a number of participants.

Related to inclusion, Petra (N) explained how the pandemic had made her more aware of the needs of her students, and as a result her teaching had become more inclusive during the pandemic. She was able to more deliberately include students who struggled to attend physical teaching activities on campus:

… in the past, I would assume that students didn’t turn up for several reasons. They didn’t like getting up in the morning, they think they can speak English [Petra teaches an English course], or they’re not interested in the class, or they’re working. So, they’re kind of making different priorities. But with Covid …[..]… it could be students who would really like to be there but they have health issues that mean it would be dangerous for them to come to campus. …[..]… It means that before, I was possibly stereotyping students a little bit, …[..]… So, I started to think about, in addition to health reasons related to Covid, there could be other ones. Anxiety disorders, in classes where you maybe have to talk another language and talk to other people and this kind of thing. I’ve always been aware of inclusivity, but I think it just brought it out a lot more …

This learning as a result of her experiences during the pandemic is likely to continue to inform Petra’s practice into the future. Similarly, many Australian participants noted that they worked deliberately to support isolated students during the pandemic. A large majority of participants gave many hours of their time over and above their usual workload to ensure this support, and some reflected on their increased understanding of the vulnerability of some students, especially those who did not have family living in Australia.

During the time of the second interview, the Trump re-election campaign in the USA, and the associated fallout when he failed to secure re-election, had been foregrounded in the media for many months. As many were confined to their homes during the lockdown, and the news outlets had little to report on, both Australian and Norwegian news reports were saturated with stories related to Trump and his supporters. For some participants this further added to the negative atmosphere created by the pandemic and the associated lockdowns. As Olivia (A) noted, “All that Trump stuff has not really helped my depression at all”. A world worth living in did not include a right-wing president of the USA. Some of the Norwegian participants used examples from the USA to illustrate the opposite of a world worth living in. They said that the pandemic highlighted the need for thinking about the common good, rather than nurturing a society where everyone is made responsible for themselves. The polarised debate in the election campaign also highlighted the importance of education (as described above).

Sustainability and Climate Change

The theme of sustainability as one of the requirements of a world worth living in was identified by many participants. In Australia, the COVID pandemic was preceded by devastating bushfires (understood by most as a direct result of climate change) that resulted not only in the loss of thousands of homes, but also in the death of hundreds of people and hundreds of thousands of animals. Identification of the present climate emergency that needs to be addressed, together with the importance of climate support actions that are more than tokenistic, was noted as critical. Most of the Norwegian participants had research interests related to sustainable development. It is therefore not surprising that when asked the question of what a world worth living in is, their answer was: a sustainable world where we do not destroy the globe for future generations. Peter (N) was concerned about the need to reduce consumption and better understand the consequences of our choices, for the environment and for other people, while Kirsten (N) was concerned with the human aspect, such as data privacy policy, empowerment, and agency in a technology driven world. Robert (N) talked about sustainability in the broad definition of the word, as not just climate and environment, but also fairness, stable democratic international relations between countries, and using technology to improve quality of life.

Community

Being part of a larger community, and contributing to that community, emerged as important for a world worth living in for many participants. Various communities became apparent: the local community in the neighbourhood where people lived, the community of colleagues that participants worked with (sometimes made up of various sub-communities), and the broader community of like-minded people and associated movements such as Black Lives Matter, Workers Unions, and sustainability amid climate change. The focus on community was often based on the notion of people contributing to something larger than themselves.

Local community was a particular focus for many of the Australian participants. Because of the move to working from home, most people were now more based in their own neighbourhoods throughout the week as well as on the weekends. As a result, many participants were interacting with their neighbours more than previously. Those who already had a relationship with others in their neighbourhood often ensured that the more vulnerable of these neighbours were cared for. For instance, Sophie (A) provided a lot of support for others during the pandemic. She did this through “doing whatever I can to help those who need any kind of support, whether it’s emotional, physical, doing our best to help fellow human beings. Because we are a social group of people, a world worth living in is not just about me, it’s about others as well, and it’s about coexistence”. This experience of having more to do with the local community than prior to the pandemic resulted in a number of the participants identifying the nurturing of ongoing relationships in the local community as being important for a world worth living in. Instead of the local neighbourhood, several of the Norwegian participants talked about how close colleagues and family became the most important community and also how they had more quality time with their partner when both were working from home. Sara (N), for example, talked about how her husband had become a colleague as well as her partner. Most of the Norwegian participants expressed gratitude for having access to family and close colleagues themselves, but concern about, and becoming more aware of, those who did not.

More “work-based” communities were the community of colleagues (for the Australian participants) and being of importance to students (the Norwegian participants). The Australian study highlighted the value that participants put on collegiality, and positive relationships with selected colleagues. Ava’s (A) comment “Thank God for good work colleagues” was repeated in various ways by most participants. Several of the Norwegian participants talked about the need to be of importance to others, and to contribute to others having a good, or better, life. For these participants the focus was contributing as a teacher or through their academic work. Gina (N), for example, expressed this as “to live and let live”.

The broader communities that people connected with philosophically came up in the Australian study and included two key areas: working with the Workers Union and the Black Lives Matter movement. We begin with Workers’ Unions. Several participants increased their active involvement in the Union. There were a number of reasons for this. One important reason was the increased precarity of university employment. This involved large-scale redundancies across the university sector, some sessionally employed staff losing their jobs entirely, and academics in some universities being coerced to take a pay decrease. The arrangements associated with the redundancies, and whether they would all be “voluntary” or forced, took a long time to be finalised leading to a long period of anxiety and vulnerability for many academics. These redundancies, loss of work, and agreements to decrease salaries, were due to decreased income for universities linked directly to a decline in student numbers (especially international student enrolments), as well as universities taking the opportunity to restructure. It was not helped by the Federal Government explicitly excluding universities from the Job Keeper allowance that was available to other organisations to keep staff connected to their employers. Sessionally employed academics were particularly vulnerable. Two of the Australian participants were employed on a sessional basis. Juliette (A) lost her work entirely (as did her husband) and found that they were struggling financially. Emily (A) kept her position, but was expected to do considerably more hours than she was paid for. In Norway, the financial situation of the universities was very different from the one in Australia. Not being dependent on student payments for income, the reduced activity during the pandemic led in many ways to an improved financial situation. The concern of the Norwegian participants was therefore not related to their own situation but rather a concern for people in socially vulnerable situations, such as international students and employees being far away from their families and Ph.D. students who had no close collaboration with colleagues. They also expressed gratitude for being in a privileged situation compared to people in other professions/occupations.

Maria (A) identified another reason for being more active in the Union. She noted that “…there’s been more women engaged in participation in Unions because it’s via Zoom and they don’t have to physically be there”. She went on to argue that online meetings allowed for greater access to those with caring and other responsibilities, and that she also felt less intimidated in these meetings when they are online. Maria hopes that the Union will continue to hold meetings online to enable a broader range of people to be actively engaged. Active Union involvement emerged as one avenue that the Australian participants accessed to fight against these unjust arrangements, as well as contribute to their community.

Jocelyn (A) identified the pandemic as influential in helping herself and others gain a greater understanding of the importance of ‘community’, large and small. She argued that the pandemic has “made very clear the importance of connections with other people and the importance of looking after and being looked after by friends and family and colleagues”. She extends this further, noting that it has influenced people into “really taking the opportunity to get motivated… a whole lot of things that were going on this year, like Black Lives Matter and climate change protests”. These connections seem to have been enabled by the changed use of technology during the pandemic. Like Maria, Jocelyn identified easier access to activist groups as one of the benefits of these changed arrangements.

Personal

In this section, we focus on the personal, however for many participants the personal was often closely linked with the global, and with community.

Self-realisation, Reflection, and Development

Some participants found the pandemic to be a time of self-realisation and development. What this meant varied between participants. Working from home, and the associated physical separation from the university, decreased some people’s sense of attachment to the organisation that they worked for.

At the same time, it increased their expectation of more deliberately guiding their own direction. Piper (A) saw this as a positive outcome, noting, “I can think through my path a bit more autonomously…[without] the institution driving what I think I need to do or what I should be doing”. Piper was positive about regaining this sense of driving her own direction (which she had previously experienced in her work in another organisation). She noted the importance of continuing to create both the time and the mental space to reflect on what is important, and to chart your own direction. For Sophie (A), the ways that others responded to the pandemic and associated changes supported her to develop greater insight. She noted that, due to the changes,

… we learn about challenges that other people experience and those challenges may not be a challenge to us, but it helps us to realise that different people have different levels of bearing or levels of tolerance or levels of understanding and so on. We need to be very open in our minds to say, OK, we need to accept people for what they are.

This changed understanding enabled Sophie to be more patient with her students and with her colleagues.

The topic of self-realisation and development is closely connected to having a sense of purpose in life. Several participants in both countries explicitly identified the need for a sense of purpose as a requirement for living well. Some of the Norwegian participants talked about the need to be of importance to others, and to contribute to other people’s well-being: either as a teacher or through their academic work. Kirsten (N) was motivated through her work of creating new technology, not for profit but for creating a better life for people, while Sam (N) found his main motivation in helping other people “grow”, blossom, and build self-confidence. A good life for him is to be able to contribute to his students’ development, on a personal level and an academic level. For some of the Australian participants, a sense of purpose related to undertaking research that matters, and teaching that makes a difference.

Work/Life Balance

For most participants in our studies, the pandemic led to change in work/life balance. The direction of this change varied between participants, although almost all participants identified an increase in their workload. For some, and in some instances, work dominated more. Some struggled with the lack of clear delineation between work time and leisure time, with the effect that work took over more of their leisure time than before. They had learned that they need the office to structure their day and keep motivation up for both work and exercise. Others found that because they did not go into the office every day, they were able to step back from work a bit. For instance, Alicia (A) noted “It’s not the centre of my world”. Similarly, Olivia (A) noted that she was able to reflect that “your work is not the most important thing in your life… and that’s partly because you’re working from home. You’ve had to delineate work time and home time and workspace”.

Many participants valued the flexibility that working from home enabled. This included easier family logistics and being able to undertake minor household tasks throughout the day. Gina (N) enjoyed the possibility to make use of daylight (which during wintertime is limited to the time people are in the office) or good weather to go hiking and get some exercise. Robert (N) talked about how the time working from home had taught him to take control of his workload rather than letting the workload control him, and also that he had learned about self-care. For example, he used the new flexibility of the home office to exercise during the day rather than in the evening, to make use of the daylight during the “dark season”. The tendency was, however, to work longer hours than before the pandemic when work was largely office/campus based. On the one hand, the workload increased because they had to do things in new ways and there were more planned meetings. However, the number of ad-hoc tasks (and interruptions) decreased because the in-between meetings in the corridor, lunchroom, and offices (Francisco & Boud, 2021) were no longer happening. Some participants found they were able to develop a work/life balance by not envisaging it as an either/or arrangement. Alicia (N) noted “It’s not about ‘how do I fit my life in around work?’ it’s that ‘this is all part of one tapestry of a life and which bits am I focusing on right now?’”.

In Australia, people were confined to their homes for lengthy periods: especially those living in Melbourne. All participants experienced some time of lockdown, and most mentioned the lack of access to family and friends during this time as helping them to realise how important these relationships are. For instance, Juliette (A) noted, “living well for me at the moment is just having my family and friends around me and actually being able to connect, not just over Zoom …or not just remotely… it’s about connecting with family, connecting with friends, connecting with work colleagues”. Similarly, Olivia (A) had been reminded “that your family and friends are the most important thing, that cliched kind of stuff, but when things get hard, that’s what you fall back on”. Conrad (A) highlighted the critical importance of longer-term friendships “that are built on the foundation of the embodied being together”. He also noted “hugging really matters professionally as well as personally and shaking hands, and I think those things are really important going forward”. Emily (A) began a new job with a different university during the pandemic (and during this research project) and was working with some people that she had only met via zoom. She found it difficult to develop relationships with these people, noting “those relationships are just on pause… The ones that I’ve worked with before, … it kind of magnifies those relationships …when you see people all the time you kind of can smooth out the rough edges”. Embodied meetings were an important part of a world worth living in for many of the participants.

Discussion

Beliefs that emerged from this study in relation to ‘living well in a world worth living in’ cannot be said to be ground-breaking. However, as noted by Kaukko et al. (2023), for words or phrases to maintain a rich meaning, we need to “intentionally pause and ask, what does it mean now, in this time, and in this context” (p. 2)? For the participants in this study, the disruption caused by the pandemic made space and time for such a reflection, to stop and ponder about what matters. All participants had some sense of what a world worth living in would look like, and what we might do to move towards such a world, at a global, local, and personal level. Participants’ understandings of the components of a world worth living in were impacted by their experiences of the pandemic. Some of the things highlighted by participants were those that they had previously taken-for-granted and lost during the pandemic. There are doubtless other, equally important things that were not explicitly mentioned, and perhaps not even noticed because they had not been lost.

Now we return to the initial questions from the beginning of this chapter: how can we make the most of the changes that occurred because of the pandemic, and what other changes might we create going forward? We are informed by the theory of practice architectures in our discussion of these questions. The theory of practice architectures enables the exploration of arrangements that enable and constrain practices (Kemmis et al., 2014) and is valuable in considering the changes that might support the development of a world worth living in (Francisco et al., 2017). The theory holds that making change requires action in the social, semantic, and space/time dimensions. In the semantic dimension, the cultural-discursive arrangements enable and constrain what is said and thought about in the practice: the sayings. In the space/time dimension, the material-economic arrangements enable and constrain the doings of the practice. And in the social dimension, the social-political arrangements enable and constrain the relatings of the practice (Kemmis et al., 2014).

Our exploration is necessarily bounded, and we focus just on four key issues that emerged in our research: changed technology use; work flexibility; stable employment with good working conditions; and social justice.

The change in how technologies are used was a widespread outcome brought about by the pandemic, which can be seen as a catalyst for further transformations longer term. This transformation has already had implications for practice in higher education: for teaching, for how we engage with our colleagues, where we engage from, and even who we engage with (Rapanta et al., 2021). Thus, the new developments in technology provide material-economic arrangements that enable further options for increased flexibility for teachers and for students. The changed use of technology has also had a broader impact for the participants in this study. It enabled people to engage in protest movements more easily, as noted by Jocelyn (A) and union movements as noted by Maria (A) and Conrad (A).

Flexibility regarding where, when, and how to work were identified by participants as important in a world worth living in. Due to the transformative changes during the pandemic, maintaining a more flexible approach to “workplace” and “work time” is possible now more than ever (Lizier et al., 2023). The material-economic arrangements of working from home, such as having appropriate equipment and home office furniture, have been established for most academics: if not prior to the pandemic, then certainly during periods of lockdown. Today, when the restrictions caused by the pandemic have been lifted, working from home is likely to be here to stay for many (Smite et al., 2023); as an expectation and as a ‘right’ that workers are entitled to access. While many material-economic arrangements to support working from home (such as rearranging a ‘spare’ room; purchasing a more suitable office chair) were often established rapidly during lockdowns, for many, the practice architectures for more flexible working as a norm are still being negotiated. These include arrangements associated with ensuring regular embodied interactions with colleagues (highlighted by some of our participants as crucial). It is important that these changes really are ‘flexible’ and consider the needs of more vulnerable colleagues, and those for whom working from home is not a positive experience.

Stable employment and good working conditions for self and others were identified by participants as important aspects of a world worth living in. University level policies associated with casual employment arrangements are a crucial element of the practice architectures that enable stable employment. Present policies in Australia support precarity of employment for casually employed academics, and high levels of unpaid work undertaken to become more employable for future work contracts (Smithers et al., 2022). Many of the Australian participants foregrounded these issues in their responses and were prepared to fight for more stable and equitable working conditions for all academics.

The participants in this study were particularly concerned with issues related to social justice, as the pandemic had very different consequences for different people and in different countries. Most of them identified a focus on human well-being and the social-political arrangements related to how relationships were enabled and constrained within the new conditions during the pandemic. At a more personal level this includes practice architectures that enable interactions with a core community of colleagues, family, and friends. At a broader level, it includes cultural-discursive, social-political, and material-economic arrangements that support equity and social justice. In the Norwegian study, for example, several of the participants found purpose and motivation in their work as academics, because they identified education and knowledge as the main ingredients to achieve equality and social justice in the world. They also described aspects of the Scandinavian welfare system that nurtured the common good rather than a society where everyone is made responsible for themselves. This kind of social safety net can be seen as a type of arrangement that allows people to relate to each other in ways that support a world worth living in for all.

In conclusion, the participants in our research identified a range of arrangements associated with living well in a world worth living in. In this chapter, we have collected these into three separate categories: global, local, and personal. However, these categories do not have clear borders and flow into each other. Key components of living well in a world worth living in include social justice and equity for all; a sustainable environment; a sense of community, and associated relationships; and ongoing professional and personal development. Importantly, this includes a sense of agency associated with guiding one’s own direction deliberately and knowingly, as well as fighting/working for a just society, a sustainable future, and a professional life that is rewarding and challenging but not overwhelming.