87: What Success Really Looks Like Pre-Tenure: An Interview with Two Amplify Grads

On this episode I'm talking with Melva Treviño Peña and Silvie Huijben, two Amplify graduates, about what brought them to the program, how their careers and lives have changed, their successes, and who they believe can benefit from Amplify.

While they came to the program from very different fields and in different phases of their pre-tenure journey, the transformations experienced, tools gained and relationships formed were the same.

Key points discussed:

• How they each found the Amplify program and why they joined
• What's changed for them in the past year as a result of the program
• Mentality shifts and how they have developed intentionality and clarity
• Developing a writing system for the long term
• Experiencing burnout and learning to develop healthy decision-making practices
• Tools they continue to go back to
• Learning to reflect and re-center when things get hectic
• Writing, publishing and project successes, and a more streamlined timeline to achieve them
• Gaining self-awareness and spotting problems as they arise
• Planning for the future with intention
• Their favorite parts of the Amplify program
• Who they believe can benefit from being a part of Amplify

Key Quotes:

• "What comes first is feeling comfortable, less stressed, understanding who you are as an academic and who you want to be." -Melva Treviño Peña
• "I thought I was the only person that had graduated without the publication skills and I started to learn that that is not true." -Melva Treviño Peña
• "It helped me transform how I see myself and how I see the writing system." -Melva Treviño Peña
• "I was worried that after the program is done..the benefit is done; but that's not the case at all...I changed the way that I work and I'm definitely not going back to the way I was." -Silvie Huijben
• "It's a continuous work in progress, all the time." -Silvie Huijben
• "In this program, I have the tools that, if I start to feel more frazzled, now I know what to do." -Silvie Huijben
• "Not all hours are created equal." -Silvie Huijben
• "With coaching and with programs, what you get is...facilitated speed." -Cathy Mazak
• "Getting a guilt project out of the way was such a sense of relief." -Silvie Huijben
• "It's such a beautiful part of the program: to find out that you're not alone." -Melva Treviño Peña
• "I learned a lot from Cathy and the coaches, but I learned a lot from the other people in the program." -Melva Treviño Peña

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This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode87.