This is what I've been hearing more and more these last two weeks or so: that in any long-term crisis people hit a wall at the six-month point and suddenly feel terrible in new ways. The Twitter thread from which I took this post was helpful:
It's week 8 of the semester here. It should be our fall break, a blessed run of days with no students, no meetings, more sleeping, and some attempts at fun. We don't have fall break this year, so it's just more of the same awful work, with additional chaos and stress. I went home last Friday evening and just cried out of exhaustion and despair. I have discovered a sudden inability to deal with emails: students wanting me to fix some score or schedule an extra meeting or "can I please take the quiz I forgot about?" Requests from various offices, colleagues at other schools. They just gather in my inbox until I find the energy and the words to answer, sometimes days later. Never?
The latest stupid idea from our safety committee is allowing any student to go into quarantine on campus for two weeks before Thanksgiving, presumably to protect their family members back home. We received, as usual, a Friday afternoon email from the Provost requesting comments on this proposal. I sent a summary of my department's comments this morning (basically: please don't do this because it will make our jobs so much harder than they already are) and I included what we all believe, that the decision has already been made and there's nothing we can say that will change their minds. The Provost responded by scolding me, saying that we shouldn't assume just because the decision goes against our wishes that our comments would not be taken seriously. Whatever, dude. He's telling me to trust him, and I just don't. He's brand new and I don't even know him, the hell I'm going to trust him. We've been screwed over this whole time and not once has anything the faculty have said made an iota of difference. I'm not going to argue about it.
Today it's absolutely all I can do (maybe more) to just be here and teach my classes. I've made some progress reading a few student papers I need to have read for later in the week, and I'm bracing myself to survive four hours of class in the afternoon (and then more tomorrow and the next day and the next), but that's my limit.
I hear you. I am also very tired. I got nagged this week about needing to do the assessment reports (this is a job that got dropped in my lap in fall 2019 when the person who had been doing it took a higher paying position. They gave me v. little guidance, especially since I was in deep grief for my father and for a friend at that time - I remember nothing of how to do it).
ReplyDeleteI started it yesterday. I cried many times and vocally threatened to quit my position twice in the hearing of colleagues.
In a humane world? We wouldn't be asked to do this, not now.
I am not traveling for Thanksgiving, no way to do it safely. Almost certainly not traveling for Christmas. My mother is 84. I can only pray she lives long enough that I get to see her again at least once when the pandemic is over. My whole entire heart has been broken so many times in this that there's more repair there than heart at this point. Bondo heart. Or superglue heart. Or something. Whatever it is, I don't like it