In my craw...

 I read an article over at "Inside Higher Education" (I think it's free to read but they may ask you to register) that has bugged me since I read it:

Reflections on a Great Semester

The individual who wrote it described how awesome their semester was, how well they did, coming back after the pandemic. As you read on, you learn:

 - while it was a new prep, it was a class they selected

- it was entirely in person, no Zoom component, and was an elective for the students, so presumably everyone wanted to be there

- most crucially? This was the ONLY class this person taught this semester. Yes, they recognize that's a privilege, but for me - coming off several years of 4/4s (including a pandemic 4/4 in fall 2020/spring 2021) and teaching three classes now....I admit I am a little sour.

 

And, as I said last night: I don't think I taught very well this semester. I'm worn out, I'm sad, I'm suffering from a lack of fun or feeling achievement. And three or four classes in a semester is just a lot. 

So, here in less-organized form that that piece, is my own Reflections on a Poor Semester:

 

Like I said, I'm tired. But more importantly, the students are tired. Or they seem tired - a lot of them seem like people who maybe USED TO care about their grades and coursework but they can't now. As I noted last night, someone who turned out to be a solid student (when his life isn't falling apart) sure looked like a flake to me earlier in the semester and I admit I yelled at him "in my heart" (I am too kind, and too concerned about reprisals from my chair, to actually yell at a student, even when maybe they deserve it). My intro students are really underprepared; a lot of them are coming off their last 2 years of high school as mostly "virtual," and in many cases, either they have failed to learn reasonable study/adulting skills, or they've forgotten about them - I had people coming late, leaving early, missing deadlines all over the place and then demanding (for example) I reopen the online quizzes a couple days late just for them. Because I'm a wimp and because we've been SO exhorted to "be kind," I mostly have. But it makes me worry about "how do I crack back down and set hard deadlines again?" - I've been somewhat forceful about the big paper in one class and the lab notebook in another, pointing out (in all fairness!) that I made the due date the latest possible date I could accept them and still get them graded on time (without me having to pull an all-nighter or something. I'm 53, I'm too old for all-nighters).

I'm losing my calibration on what's "being reasonably kind" and what's "being taken advantage of" and I suspect I'm falling into the second camp. 

I also know I'm teaching worse - I don't engage with the students as much. In the before-times, I'd walk into class five or seven minutes early and chat with whoever was waiting there as I opened the file I was going to use that day. Students knew that and sometimes came early if they had a question for me so they could get a quick answer without having to make a second trip to my office hours. Now, I scuttle into class. Plug in the camera/microphone (I am still broadcasting over zoom; I have one or two students with vulnerable family members - or who are vulnerable themselves - that are mostly attending virtually). Then I have to do the dance of logins to get into Zoom, into Blackboard, open up the file. When people join from home, I can't quickly write things on the blackboard or write annotations on the (real) whiteboard I am projecting on to - I have to open up the virtual whiteboard, and use the mouse to shakily draw - or do a few extra clicks to get a textbox, and then type, and then make typos I have to correct because I can't always see the keyboard well

And it is distancing and isolating. It feels very much like it centers the computer in the room, rather than the people. And it does feel like a barrier between me and the students. I would like to ditch the camera and I'm playing with the idea of doing so for fall.....but I know if I make hard plans for that, there'll be another horrific variant and I'll have the ethical dilemma of requiring people to be present (and potentially at risk: we can ask them to wear masks but they don't have to) vs. continuing to do something that makes me a worse teacher.

I'm also somewhat....jaded? I feel like my job isn't that meaningful any more. Like, it's really hard for some of the students to get careers themselves, and I'm not sure how much they're learning in my classes will help them find a job or fulfillment in life. I'm questioning a lot of things these days, things I formerly accepted, and one of those is that "what you do adds value to the world." A lot of times I feel like the research I am doing, is done merely to check the box on my post-tenure review that I did it - not that anyone will benefit from it or even read it (And I don't....really enjoy it that much, a lot of the time. Too much I feel like "I have no idea what I am doing" and I don't like that).

And I know I'm trying to do too much. My house is a pit, it really needs an incredible deep clean, but I never have the energy to do that (And no, don't suggest hiring someone or something: I am too ashamed at the state it's in to be remotely comfortable getting someone in. That's also why I've dragged my feet more on getting the repairs done. Maybe this summer? Maybe I take one day a week and MANDATE that I must clean for at least six hours? Or sort and pitch things?). I've barely been pursuing my hobbies. (I do mostly keep up with practicing piano. And I work out almost every day, but I don't enjoy that enough to call it a hobby - it's more a "maintain my health" thing)

If I only had to teach one class (or two classes) a semester, I'd be in a lot better headspace. 

I am also staring down a new prep for next spring and kind of dreading it (will have to do it over the summer, that's the only time I will have time) - our systematist is retiring and we need someone to cover systematic botany. We advertised the position (though perhaps not enough), got ONE qualified candidate, who ultimately turned us down. So now that's on me, and we're going to try to hire an adjunct/instructor for basic botany, and the evolution class he used to teach will be loaded onto another faculty member - so our loads ever creep upward, even during a time when we're all tired out.

And I think that's it: a lot of us are just tired and demoralized. We've been running on fumes for at least a year, without sufficient chances to rest up or restore. I don't even know at this point what a chance to restore would look like for me - in a different article in Inside Higher Ed (this time: written anonymously, probably because the author is concerned about repercussions), the unnamed writer notes that they have a "work debt" - they had to take off time to tend to a seriously-ill child, and while they weren't *required* to work, work did keep piling up, so much so that they're trying to 'declare bankruptcy' as much as they can by finding others to shoulder the necessary work tasks (and of course, that has knock-on effects: I would do my best to help out a colleague with a seriously-ill child, but that would wind up costing ME, because I'm at the limit right now....). And I think a lot of us are closer to that position (I recognize that I'm in a better place than the anonymous author - I'm not really work-bankrupt, though there are tasks I've "floated" that will have to be done this summer) than we are to the person proud of teaching their one, upper-division, elective class Very Well this year.

 And I don't know what the answer is. A lot of us in academe are people who thrived on being high achievers. We feel good when we do things well, to the point where a lot of us are probably over-invested, emotionally, in our work. And work can't love you back. And a lot of us have pushed really hard these two years to keep all the plates spinning (though for many of us, also, a few have crashed to the floor and broken). And a lot of us feel like - we're not doing things as well as we once did. And that hurts. It's another terrible thing on top of the pile of terrible things - the pandemic, economic insecurity, war in Ukraine and its related human-rights abuses, people being horrible and "othering" and trying to pass spite-legislation here at home....and it just, it's a lot, and it feels like Too Much to me that I am floundering and teaching badly. I wailed on Twitter one day that I needed to do one thing well, just one thing, and I do feel that a lot of days - or like "I used to be good at things, didn't I?"

I don't know what the solution is. I don't feel like learning to embrace the suck is the solution; that's an awfully painful one for someone like me - if I'm going to be bad at things forever, well, in my most extreme moods I almost feel like "might as well be dead, then." 

But I don't know how to fix anything, and it doesn't seem like anyone else does. Or if they do, they don't care.