askygoneonfire | Entries tagged with academia: elaborate masochism

My 12 letter prompt of 'housewarming' brings me to 'i' this month. I have chosen to go for statements beginning with "I am"

I am exhausted
I am drained
I am worn out and washed out
I am feeling unseen and unheard
I am feeling unappreciated
I am overworked
I am finding it impossible to imagine completing the full academic year like this
I am angry at the Government
I am exasperated at University Management
I am lacking compassion for students who seem to treat me like an automaton without feelings instead of a fellow human being trying their hardest
I am finding hope hard to hold on to
I am lonely
I am feeling isolated while immersed in endless communication
I am grateful for every kind word or consideration
I am living life in little gasps of relief from all of this
I am so tired.

The 12 letter prompt of 'housewarming' today brings me to 'm'. After hesitating for half a week I've decided to go for 'me' and essentially update my 'intro' post from 3 years ago.

I am [about to turn] 36. I work in a 'prestigious' university in the south of England. I put prestigious in inverted commas because I am deeply critical of the system of university rankings, and things like 'Russell Group' which ensure money and resources flow around a ring fenced group of already over-funded institutions who select students from selective schools and...it's a pyramid scheme. I have worked at less prestigious universities which do better, more exciting research with less money, and make an objectively bigger impact in the lives of their non-elite students than this one does. I work here because they hired me for a permanent role and the lookout for careers in academia right now is terrible. I like my colleagues, I like many of my students, I work hard (sometimes too hard) for the community I am part of but I am never going to toe the party line on being 'world-leading' simply because of what some dodgy metrics say about the institution as a whole.

I am a cis woman. I think gender is a trap. I have always, as long as I can remember asking questions, been baffled by binary conceptualisations of gender and I have never easily fit either 'girl' or 'woman'. Woman, right now, is a word I choose. But more often I like to roll my descriptors of gender and sexuality into one and use 'queer'. I like the indeterminacy of queer. I like the history of that word and how it still needles at the norm, how it says 'I am against and across and strange and uncomfortable and making you uncomfortable'. I find it fascinating how and when I get misgendered and I find it fascinating when I get called "lady". The latter makes me more unhappy than the former.

I also use bisexual to describe my sexuality. A word which I painfully tore out of me and presented to the world when I was about 15 and which I clung to in the face of all the horribleness that can attend coming out. For a number of years I dropped bisexual because I had internalised too many negative stereotypes and associations with that word. Recently, after an inspiring keynote address entitled 'lesbian nation' by Campbell X at a conference, I claimed 'lesbian' as a word I had a right to. I mix my words all the time. Did I mention I like indeterminacy? I don't owe anyone a box to put me in. The words I use are expression, not definition.

My work mixes my life. I do research about LGBTQ people, families, childhood, gender, relationships. I don't write about that in much detail as I try to maintain some division of my professional and personal online existence.

One of the roles I have in my job involves supporting students who encounter a range of difficulties during their studies; I am determined to do all I can to kick open the door to Higher Education and use my entire body to stop it slamming shut on people. On some occasions this is harder to acheive than at others. I am continually learning about doors I didn't even know existed and how they exclude people.

I have a long term mental health issue. I write about it in more detail on my wordpress blog. I write about it here too, but typically in less detail. It's a useful background piece of information to have if you're coming to read. I am, as mentioned above, hitting my late 30s. I've been told that this stage of life often includes a worsening of bipolar spectrum disorders, that's something I've been wrestling for a while now. I've also been told that it kind of shakes out by the time you're 40 and you can just get on with it - whatever level you end up at. I hope that's true. I work hard to be well. My success on this front is, predictably, variable.

I am fortunate to have a huge range of people in my life. I have a biological family who live far away and who I have limited contact with, this includes three brothers, and two parents. I have a chosen family of friends who live much closer and who fill me up with love and kindess and sometimes beer. I am [recently] poly after being single for a decade. I got to poly through a lot of reflection on what I can and can't do in relationships and how I want to be able to build relationships with people. I am finding the space, communication, and conscious choice of commitment which poly centres incredibly positive and freeing. At the time of writing, I am in one relationship of note and that's with 'Teddy'. They are on dreamwidth as well and next-to-no-sleuthing will reveal their dw username to anyone who wishes to put together such a puzzle.

I am a nerd for pop culture and a deep love of sci-fi (especially Star Trek) has been a constant in my life. I am a lifer fan of Manic Street Preachers, even though I haven't liked any music they've released for nearly a decade. I have a soul deep love for David Bowie and our bond will never be broken.

I read the journal of everyone I subscribe to but I am an inconsistent commenter.

I am fully hitting the summer slump. The stress-pocalypse of the last 2-3 weeks at work is finally rounding off, next set of deadlines are all pressing but vague, the sun is out, the valley is calling me out to walk and walk, and I'm on leave from Friday so somehow starting anything seems absurd (on a Monday..)

Because of the corona-sprawl teaching duties are only just wrapping up at the end of July; meaning I really only have 4 weeks to do three seperate research and/or professional development jobs. Entirely possible if I pull my finger out but working flat out over a summer after 9 months of working flat out is not filling me with enthusiasm or generating much motivation.

My last three summers I've mostly lounged about, worked half days, socialised with my other aca-friends, and generally taken it easy. The amount we all overwork during term time means, if anyone tracked concepts like time in lieu, I'd still be well up to my contracted time. The new academic year is going to start a week late this year, which means finishing a week closer to Christmas which will be painful and I don't want to go into October already burned out. I think I need to give myself permission to achieve just two of my three tasks. One of them I need to ask around and see if any aca-friends can do some really constructive, interventionist editing on my work so I can move ahead on it from the utterly stuck place I've been with it for 6 months.

What I want to do is work on the Union branch website, turn it into something navigable and sharable that provides useful contact point, and information sharing for our members. That's already seeming like an oddly impossible task as I've been given limited editing powers when I need admin access but it's one for the to do list (which I seem pathologically unable to stop adding things to)

In many ways, I'm impatient. Impatient to be in my summer break regardless of how vanishingly short it is, impatient to have acheived the things I am still looking at from a wary distance, impatient to be past this weird year and all it's limitations and cancellations and smallness, impatient for relationships to grow as they can only do with time. Simultaneously I'm scared of what is on the other side of all of this; what will next [aca] year look like? What will the world be like in pandemic terms in 6 months, a year? What will my work look like if my project bid is successful? What will this relationship be - what if it fizzles or breaks? I want it to grow, but not everything works and it scares me to wish away the tentative moments that exist now for an uncertain 'next'.

Psychically there's a lot going on, it's a big drain. It's not surprising I'm hitting a slump.

Realised I missed doing this in March so I'll have to do two letters this month. Today's prompt from my 12 letter word (housewarming) is "U". I have gone for...

Unproductive

There's been a lot of chat about un/productivity online in the last couple of weeks as lockdown lengthens and we all try and adjust to working from home.

I have always been able to work from home for the majority of the year and the rest of the time during term, for as much of the week as I don't need to deliver teaching. Generally I prefer to go into the office - the physical transition helps me get into the right mindset to work and the shift in environment makes me happier. So enforced home working has been a challenge.

There's also the significant thing of this being a crisis and shit being stressful and weird and it being hard to focus on work in a time like this.

So there's something of a double whammy in how hard it is to be productive.

My biggest problem with being un/productive is that so much of my self worth is derived from being regarded as organised, good on deadlines, and a hard worker. I do attach a moral value to being a hard worker. I recognise all the issues of this - and certainly don't wind up at a Tory-style dismissal of people who cannot work or who cannot find work as valueless. But as with so much in life, I hold myself to a much higher standard than people around me. And I cannot find much to value in myself if I cannot point to things I have achieved and worked at in the recent past.

I sleep better, I feel happier, I am kinder to other people, when I've worked solidly all week and completed a lot of work.

I feel excited at the possibility of a slower pace of life right now. Unfortunately, I think academia is trying to make itself look "important" by generating a lot of extra work and urgency about that work. Students are getting blanket extensions (inexplicably, the entire assessment thing isn't being cancelled or all students being given the option to complete their year next year): staff aren't.

I was supposed to be taking annual leave from Friday last week through until Tuesday after Easter. We've been told to still take annual leave but what am I supposed to do? It's not a holiday to sit in silence, alone, with no meaningful activity or interaction, for a week.

I keep seeing emails about concessions for people who are trying to work from home and look after their kids and it's like...yes, that must be really challenging. But I am alone. Completely fucking alone. The only needs that exist in my household are my own and meeting them seems optional. If I had other people, structure and communication would be essential. I don't dismiss the difficulties of that. I just don't know why the whole world seems to think that being alone means you are able to work effectively and manage your time.

I can't be productive. I don't know how to accept being unproductive. I want my employer to formally declare we do not need to be productive (other unis have told staff to forget about hitting any appraisal goals/everything is off for a year). I want to find a place of calm in all of this.

Further reading:
I also finished off a post today on my other blog that I had sitting in my drafts for ages, broadly on the same topic; On tenancity

A placard reading "honk for secure contracts" held aloft

I entirely forgot about my weekly commitment to blog after a busy weekend of doing social things and a busy week of striking (Mon-Weds) and then working (Thurs-Fri)

Today I've been back on the picket lines as we embark on week 3 of this round of strikes - week 5 of this action overall - with another week left.

As ever, it's been cold, wet, hard, tiring, and emotionally draining. But it's also been uplifitng, given me a sense of community for the first time since I started at the University, and provided an outlet for my energy and hope for this industrial action. Pictured is my creative and energetic outlet - a placard I use to generate disruption outside the management building on campus via outreach to motorists - impact!

Every strike (this is my fourth since I entered academia) begins the same; my friends (across at least 8 universities at this point) and I quietly confess to one another we "don't know how we'll do it" and "can't afford it" and "are not sure the demands are achievable" and then we dive in, and we all participate with a degree of militancy in how we withdraw our labour and man the pickets as fully as we are able. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had such a strongly unionised, strongly political cohort of PhD peers with whom I continue to share soldiarity and support in all aspects of our journey through academia.

Facebook reminds me it was exactly one year ago [yesterday] that I was offered (and accepted) the job here. And that 2 years ago we were on strike in the snow to protect our pensions. 4 years before that [last week sometime] I was participating in the marking boycott to protect final salary pensions (a fight we lost).

Difficult though every strike is, not walking out would be a thousand times harder. Not standing up, not drawing a line in the sand, not pushing back on the slow erosion of our universities, increasing inequality, and the devaluation of our labour is not an option.

1. What did you do in 2019 that you'd never done before?
I was an invited guest on a podcast and featured in two episodes, spoke at the Houses of Commons to an All Party Parliamentary Group, I started a permanent academic job, I voted Labour for the first time (last few elections it's been Green for Caroline Lucas, before that I voted Lib Dem).

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

( Read more... )

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years

You know sometimes how you're so tired and so overworked and so anxious about the endless list of stuff you just have to keep in your head and keep moving forward on even though progress is so small it's like you're not moving at all?

And how "sometimes" is "all the time"?

Is this just how everyone feels? Or is this quite particular to having a really demanding job, a brain that sometimes runs on empty, and being really fucking single in a constellation of friends who have partners to share these burdens with?

I feel like I'm a zombie in my own life sometimes, I really do. Stumbling on and on.

I genuinely thought "well thank god for that, an end date" when I saw this headline

I have been working flat out for 4 years.

I have been working, absolutely without cease, and always with a terror of financial ruin, and with the urgency of getting into a post before my research becomes outdated, for four years.

I have had jobs at 3 universities, and a job outside the academy for extra cash whilst continuing to work three roles in two universities, in the last 4 years.

I have submitted a thesis, passed a viva, published three articles, secured a book contract, co-authored another article currently at peer review, run from inception to completion two research projects, written a proposal for a new research project, in the last three years.

I have taught on 10 different modules at three different universities in the last three years.

I have willingly taken on a financially ruinous commute that eats at least 3 hours, typically 4 hours, of my day for the last two years.

I have submitted three job applications (min 6,000 words each) in the last month. I have marked 50 essays and have another 15 to go, and a batch of moderating) and spent 13 hours classroom teaching (not including prep and admin), more than 8 hours in tutorials, 5 hours in staff meetings, written one call for papers and one reference, in the last two weeks

I have worked every single day for the last 18 days. I will continue to work for at least the four days at which point I will take one day off and then go back into another ceaseless stretch.

I feel wretched all the time. I cry every single night. I have terrible dreams. I feel utterly, utterly overwhelmed. And I know I am still not doing enough.

1. What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before?
I was published - two sole-authored articles in two peer-reviewed journals. I got a book contract. I went on strike (techincally I've been on strike before, but because of how my previous contracts worked I've never had to endure the financial penalty for striking). I was interviewed on BBC Radio. I went to Tenby - which is bloody miles away.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

In 2018 I resolved to look again at my housing and decide if there is enough justification for moving to a (more expensive) one bed flat and letting my (safe, warm, most affordable option in Brighton) studio go when the future is still uncertain in terms of work. I'm also resolved to visit two new countries in 2018.

I did look at my housing situation, many times over, but have to stay where I am until I know what is going to happen with work. I made it to two new countries - USA and Austria. I also travelled to two countries I'd visited before, again.

For 2019, I resolve to commit to one course of action or another over my career (keep hanging on in academia, or pick a new direction in private sector). That's it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope, one on the way though.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My uncle - my Dad's brother - died. It was distressing for the length of his illness, and the impact it had on my Dad and my Aunt.

5. What countries did you visit?
Spain, the Czech Republic, Austria, and United States of America. And Wales. Again.

I had a fucking trial and a half getting to New York - my flight was rescheduled twice moving departure back 3 hours, then it was delayed by 5 hours. Thanks to EU rules, I got compensation of a greater value than the entire holiday cost me. I never managed to extract an apology - or compensation - from Norweigan Air for making me cross the Atlantic on a plane infested with cockraoches. Then my last flight of the year, which I need to speak to my Insurer about and complain to company, I got diverted to Bristol from Gatwick and lost 4 hours of my life to a fucking coach journey to London. Czech Republic was ace for being paid for by work so I could attend a conference, and then I fit sightseeing in either side of it which felt so luxurious. Austria was my first trip with my parents as an adult and I was vile and it was difficult and the weather was terrible.

6. What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?
Permanent employment. The financial security I need to move to out of my studio to flat to a one bed. A close and constant friend.

7. What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Nothing

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Submitting two job applications, a book proposal, and a co-authored article, and drafting a funding bid. Not going off sick from work - although I probably should have.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not making progress on writing my book.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Meh. No injuries. A lot of aches and pains that the GP can't explain for me beyond "hypermobility" in joints and some truly terrible periods of anxiety.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A new sofa. And a polaroid camera.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Caroline Lucas

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Jeremy Corbyn.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Train tickets

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Getting a contract from a publisher for a book.

16. What song will always remind you of 2018?
International Blue - Manic Street Preachers.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Sadder
ii. Thinner or fatter? Thinner; made a concerted effort to get in control of, and comfortable with, my body in the latter half of the year
iii. Richer or poorer? The same almost to the penny, I think. Poorer in that this time next year I won't know where my money is coming from, which I did last year.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing. I put lots of needed writing (book, articles, job applications) off for impossibly long periods of time and I regret it. It's never as hard as I think it will be when I just knuckle down to it, so why the procrastination?

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Crying. I've been crying a lot since I learnt I haven't got secure employment to the end of the year.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent. After the success of last year's trip to Amsterdam, I booked to go to Valencia over the same period just before Christmas. Thanks to Schrödinger's Drone, my flight home on the 21st ended up diverted to Bristol, then I had to spend 3.5 hours on a bus, wretchedly trying to get home. Not the most auspicious final trip to the continent as a European citizen, although perhaps a good indication of the chaos ahead of us. Then to my parents from 23rd-28th. Dull, dull, dull. Miserable, grumpy, bored.

21. Did you fall in love in 2018?
Nope.

22. How many one-night stands?
Zero

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Loads of good stuff this year; Killing Eve, Doctor Who, A Very English Scandal, The Good Place, Star Trek Discovery, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Crazy Ex Girlfirend, Grace and Frankie...lots of value from Netflix, in short.

The Handmaid's Tale dropped off my list of things that was worth watching, and Im not sure This Is Us is good anymore, so much as perfectly designed to make you cry.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nope.

25. What was the best book you read?
Marginally better year than last year, although not by much. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was certainly my favourite and I recommended it (successfully) to almost everyone I met. I was also really inspired and enlivened by The Argonauts

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Nothing new in my world. Lots of singles I like but can't name that I heard on 6Music

27. What did you want and get?
Holidays

28. What did you want and not get?
Same as last year: a girlfriend. Financial security I could [literally] take to the bank [and get a mortgage with]

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Ladybird. Broke my heart a bit

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 34. I invited everyone to the pub and we all had amazing Sunday roasts.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Certainty of career, and financial stability.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?
Nonexistent

33. What kept you sane?
I took up more fitness stuff, got a fitbit, and generally embraced exercise as a general good. That has been the only constant, and the only thing I always do which is definitely Not Work.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Probably Jodie Whittaker/13. It was a bit of a sexless, desire-less year, all told.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Brexshit. And America locking children up in cages and then letting them die for want of water.

36. Who did you miss?
I'm not sure I have any relationships significant enough to have anyone to miss.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
I met a friend of a friend for the first time. She is nice. And it's nice to meet new people at all as you get older and believe they will be in your life longer term

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018:
You can do everything right and still fail. Which is something I should have taken more notice of when Picard said it on ST:TNG

39. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?:
My Mum.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I'm really looking forward/To when I won't be here/When I fly, fly away/To a better day.

Work is a pit of hell and stress and nightmareish crap.

Got told what I suspected but hoped against the other week - not getting my contract renewed so I'm unemployed in September.

Which, fine.

Except I applied for another job the other month and didn't get shortlisted, then learnt my manager (head of department) was on the hiring panel, and she was all "if you'd applied for that job with your current CV you would have been interviewed" and I was like "I did." And she had no answer. And I applied for another job which had 315 applicants, I made top 8 and they interviewed top 4, and hired 2.

I have been told I am "well rounded" and "outstanding" from two different people involved in hiring panels, and I'm not even getting interviews.

Suspected another temp-contract colleague (4 of us were told there was no job for us in September, she wasn't told anything) was going to get a permanent contract, despite Head of Department telling me they weren't able to offer anyone permanent contracts. Sure enough, this colleague messaged me today. I congratulated her heartily - I am really am so glad for her. But I am also gutted for me, of course.

I could weep at the frustration and injustice and impossibility.

I do everything right, and it's still not enough. All I want is a permanent job so I can know where my money is coming from in a years time, and actually move forward in my life.

I cannot keep doing this, but I don't know what else to do - and I don't want to walk away from academia because I do love the job when I actually get to do it.

I'm the only person in any part of my family to ever go to University.

Ever.

It's suprisingly isolating. And, as I get more and more embedded in academia, the sense of isolation only increases. Nobody in my family has any clue what it is I do, and only a couple of people have an inkling why I do it.

My nephew turns 21 today and in a genuinely surprising turn, has decided to go to university. He got in to a university which I didn't have the grades for as an undergrad (to my chagrin!) but he got in, effectively, on a much lower offer because he's a "mature" student and has an NVQ (in "performance and excellence" - no comment) which is fairly arbirtrarily weighted to 3 or 4 A Levels.

He's a bright lad, always has been. But he's also completely unwilling to distinguish himself and deliberately buried his ability at school and habitually refuses to ask for help because he seems to view it as a sign of weakness. Add to that the fact his classmates are largely going to be beginning this year having been drilled through A Levels in Law, Sociology, English and similar, and he's going to be a huge disadvantage. He doesn't know how to write essays or handle reading independently. There will be support for him - but will he actually access it? I don't know.

I'm hovering between sending him reams of instructions and directions in how to actually navigate university, and trying to remember he needs to find his own way, and I don't know what is in his heart in terms of commitment, change from how he was when he was younger, and determination.

It's particularly hard that he has never consulted me or asked for any help or advice in applying, selecting, etc, to university. His mother and my brother seperated when he was 2 and I'm not a big part of his life, but I am here. At Christmas I said he could message me anytime if he needed any help and he said "what is it you actually do?" and I was like ".....I'm a lecturer in Sociology. The same discipline area you are going into".

Does he think I have nothing to offer or is this another example of his total unwillingness to actually call on people to help?

I'd love for him to succeed at university. I have this fantasy of us becoming closer as he goes through university and actually having a relationship.

I just want to feel some sort of connection to my family.

Being the only person to go to university, or show any sort of interest in it, makes me feel weird. Like I'm actually a changeling. And it makes me feel - wrongly, perhaps - that nobody in the family values what I do. Everyone respects hard work in my family, but I think there's a suspicion that academia is secretly a holiday. And then my Dad, for instance, seems to respond to that by continually emphasising how hard I work which in turn just makes me feel guilty for not working that hard.

Academia is intellectually and emotionally hard work. But compared to my various low grade jobs - shop work, childcare, cleaning - it is much less physically challenging. And physical hard work is really easy to understand. I can't and wouldn't suggest my fortnight of sitting in front of a computer with writers block, drinking cups of tea, is anywhere near comparable to the various labouring jobs most of my family do.

I think this could all be summed up as "I have a working-class chip on my shoulder and it's getting heavier with each passing year"

It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

I'm the man in the joke

43/52 - I am solipsistic

38/52 - Me

29/52 - Summer Slump

14/52 - Unproductive

9/52 - Strike

Annual Review of the Year - 2019 (15th edition)

(no subject)

Working to death.

Review of the Year - 2018 (14th edition)

Work Precarity

On being a first generation scholar

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December 2021

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