How are we all managing?

[ItalianHat]

It's the end of a 2nd week of teaching for me. Online is working OK - the students are saying they're already very tired though! I think it's about switching from the complete lack of structure of lockdown (for them - I was pretty busy!) back to timetables and starting seminars at 9am and so on.

And today's hollow laugh was an email from our IT managers which included the statement that: "IT staff are working into the evenings and at weekends to overcome the backlog of requests"

Tiny violins, please ...

It's of a level of clodhoppery that rivals an email sent to us from the teaching administrative staff manager in the June exams period, which told us that academic staff would have to do some time-consuming admin task, because professional staff "did not have space in their workloads."

I mean, I know everyone's working over & above, but why is it the academic staff who have to applaud everybody else (and do parts of their work for them), when we routinely work evenings & weekends.

Grrrrr.

But other than that - it's nice working with the students again, although online can be frustrating at times. However, I don't think it'd be any more frustrating than masked & at 2m distance, trying to run a seminar with desks & seats set out in socially-distanced rows.

That really is unbelievable @GCAcademic .
But sadly it's actually all too believable.
I hope you've eagerly signed up!

Oh! We’ve got asked that too. Although later emails made me wonder if they were really going for postgrads? As they want people preferably full time but you could do some half days if you wanted time for research. Um, teaching and marking anyone? But even our postgrads are doing teaching/marking. I have no idea who they think has the space to drop their duties full time for this. Professional services is overworked too.

Wow, this is so unbelievable that they think that staff aren’t stretched enough as it is. As if they’d want to do this on top of everything else.

I’m a senior lecturer at a Russell group uni (social sciences). I need some encouragement!!

I teach on 4 courses this semester and still have lots of sessions to record and post. I have quite a few PhD, masters and undergrad students. Also three kids at home, DH who has just been made redundant, major building work at home etc etc.

Everyone just seems to want something from me - more teaching, more research (always), more help at home, more money, more everything. I am failing at it all. I genuinely wish it was me that was being made redundant (which may come true as my Uni constantly implies that redundancies are coming - already has voluntary redundancy scheme). Does anyone have any suggestions of how to improve at it all or at least hold it together?

@Redundancygirl ...I'm working on a healthy attitude of fuck it, fuck that and fuck off at the moment. I'm totally sick of other people's inability to come up with anything useful when they're paid at least triple my salary. If it doesn't help me or my students,I'm ignoring it. Im not coming to your pointless meetings. Nope,I won't be taking on extra stuff. I will be ignoring your useless protocols that make no sense and don't protect me or my students and I'll do what keeps me and my team sane.

Frankly, it amazes me what other people seem to get away with so I will channel some of that for self preservation.

@Redundancygirl I feel so similar. I'm at the end of my tether this week. I hate online teaching, it's soul destroying. I feel like I haven't got anywhere with research. I had a meeting with a colleague this week to write a paper and they basically said all my ideas were a waste of time. Said colleague has form for this and waits until you've honed an entire paper and then will decide it's something they want to be involved in, and I'm tied in with working with them.but it's a gamble as if I work on a paper and they still say no then they won't allow me to submit. So I'm feeling crap about research. The pastoral side is now starting to heat up with students having meltdowns left right and centre. I'm being hounded to redevelop and remarket curriculum in new catchy ways as student numbers are low. And what I don't get is how others seem to have so much time, like how are they doing that? I try to ring fence time but with school runs and kids at home I just have no time for anything. I've been searching jobs outside academia this week. I'm just done!