Cannot face going back to academic role

[Marasme]

I am a prof at a RG uni, STEM subject. I worked through to the 23rd to "catch up" before finally switching everything off. This was a long awaited break following the semester of hell, and no holidays last summer.

I opened the email yesterday and got totally overwhelmed by the amount of work hiding in my inbox. Ten years ago, I would have happily worked on pet projects during the break, but this has massively changed over the last 3 or 4 years. I cannot complain - my group publishes well, I have more than enough funding.

I just can't face going back. It could be burn out, or just falling out of love with the job and the workload, especially now that the nice parts have vanished (conferences, workshops). My uni has also done some dodgy financial moves that restricts us from spending any discretionary money toward CPD or conferences (unless from grants).

DH suggests that I just pack it in a retrain in sthg else. I don't like the idea of retraining. I am sitting on an academic job offer elsewhere (not UK) which i haven't actioned just because it would mean disrupting DH s career and DC10 and DC13 too much.

Am also Prof at RG Uni and recognise the urge to run away. I have planned my leaving party plenty of times! What keeps me in the job for now is the fact that I have DC of a similar age to you and I can't face the thought of retraining/financial disruption while they are going through teenage years/university. I also want to accrue more pension.

I agree with those who suggest a fallow year or two to regroup. What has worked for me is:

• blanket policy to say no to everything that I don't HAVE to do (for a while)
• no email on phone
• stopping working evenings and weekends
• religiously taking all my holiday

Of course you feel burnt out and fed up if you didn't have a break last summer - the last couple of years have been dreadful and I find that in a senior role there is also the added pressure to support everybody else and bring positive energy to encounters where there is none. Exhausting!

@parietal

Hi Marasme

I'm just here to express sympathy from a similar position - Prof leading a science group at an RG uni etc.

In the last year, I've cut back my group size - I'm refusing to consider any new PhD students for next year because I've already got 4, and I'm taking fewer MSc students too. I reckon I'd rather do slow-science than burn out.

are there no sabbatical options at all where you are? that seems unusual & might be worth kicking up a fuss about. even an 'unofficial sabbatical' can be a good way to get a break from committees etc for a term. Or can you use the job offer from overseas as an argument for why you need a break & a sabbatical in the UK?

I need to have a chat with my HoD and test the waters. He has form for being dismissive and saying whatever you want to hear as long as you get out of his office fast.

A sabbatical would be great - alas, it's not really a thing unless i got a sort of secondment somewhere (e.g. government or industry - neither appeal unless i can cull half of my group).

I would love to have the negociating know how to use my job offer to get something that makes the current set up liveable in the short to medium term - i got warned against doing this by a female colleague who tried unsuccessfully (she then moved uni), but would love to be able to be transparent about where I am in my head with them.

I ll try to fix a time in the diary to speak to them this months. The offer expires in April so i need to crack on...

I would love to have the negociating know how to use my job offer to get something that makes the current set up liveable in the short to medium term - i got warned against doing this by a female colleague who tried unsuccessfully (she then moved uni)

Do you have a senior colleague from a different university or a different department in your own university that could support with this?

Negotiation is quite field dependent so good to talk to somebody from the field or a nearby area. In my own area it would be unusual not to be able to use an external offer for some kind of leverage.

Those who have been in a similar position are men - all but one negociated more money (this is not at the top of my list), and the one got some random leadership title. I don't know any senior women who have played the alternative offer card, except my unlucky friend.

In my network, the understanding is that there was time when a job offer opened a process of negotiation and then a few years ago it seems virtually all SMTs adopted a position: if you want to go, - go, nothing is stopping you. I haven't heard of negotiating salary, rank or conditions in the recent years.

I have both dealt with retention negotiations and myself received retention offers. It still happens, at least in some fields.

I have also adopted a hard line & not offered any retention package where we were happy to let the people go or we felt the offer was not comparable (which includes several cases of overseas offers, so perhaps OP's situation).

I don't think OP has much to lose by discussing possible retention offers but it would be good to get some input from people in the field. Male v female shouldn't matter & if it does that could be a card to play in itself.

@Marasme

Those who have been in a similar position are men - all but one negociated more money (this is not at the top of my list), and the one got some random leadership title. I don't know any senior women who have played the alternative offer card, except my unlucky friend.

I am in very senior management, and alternative offers don't wash with us at all - we just let the person go, natural turnover. Unless they are bringing in actual millions.

I had another offer and asked my current employer to promote me and match the salary. I told them I really wanted to stay but they had to make it worth my while. I was completely honest and it worked. You always run the risk that they won't negotiate with you but then you know where you stand at least and probably need to leave anyway!

I do know that the pressures on many academics are preposterous and awful so I really do not want to dismiss anything that has been said here.

But I do wonder whether there is a tendency within the type of person who becomes an academic to also put enormous pressure on themselves? I work in a top 30 university (not Russell Group). My career is moving very slowly and I would class myself as extremely mediocre. I struggle with that psychologically every day as it is associated with quite painful feelings of inadequacy and shame. That's the bad news.

However, I do also know that I have a fairly secure and reasonably well-paid job, I get to research topics of my choice that I find fascinating, I do quite a bit of impact and external engagement work where I enjoy sharing my findings with non-academics, and I have an enormous amount of autonomy and flexibility compared to many people in more corporate jobs. I also made a decision some time ago that I would work 'normal-ish' office hours around the kids and I rarely work at weekends (apart from last year when I was writing a book and worked a lot).

So ... I guess for me I have to balance the knowledge that I will never be in the premier league of academics which is undoubtedly rather painful but that on the other hand, there's still a lot that's good about the job. I recognize that I can't compete with other academics who are prepared to work much harder and longer hours (and are quite simply better at it than me). But I am still in the game.

I know that might not be possible in other disciplines or indeed remotely desirable for high-fliers but ... are there options? Which inevitably involve certain forms of compromise? Or am I being totally naive?

good points @generaljake.

I do try to practice gratefulness - being tenured and secure is great, but the workload is just infernal.

It would help if that workload was spent on research, grants, papers, KE, or even teaching, but no... all sucked in admin, more admin, pastoral work and forever marking.

The KPI culture does not help, when you need to bring in big grants every year to keep your lab space.

@marasme - I totally get that.

I would be the first to admit that I am in a discipline where the pressures are quite different, undoubtedly, and perhaps not as intense, especially at my level and in my institution. There are pressures to publish and to secure big grants etc etc but very few people in my discipline manage the latter and it's not always necessary to conduct research. And although my publication record is embarrassingly bad I compensate a bit with impact work and am unlikely to lose my job - they need me too much at the moment for teaching etc.

So I really do know that it must be much more difficult for you. I don't even think you should try to practice gratefulness if it's just really shit.

On a more general point though I do think that academics are often highly competitive and many are prepared to work a lot.

That does inevitably make things more challenging for those of us who can't or won't do the same, as it sets an unachievable standard! This clearly is not all about kids but I think it's significant that very few senior women I know of have more than one, and many have none.

In my discipline the research superstars (often, men) also tend to be highly effective at getting out of the admin, pastoral work, marking etc - or just do a really bad job of it.

Grr. Good luck though. Those of you who are busting it have my sincere admiration for what it's worth (and a bit of envy)

there is something to be said about doing a bad job!
more of this in 2022

How are you doing @Marasme? xx

well... it s been brutal so far :/ - more of the same, as per 2021. All resolutions to save time for self paused thanks to some admin drama cluster fucks. Every colleague i speak to is demotivated / depressed / not coping - there is very little positive "team talk" left and this makes the whole job worst in many ways.

big big reservations on whether i ll be able to sustain this, especially with DH harping at me to "go find another job".

I am a Prof, in the Humanities field though, so very different opportunities for funding and a very different nature of research. Loved this thread, and commiserate with fellow sufferers. With restructuring which seems to have happened UK-wide in all institutions, admin has been annihilated. With no admin support, we just absorb all admin and above, and the expectation is, also one that we have of ourselves, is that you can still go on and still do great research, because we are here for it, right? Admin is not a job (in my feeling of it), I am doing it because I have to, but my real job is research, which I do in the nights, weekends, holidays, etc. So basically we absorb increasing admin without adjusting our expectations. Nor that we can, try not having publications...

HR is ALWAYS crap (why?) So called support services are actually obstructive.*

@microbius are you me? I'm probably older than most of you - twenty years a professor now quite senior. I made a deliberate decision in the most recent job move I made (about 8 years ago) to step off the HoD -> Head of School - > PVC treadmill, and went somewhere where I could focus on research & teaching.

I'm in the humanities & more successful than most in getting external funding, but I have very little time for research because there is absolutely NO admin support for research, and a diminishing amount for teaching-related admin. A message went round about a task that admin colleagues usually do around marking, telling us that we had to do it because admin colleagues "had no space in their workloads."

I just had to laugh because otherwise I get impotently furious.

I'm maybe 4 or 5 years off official retirement age, although I think I'd like to keep working till I'm 70, and the pandemic has made me think about retiring earlier (although it's hard to afford as a single woman), but I figure I'd be retiring so I could do my research, so they may as well pay me my nice professorial salary and I'll start to let go from running things.

I think I'm suffering from 35 years of overwork. As I age, it's starting to catch up with me, even though I'm extremely fit & active.

That does inevitably make things more challenging for those of us who can't or won't do the same, as it sets an unachievable standard! This clearly is not all about kids but I think it's significant that very few senior women I know of have more than one, and many have none

I'm a senior woman with no children - but please be careful about assuming that being childless is an advantage. It is a huge sacrifice we make, which men of a similar level of success rarely (if ever) have to make. They generally have wives who support their careers in material & emotional ways.

I've done it all on my own and I went through very dark dark times in my late 30s /40s - single, childless. Unpartnerable really because I was too clever, independent, too high-achieving for a woman seeking a heterosexual relationship - if I were a man, I would have had women at my feet, but the reverse doesn't generally happen for women of my generation.

You're not doing it, I know, but I do get a bit sick of the sneering subtext in "It's OK for you, you can have this successful career because you don't have children" I'm clearly oversensitive . It's hard, in different ways. And hard also because while women can complain, and get support for having children, and that family & caring load recognised, I feel I sound like an incompetent & failed human being by saying "I'm single, I have no material, domestic, or emotional support, and that is hard." Who says that? No-one ... because it's to admit a kind of failure.

But it does make the senior roles really quite difficult. No-one at home to listen to you, support you, or (lovingly) challenge you (assuming a good marriage of course!)

Ugh rant over - I am procrastinating on finishing my marking and doing the weekly shopping.

Oh goodness @lachanticleer - I am so sorry if what I said sounded like that. Very clumsily worded if so. It’s really not what I meant. I was just suggesting that any or all of us who work certain patterns set a standard for others, inadvertently. But actually after i wrote that post I reflected on it and realised I was slightly missing the point. Anyway the main point here is that in mentioning that many senior women in my field don’t have kids, my intention was not to suggest that therefore they had no difficulties in their lives or careers. Not at all.

I think I'm suffering from 35 years of overwork. As I age, it's starting to catch up with me, even though I'm extremely fit & active.

This resonated. Though not childless mine are grown and gone and the expectation is that I have now got unlimited time to totally devote to my academic role. The problem is that my stamina is not what it was and despite lots of exercise/keeping fit ( because I need to keep well and working to statutory pension age rather than for its inherent pleasure)

I absolutely understand younger colleagues difficulties with childcare etc - been there. I just wish there was more empathy around older workers

I'm a senior woman with no children - but please be careful about assuming that being childless is an advantage.

This really resonated with me. (nb none of the following is aimed at anyone in this thread.) There's often a sense that childless senior woman have somehow 'cheated our way to success', whereas the same doesn't seem to apply to childless men, or men with stay at home partners.

My personal situation is very different; I've in a long-term relationship with another academic and have never wanted children. However we work in different cities and have long commutes, which would have made having children difficult.

I get very irritated that men can use 'I have children' as a reason for not doing things, but other 'life situations' (commuting, elder care,...) don't get similar consideration. My particular pet hate is men who don't do things that are inaccurably their job because 'I'm on paternity leave', when in fact i) they haven't officially taken paternity leave and ii) it's 'business as usual' for their research.

I think I'm suffering from 35 years of overwork. As I age, it's starting to catch up with me, even though I'm extremely fit & active.

that s my worry @LaChanticleer - i m not super fit and definitely not active, and really concerned that i m burning out faster and faster every year, and thatbi have spent all my "resilience capital".

after a day which feelsnlike hard battle, i am trying hard to not open a bottle of wine (we stopped drinking during the week, as we were forming bad habits) and have zero headspace or motivation for "me" (even for sedentary creative activity, let alone being active).

There's often a sense that childless senior woman have somehow 'cheated our way to success', whereas the same doesn't seem to apply to childless men, or men with stay at home partners.

Yes, yes, yes! You put that really well @ehtelp Far better than I've ever been able to, so thank you.

And @generaljake you didn't offend or upset me. I know you weren't suggesting that women without children had it easy. But my experience was when I was in my 30s and 40s that I was the constant recipient of comments about my success - well of course it's easy for you, you don't have children blah blah blah. So I'm a bit sensitive to this!

And your description of it as "cheating" @ehtelp is apposite.

But I think it's also that clever successful women are just not liked. Look at the thrashing I've received on another thread in this section of MN. How dare I describe myself as a "senior professor"? Apparently I'm terrible at my job, because I'm having a bit of a moan about my students' tendency to treat me like their personal secretary or their mother.

@Marasme , over various lockdowns, I started to do a lot more physical exercise. Going to the gym, or running, or working out with a trainer in the park, over the last 2 years has kept me sane. I've told my HoD that I'll be prioritising this, even during supposedly "working hours" - I get my work done, and training really hard at the gym 3 times a week helps me to do that.

that other student thread is a bit crazy - but demonstrates neatly that point - a big issue with overt acknowledgement of seniority, over a context of gross misunderstanding of what the job is and how it's funded.

I need a kick up the arse to get to the gym. Living in the suburbs has made it all worst. Noone around and no gym either. Working from home has been a killer.

For me, the transformative thing was signing up to a gym that offered a couple of free PT sessions. I really enjoyed them, and 4 years later, it's changed my life. I feel on my feet with my PT - he's fantastic, and I really get on with his wife, too, so I have a gym buddy. It's a couple of sessions a week, and I forgo a cleaner to afford it, but it's 2 hours when the only responsibility I have is to manage 50 burpees or a heavy deadlift, or whatever. It's become essential.

But I've always been active - never a sports player, but I did aerobics in the 80s, and so on. Just never in such a focused way as now.

Is the university gym a possibility?

I now rarely go in the city as WFH is the new norm for us all and for the foreseeable future.
Uni gym is full of students and not many staff venture there ever, for classes or machines.

Maybe getting a PT - i am very resistant to coaching, my mind fights again everything i don t want to do. We have a peloton, and the motivational speeches of the trainers just don t work for me. Feels like i am totally uncoachable :/

I am trying to go back dancing - main struggle is finding a partner and a class (all stopped with covid), but hopefully in the next few months!

I hope you can do that @Marasme I find exercise essential for being able to function in every other aspect of life (and I do ballet & contemporary dance - keeps me a bit calmer). We're teaching in person, so I do get out of the house.

I find if I put in all my exercise classes/training sessions fist, then I work around them.

RE the coaching thing: that's interesting - I find that what I enjoy about being taught is - I love learning, and also for an hour or so each day, I can totally give up responsibility for anything but doing what I'm told as well as I can. (One trainer said I'm easy to train: "I just have to pull your cord and you go!")

The rest of my life is filled with responsibilities & obligations to others, and sometimes - like you - I feel everyone wants a piece of me. My students want to suck my blood, the university wants my very existence ...

So these hours when someone else tells me what to do, and the doing of it is either harmonious movement to beautiful music, or focus on intense fitness (I'm fitter than most of my undergrads) - it's actually really refreshing & releasing.