Is this it... ?

[Excitingnewusername]

Anyone else struggling with (not exactly disillusionment... disappointment...?) this feeling at the moment?

It has taken me a long hard struggle to get a permenant position, so my eyes were wide open coming in as I've been plugging away for years at all levels of teaching, research, and admin (for well over a decade), but after the initial relief and whilst knowing how lucky I am (in a field where jobs are very few and far between), I've hit a bit of a trench of dispondency. Think I may be struggling to adapt to permenance after so many years of casualised work and that's not helping me.

Nothing works as it should, we're constantly in emergency mode and changes introduced from on high never help but always harm, students are really struggling and a lot of effort is producing poor results for them, engagement from students and staff is poor at every event, colleagues are struggling and burnt out, others are piss takers who ignore important tasks so others have to firefight, and I'm constantly feeling like I can never do a good enough job at any of my tasks as there is just too much to do and not enough mental space for it all. I've tried to lower my standards and expectations but that feels like a betrayal of all the effort I put in to get here (rather than a realistic work to pay ratio for eg).

Not sure what I want from this post 🤔 misery loves company maybe ...? 🙄. Or some tips on how to keep grinding away with no end in sight (which is a good thing).

Sorry, can only offer miserable company!

Yep, that’s basically it, I’m afraid. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but it’s the reality, and there’s no prospect of it getting any better (and it can definitely get worse - just wait till you’re a HoD!). You need to find strategies to deal with that and give less of a shit. If you find out how to do that, though, let me know! My New Year resolution/ strategy is to have hobbies and make sure I’m doing them at least three times a week so at least some evenings and weekends are free from work.

Miserable company happily accepted (which doesn't feel like it makes much sense).

I simultaneously want to give less of a shit, and not give less of a shit as then why fucking bother! (apart from the pay and pension, God I love a regular pay cheque!!!) 😂

My hobbies have definitely slipped, as they are all creative and I find work saps a lot of my creative energy. I definitely need to prioritise spending time with non-academic friends, and doing things like going to the cinema where work talk and thinking can't happen. Two academic (no kids) household so work can become life far too easily.

After 20 years in various academic posts and holding various roles I've lately become far more protective of my health and wellbeing and that has meant trying not to give a shit about the extraneous rubbish. So not getting wound up by institutional directives and internal department politics but still trying to take pleasure in the bits of the job that's OK. This is getting increasingly difficult as HE struggles with financial instability and exponentially needy students.

@damekindness any tips for not getting (too) wound up by all the should be extraneous stuff? I was doing OK at that, by focusing on teaching and research but now have several big admin hats to wear at once (as a new person, with no mentoring).

Exponentially needy students - yes! Absolutely exhausting, especially when also combined with a large number who never turn up, don't reply to attempts to contact, and then expect to be able to pass their coursework by demanding that we make up the lost effort for them (which I don't, but then you get the angry emails). The difference between the most and least competent students is now vast and makes teaching so much harder, and the numbers shoved into the classroom, often with unmet additional needs, makes teaching without actual teacher training increasingly hard.

Trying to get anything done just feels so frustrating, you must evidence change and progress and impact but no money, no time, noone able to take up things you offer or help to solve problems.

In the last two years things have got so much worse at our place. Nothing works. No infrastructure such as cafes etc. Barely any admin support. Students have a lot of issues. Permanent crisis mode and reinventing the wheel. Not enough students...so endless course cuts, redundancies. Am curious though - my place is non RG and serves quite a poorly equipped student body. Is it also the same in more robust and thriving HE institutions?

Unfortunately my top tip is to avoid admin roles as far as possible! I had a few years when I juggled several and it made me unwell and I needed to spend time repairing various relationships after I stood down. Luckily I think I'm viewed as having 'Done my Bit' and am heading towards at least thinking about retirement in the next five years - so am able to swerve any big asks at least for a while.

Looking back I think I needed not to make perfect the enemy of good and have an outlet. I forgot that there was any space between working and sleeping that could be filled with something else equally absorbing (or mindless!)

Thank you @damekindness@damekindness!

@tizalinatuna I'm at an often top ten, but everyone I know across many different and differently ranked institutions seem to be echoing exactly the same experience.

@tizalinatuna I’m in STEM at a RG (not Oxbridge or London) and I don’t recognise your picture, no. We never go to clearing, aiming to increase student nos by 30% over five years (lecture theatres being built now). Everything works ok. Massive recruitment drive for perm
positions

I don’t Think this is because of my university so much as because I am in STEM, though.

@tizalinatuna I think we could work at the same institution!

Also at an RG though in a PS role. The sector is in crisis, projection of half of English universities to be in financial deficit by 24/25. Real risk of a big name going bankrupt unless something changes in the HE funding model. However, in my organisation the leads (imo) do genuinely care about staff welfare and student support and success, and are doing what they can on both whilst trying to keep the lights on.

This really sums up the problem in the sector. Since the removal of caps, RG are over-recruiting which is causing redundancies and closure of whole departments in post-92 and other non-RG universities. It's also triggering the issues of mixed student cohorts as they have often changed entry tariffs to scoop up more students
If the cap is reintroduced by the new government, the decline of HE will be stopped - but the RG places that invested heavily in new infrastructure will be left with big debts.

To go back to the OP, I think it's so difficult if you are in an admin role. I am and on the one hand I want to throw all my energy at it because we need to change on many levels, but on the other the organisation I'm trying to save might make me redundant next year so 🤷
Until we have more stability and investment, it really is fire fighting. The only place where long-term thinking is going on is in relation to AI

IME the issues are now hitting (or in some cases beginning to hit) many RG STEM departments too.

Think I may be struggling to adapt to permenance after so many years of casualised work and that's not helping me.

I think there might be an element of it OP. For me there was - as a precarious lecturer/researcher all I cared about was whatever was the most time-efficient way of adding a line to my CV that could land me a permanent job. Adjusting to thinking in a more medium- and long-term way took a while. This means that e.g. you might have a year where you feel you haven't done much research because you haven't published any new articles... but maybe you are working on applying for a mega grant that will yield fruit in the coming years.

The admin jobs I can imagine might get better as you learn the ropes - i.e. how to do them, but also what's the minimum you can get away with, and which jobs you're happy doing the minimum in and which others you might want to put more effort in because they help your promotion, or you're personally invested in them, etc.

However I think the general outlook for academia is bleak. I am privileged that I am in a RG university which is intending to expand, however the last few years I've been hit by the realization that, because of the glacial pace academia movess at, things are probably not going to start changing substantially before I retire (I am now in my early 40s). I think we are at a point that many and many more colleagues are buying into the corporatization and managerialisation of HE (which can actually be a survival strategy - I don't blame them). I mean for example situations where management puts increased pressure on us to be available for students 24/7, and regular colleagues embrace this enthusiastically and even pressure or blackmail the rest of us into replying to student e-mails during holidays because "they are anxious and their MH is suffering" or whatever.

Still, I sometimes think that being paid to engage in the (obscure) research that I do is quite miraculous, and I try to protect and enjoy those moments.

@aridapricot thank you! I hope the admin side becomes easier, officially my 3 (no wait... 4... maybe 5...) admin roles are interrelated, and that should make them easier in the long term, but short term it's a lot to get my head around and I'm not a meetings and committees type academic.

You are absolutely right that I'm still in the get the line on the CV mode and it's not necessary or sustainable long term, (partly as I'm trying to turn probation work into promotion as early 40s and need to make up the lost years of earnings).

Ive tried to find resources for supporting the shift, but couldn't find anything.

Will book a chat with my line manager I think to have a proper chat about getting better at the admin stuff and learning to calm the fuck down. They are very supportive luckily.

Hi OP,
If I am allowed to say something else about admin roles (speaking as someone who has done a range of jobs, often the least rewarding/the ones no one wanted):
It is worth thinking "laterally" to find people who can support you in your roles. It might be that your HoD/line manager is absolutely brilliant and on top of everything, but I have often found that HoDs do not fully understand what many roles entail and how much work they require. In my place many admin roles within a department exist horizontally as well as vertically so to speak - you are research convenor in your department, you go to meetings with other research convenors led by the College's research convenor, and in these a number of directives and obligations are issued to research convenors that HoDs might or might not be fully aware of. Sometimes HoDs can be massively out of touch (and I say this as a current HoD).
Often the person who will have the most insight into the role will be someone who is very experienced at it but maybe in another department. Administrators have also tended to be extremely helpful to me. In my example above for example it would be the research administrator at College level - someone who is not directly involved in doing the job but has maybe been in post for years and has seen dozens of people doing the role in different departments and has an idea of what works and what doesn't. Another example is that early in my career I was made Study Abroad convenor, and I had a question about who was responsible for a specific thing that no one was able to answer - my then HoD and the Study Abroad Office had me going round in circles for a while, shifting responsibility to each other, and I was only able to make progress when I talked to a colleague who had been doing the same role in another department and explained to me how things worked.
I think it is also easy to assume that a university's administration will be some kind of Kafkaesque, extremely rational machine, where every job and process is perfectly defined. That's not always the case. Just because a certain role has alway been done in a certain way in your department, that doesn't mean it's the only or the right way to do it. Surely there will be jobs which must be done in a certain way and there isn't much scope for flexibility (for example everything to do with exams and grades, which call for standardization across the institution), but that's not always the case. You might find that a predecessor did an inordinate amount of work but if you talk to colleagues in other departments you might discover that there are ways of ticking the boxes without creating so much work for yourself.

Thank you @aridapricot for taking the time to write such a helpful response! Will absolutely try to follow it as I navigate the joys of admin roles.

Its absolutely the case that my dept takes the 'instant expert and authority' in any role you take on (where does this assumption come from with groups of people who should know better?!) and that's often echoed in bouncing around people to try to get a straight answer on anything. It's almost like a settling in and getting to know a place time is needed... 🤔

Today's revelation!

I worked 9 till 5. Checked my emails just once, at the end of the day, didnt feel completely overwhelmed, managed some housework, have prepared our evening meal for when DH gets home. There's still work to do, but there always will be, and that's not a reason to work until knackered.

I'm RG and STEM. We have increasing student numbers and increasing research staff. Years of under investment have left us with poor infrastructure, not enough lecture theatres, not enough teaching or research labs and struggling to manage classes of 400. Also managing teaching large MSc classes where many students have very poor English. It all feels very unsustainable, despite excellent research and a real commitment to the students at the coalface.

Feeling this too! For those who are looking to get out, what are you thinking of doing?

I suppose I am thinking about industry. CROs. Feels like I would be selling my soul though.