I just can't be fucking arsed any more.

[SmashedPumpkings]

It's a rainy Monday at the beginning of assessment and marking season, and I'm at a point in my life where flouncing off forever for an early retired filled with an absence of academic bullshit feels within reach.
No longer being fucking arsed with academic life seems like a perfectly natural reaction to this context.
But, still I need to be a little bit fucking arsed because I do actually need to do my job, if only with minimal effort and if only for a decade-ish.

My lack of arsed-ness is manifesting in several ways including, but not limited to:
> Not pursuing any new research avenues unless they are genuinely innovative, fascinating and/or disruptive. I have no fucks left to give for research which is safe and intending only incremental shifts.
> Not attending conferences or workshops unless there is a clear and direct benefit to me. I have no fucks left to give for hearing about other people's safe research which inevitably results in hardly-discernible incremental shifts.
> Only writing academic articles that excite me even if they are completely left-field from my core research area and not guaranteed 3/4*. I I have no fucks left to give for spending weeks agonising over writing articles that are dull but strategic.
> Putting only minimal effort into teaching such that I ensure the basics and foundations are sound while giving no attention to the singing and dancing add-ons because, shock horror, academia is not one long Tik Tok video. I have no fucks left to give for pedagogical practice which ignores the fundamentals of sound scholarship and assessment and, instead, focuses on shiny things in the name of some bullshit strategy.
> No longer answering stupid student questions. I have no fucks left to give for students who email with questions that have been answered both in person, in lecture materials and on Ultra sites.
> Completing my citizenship role to the absolute minimal standards and at a time which is convenient for me (barring meetings of course). I have no fucks left to give for roles which have minimal kudos attached, from which I get zero satisfaction and which I believe would be more effectively, and cheaply, done by a colleague on an administrator contract.

In short, I'm working to contract whereby I'm doing my job to an adequate quality but no more than that.
Though I'm still a decade away from leaving academia, I'm already beginning the process of winding down. In six or seven years I'll dispense completely with anything which is absolutely non-essential.

Thank you for giving me the time to vent this. For obvious reasons, I've name changed.

I wonder whether anyone else just can't be fucking arsed any more? And if so, how does your not arsed-ness manifest?

I've read this thread with interest from academia in Canada. Some things resonate, others not as much.

I don't have much to add but will say reducing the exposure to BS is crucial. It is so easy to get dragged down with nonsense that takes energy and passion away from research and teaching. It's a bit of an art avoiding it without coming across as a jerk though, at least for anyone who isn't a full professor with the protection that comes with that. I'm on a lower rung of the totem pole so have to appear eager and engaged while secretly rolling my eyes at most of it 😂

Hello in Canada 🇨🇦 👋

I don't think senior men worry about coming across as a bit of a jerk when they say "no" to everything though 😅 Women need to get comfortable also coming across this way. As PPs have said, it's not about being a dick to others, it's about self protection.

"Full professor" doesn't really have the same connotations and protections here in the UK.

Agree, @SmashedPumpkings, it's about self protection and preservation. The seniors (men and women in my experience) have no problem doing the minimum!

It's interesting reading about how PPs wrote about having to deal with student wellbeing. Is that common in the UK? Universities here are required to provide medical and mental health on-site to students, so there's a full team of counsellors and physicians who treat students. Faculty are not engaged in that sort of thing at all. I'd be uncomfortable talking to a student about that sort of thing.

Fucking hell no wonder academics get a bad press!

Just move into the private sector. Are you seriously going yo spend a DECADE treading water? Isn't that kind of sad?

Get om and do something different with your life. Academia doesn't even sound like the cushy number it once was now employers have become more chilled post covid

God I wish Full Professor meant something here. Means nothing now in terms of tenure, relief from arduous treadwater duties etc. Just been at conf in Europe with US academics and feeling it!

It depends on the academic, their relationship with the students and their admin role. Students will go to their tutor or another lecturer they're comfortable with when they first want to raise an issue. They can then be referred to both the NHS and the university wellbeing services but both are hopelessly underfunded.

I've known more than one academic end up in A&E with a student in crisis, and at least one other who rang the parent and kept the student in their office until the parent arrived to take over.

As you say, we are in no way trained for this sort of thing.

There isn't a private sector to "just move into" for social scientists. And certainly not one that's going to provide the salary, conditions and benefits of academia.

Academia might not be as cushy as it once was, but its a very nice place to cruise along under the radar for a decade until I check out.

Yes, it's very common. We are meant to be there to deal with academic struggles but these are so often wrapped up in personal struggles. So a student might come to see you ostensibly to say "I'm struggling with my deadlines, can you help me?" But they might be struggling with deadlines because they're going to/from parental home to deal with a terminally I'll parent.

So they disclose that to you. Then they start crying. You say sympathetic words. They cry more, they start to open up. And suddenly you're in a welfare situation that you've no training for and which is well beyod your job description.

As PP said, there are health and counselling services that we can direct students to. But we will very often the first point of contact for them accessing those services. Women bear the burden and brunt of this because we're seen as much more approachable and kind.

We have minimal training in dealing with these issues, and there's zero account taken of how distressing and triggering they can be for us, and how much this kind of work adds to our mental and emotional load.

and that exactly is the crux of it for me @SmashedPumpkings

it is triggering and distressing and i just simply don't want to do it - although i have to.

at the moment, i supervise a young man who as a serious MH condition and has suicidal ideation with a couple of attempts so far. Their ill health is such that their peers are distressed by it. We also work with a lot of dangerous equipment and chemicals. I suggested many times that part of the distress for them is also the lack of progress (because researching when you are unwell, off, if hard) and they should suspend studies until better. But no. They want to plough on. So every week, i have tears at project review, every month or so i have a call from them on my private number (which they all have due to field equipment safety) about how it s all to much and they want to end it all and stop being a burden. At this point i activate the crisis team, which goes fetch the student from the place they are, and i call the MH crisis team for couselling follow up. Pressing these buttons takes hours. The University will not force a stop for this person, regardless of how unwell they are. So we carry on... This is an extreme situation but it s not uncommon.

just thinking about it, i can feel my blood pressure and anxiety rising

We had a young man take his own life on our programme a couple of years ago. Not so young that he ended up leaving a wife and baby. It was very traumatic and distressing for his supervisor who he had seen a few days earlier. That member of staff resigned later that year.

@Marasme, that sounds incredibly challenging and I am sorry to hear you are having to deal with that.

What Marasme says is my experience too.

Academic tutors are meant to 'signpost' to wellbeing and mental health sevices, but students often want recognition of what they are going through, and to 'let the university know'. They don't want rapid-fire problem-solving. They want to talk for about half-an-hour to an hour about the range of things holding up their progress - and then they don't apply for deadline extensions etc.

I think they see lecturers and professors as being the institution. They know they can go to the doctor and also have some wellbeing support. But they want to be valued and recognised as they are, in all their messiness.

I do feel for them, but am occasionally struck by how my own lecturers will not have had so much disclosure. It must have made it easier to teach and research.

This year I have actively-planned for the last-minute meeting requests, but it just doesn't feel like a good use of my time, and won't be viewed as a positive in my annual performance review.

@Marasme I'm sorry (and stunned) you're dealing with that situation. Surely there's enough grounds for the student to be required to intermit under the institution's fitness to study procedure?

I may be wrong but they may not be able to. We have a student with a recently acquired chronic physical condition that more than meets the criteria to register as a disability. From an academic point of view, they need to take a year out, get on top of their health, rest and sort meds etc and then come back, but they are determined not to lose any tim. The parents are insistent that the university does X, Y and Z to help the student get through, none of which are possible in the university's regulations. Student also won't register with disability services because they aren't willing to face being disabled, which is of course very understandable on a human level but means they aren't entitled to things like extra time in exams or flexible deadlines.

It has been recommended that the student take a leave of absence but we can't force it.

Nowhere near as distressing as the MH situation outlined above of course.

with fitness to study, we can only make recommendations, but we cannot force a student to stop, unless they agree to do so or under extreme circumstances. Given that this student is adament that they want to stay on and continue, we must provide accommodations to make this happen - and given that 1) they will mask in order to convince review panels and 2) swear to me that failing or not completing will kill them... we have no option but to continue, whilst gently reascerting that gaining a phd is not a mark of someone s passion, brightness or commitment... if this student kills themseld / dies by suicide, i m genuinely not sure how i ll be able to keep going, especially when so much of what we do is bound in confidentiality - my group seems to think i m unaware of the student's MH and how it impacts them, and are angry that i don't just "kick him out" (their words)

i wish we had more robust processes - including holistic assessments of wellness and fitness to study - but we had a case recently where a student went against our unit for discrimination following them being removed from carying certain type of work after hours due to impossibility to make the work safe. Their case is that this decision is what lead to their unsuccessful submission and viva.

I'm surprised and saddened by what I'm reading and to what extent faculty are involved in these matters. My department once had a student who was facing some struggles in the program due to their mental health and once the situation become untenable, everything was managed by an external contact in the student affairs office. If a student said they would hurt themselves if they didn't finish the program, I would email student affairs and they would take over since it's not appropriate for me to address that sort of comment. I'm totally clueless about this, but are there not faculty associations? I think part of the reason these policies and frameworks exist in Canada/US is to protect faculty and make clear to the university they cannot expect faculty to be counsellors and life coaches to unwell students.

@HighlandsExpat yes of course there's all sorts of support they get signposted to but those support roles and safeguarding roles don't take on any academic support so they are still there and if they refuse a leave of absence then what do you do? Have you read the thread?

This is also a PhD student, so a very different relationship. I really feel for you Marasme. My phd students have had their struggles but nothing like this; how awful for everyone in the group

@HighlandsExpat i could speak to the union i guess but not sure what they would do... and whatever they would do, i suspect would harm the student by removing me from their support network (because even though i don t really want to, i m the person they call when they are really not well).

To me, it brings up the question of whether PhD studies are fit for purpose as they are: the timeline, the pressures, the financial burden, the angst of many of the students, and the examination schedule based on a single exit assessment (we do not do MPhil transitions here, a bit issue for me).

i ve had hopeless students graduate with what i felt was an undeserved doctorate thanks to very lenient examiners (i was told off for telling the student that i would not pass their thesis before submission agInst my advice), and i had amazing thinkers/scholars face really tough viva, landing them unfair rewrite periods which blighted their entry into the working world.

basically, it s not a fair process. The students know this and we know this.

I'm really sorry to hear that you're in such a difficult position, @Marasme, too, and completely agree that there are no simple solutions. I have so much sympathy for students with mental health issues - my own was rocky during my PhD, and I think it is quite a difficult process for anyone prone to anxiety - but I think the pressure that is being put on university staff, and particularly academic staff with no particular training or expertise, to support increasingly complex student groups is unsustainable. I really despaired when I read the judgement in the recent case against the University of Bristol. Again, I feel immense sympathy for her poor parents but it just isn't reasonable to expect university staff to know and anticipate exactly how to handle someone in a mental health crisis at all times, especially as all the other services that should be supporting young adults are failing.

Your ignorant and rude response brings nothing to the conversation.

and right on cue... my internal REF workload has landed, ona bank holiday Monday. Thousands of entries on a spreadsheet, with loads of redundancies, to sift through and "grade". Total bullshit.

I don’t think it’s safe or appropriate for faculty to get involved in students lives like this. It’s getting into duel roles which is always discouraged in mental health care.

Social sciences at a post-1992 here and I agree with every word you have said.

i don't disagree - and i don't want to be trained into it either - but I think what you fail to appreciate here is that we are the first point of contact rather than the provider of MH counselling. We are the sign-posters. The person who sees them everyday / every week. And I don't know many academics who have been so cold to refuse to listen to a student in distress. I also know very few students who felt that their struggle was "valid" enough to go and seek counselling resources direct without their supervisor ever being looped in somehow.