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?

In the last few years, I have had an increasing number of students who are clearly not in a position where studying full-time is an option, yet they insist on ploughing on instead of taking a one- (or more) year break. As some posters above has said, it is absolutely true that there is mental health support from professionals (but they too seem incredibly overstretched), but academic and administrative involvement is needed too - for example, a student say fails to submit all of their mid-term assignments, goes missing, after several attempts you manage to track them down, get them to talk to counselling services, you agree on a revised submission timeline, then the new deadline arrives and nothing is submitted and it all starts again, and then again. I do understand that sometimes there are student loan/finance implications, but it is sometimes extremely conflicting to witness the impact that a growing number of such cases has on an increasingly overworked workforce. As someone has suggested above, the roles at the coalface (e.g. exam convenor, programme convenor) tend to fall disproportionately on female academics, while male colleagues often brag about how kind and supportive their department is without them personally offering one minute of their time to deal with this.

@aridapricot absolutely agree. A significant and ever increasing proportion of my time is spent chasing up students who are struggling (mentally and financially and all points in between ) just to get them to engage with me, explain what their issues are so that I can signpost them to our beleaguered student services.

It's by no means all of the students but 10% of them take up 90% of my time because that 10% have such complex and difficult issues. That means the 90% have much less of my time to support them in their studies.

When the staff student ratio is optimal it's just manageable. However, with recruitment freezes and/or redundancies I'm constantly afraid I'll feel responsible if anything happens to one of my personal students.

I agree completely. But its unavoidable.

Let's say a student emailed you to say "Can I see you in your office hours? I'm struggling to keep up with readings on your module and I'd like your advice on how to prioritise ready for my assessment"

You agree because its your job to provide academic support.

The student comes to your office, and tells you they're struggling with keeping up because (to take some examples I've run into over the last couple of years): they're in an abusive relationship, or because they're traveling back and forth to their parents' house each week because their dad's terminally ill, or because they've decided to go to the police about historic sex abuse, or because their housemate raped them on a night out, or because they're pregnant and terrified to tell their strict Muslim family, or because they're trying to keep their alcohol addiction under control, or because they constantly think about killing themselves etc.

What do you do? In that moment, I mean. You can't say "Nope, I can't listen to this. This is beyond my job description and not something I'm trained for. This is risking a dual role which is inappropriate".
You have to listen, to make the right noises. Fair enough, you then direct them on to an appropriate service but not before they've unloaded and wedged their problems in your head.

Now imagine that happening multiple times throughout the academic year with different students, with different problems. Each time, you listen as they unload and wedge their problems in your head before you redirect them.
Now imagine those students think you're a nice person because you acted like a human when they unloaded. So they come back to you ostensibly about an academic issue, but the academic issue is always rooted in their personal troubles which, again, they unload and wedge in your head.

Now imagine some of those students drop off the radar and stop attending compulsory classes. So the department wants to follow them up and get them to engage. Let's say a couple of them are your personal tutees, so its your job to get them re-engaged which inevitably involves retouching on all the personal problems that made them disengage in the first place.

So, yes, it absolutely is inappropriate but unavoidable.

@SmashedPumpkings
"What do you do? In that moment, I mean. You can't say "Nope, I can't listen to this. This is beyond my job description and not something I'm trained for. This is risking a dual role which is inappropriate"."
Actually I was working in a health/ social care related role where we routinely stopped people disclosing/ giving details of certain things - mostly because of legal ramifications, but also due to training/ safety reasons. We absolutely would stop them and say, in a kind/ appropriate way, 'We have specialists who are much more trained and expert in this area than me, and its such a significant thing you went through, you need a safe space and time to discuss this properly, to do yourself justice...'

Similarly, if you started to disclose details personal issues to a clinical supervisor, they would kindly direct you to the right forum because of duel role issues.

A good therapist would contain a client's urge to spill everything in first sessions and do some kind of safety plan before going in depth into any trauma. Would also have strict boundaries around topics if anything is subject to a trial...

So basically, yes I would say something along those lines to a student, in the kindest way possible. Especially if I thought some of the topics you mentioned were involved....

It would be to protect the student before protecting me actually. Imagine you are an 18 year old who broke down in front of a lecturer in their office and disclosed a rape. Its not a safe space to disclose, and you would realise that - maybe they didn't react in a way you wanted them to. Maybe you are worried who they will tell - none of this will be explained because there is no confidentiality agreement you go through before chatting to a lecturer in their office hours. They also have power over you, and mark your work. It could make you feel worse, and more ashamed and anxious than you did before.

Obviously it's important to know for safeguarding and signposting reasons whether there are issues. But yeah I can't see how listening to details of students' trauma is safe.

Let's be honest. The majority of academics would have their eyes very widely opened by working in industry, and would not be able to cope with the pressures of a "real world" job. Someone with the OP's attitude couldn't succeed in an industry environment.

I can see why you didn't get the job at the post-92 you applied to. Calling it an "ex-poly", assuming you wouldn't need a track record of funding and publications to get a permanent lecturing job in a post-92 university...you are vastly out of touch with the situation and position within it.

You should be performance managed out.

That time is allocated. For every module you lead, you have hours in your work balance model for the admin of doing so. For every student who is your personal tutor, you have hours built in to mentor and write references for. Your attitude sucks.

No that time isn't (all) allocated. Increasingly the time required vastly exceeds the allocated time. This leaves even less time for the things that are valued by departments and institutions. And it disproportionately affects female staff, as students are far less likely to expect this level of extra support from me.

@gyrt
""What do you do? In that moment, I mean. You can't say "Nope, I can't listen to this. This is beyond my job description and not something I'm trained for. This is risking a dual role which is inappropriate"."

The one time I attempted to do that the student complained. Institutions could do more to address this e.g. by renaming "personal tutors" "academic tutors" and making the boundaries of the role clear to students from the outset and repeatedly. What individuals (in particular women) can do is extremely limited.

@gyrt i don't know how many modules have you led/taught and how many PhD students you have seen through, but your take on the pastoral situation above comes across as very righteous.

There is the best case scenario, and there is the reality - overstretched services, young people in distress who are not heard/seen, universities expecting tutors to do the correct signposting, and the reality where parents sue universities.

When someone trust you and does not know where to turn, you must listen to signpost. And even the lightest engagement with what you hear, without saying anything other than "let me put you in contact with X" leaves a wedge in your head.

"Real world job"

Hard eye roll

Having moved from the financial services to academia I'm usually the first to say this, and frequently frustrated by colleagues who protest at every new bit of paperwork or repeatedly use strategic incompetence to get admin roles they don't want to do taken off them.

That's not what OP is talking about though, she's not going to slack off anything that will affect others. She's going to be better at her job but not be promoted because the things that get you promoted are not necessarily the things that make you a good academic and certainly not a good colleague. Those strategically incompetent men get promoted over and over again.

So basically, yes I would say something along those lines to a student, in the kindest way possible. Especially if I thought some of the topics you mentioned were involved....

Firstly, no I don't believe you would stop a student in the middle of a disclosure to basically tell them, kindly, "I'm not willing to listen to this". I mean maybe you would because you're trained to do so. We're not trained to do so. And it's not a health and social care environment so the legal, safeguarding, training reasons aren't as clearly defined.

Secondly, there are blurred boundaries between academic and pastoral support. If a student comes to ask for help with prioritising work but says that they're struggling to prioritise because of something traumatic, its hard to separate the academic issue from its root cause, particular in normal one-on-one human interactions.

Thirdly, as PP said stopping a student from disclosing has huge risks in terms of student complaints or evaluation feedback. I DGAF about these things to be honest because I'm too far into my career for them to affect me, but junior colleagues will be at risk. And particularly women given that women have to field more disclosures, and that women are expected to be sympathetic to disclosures.

@DoorPath

Excuse me? There is no need to be so rude. Where did I assume you wouldn't need pubs and funding? I said you DO need these now, but that wasn't the case a short while ago - many people working at this university don't have phds. That was the point of my comment.

What you say sounds fine and great in theory, @gyrt - especially in the scenario where you have an ancillary service that is directly available for that which is familiar and known to you and which you can access directly for them. I don't think it's realistic in reality, and I think you'd find people would be a lot less receptive to you re-directing them in that way in a non-clinical setting, and especially when you need to tell them to contact that different service themselves. I ended up really overwhelmed with pastoral issues in my first academic job - I was a young, kind woman and so a magnet for them. I was 24, on a fixed-term contract and so pretty poorly supported by the institution all round. I remember sitting at my desk sobbing after a student who had come to see me about an academic issue had told me about his younger sister who had just died of leukaemia. I had held it together to be sympathetic for him but when he left was really upset and it still sticks with me. How could I really have turned around when he told me of his bereavement and told him that he shouldn't be talking to me about it?

And the lines really are so blurry sometimes. I remember crying in a PhD supervision because I was struggling with writers' block. It was very bound up in my own mental health, but it also sort of was an academic issue - and I am very grateful that my supervisor was kind, sympathetic and handed me tissues rather than telling me it wasn't his job to deal with emotional issues.

Incidentally I don't think this is solely an issue for academics. I'm not one any more, but I am a manager of a large team and still sometimes struggle with the weight of the personal issues that staff members I manage are carrying. The difference is that it's an occasional thing in most management roles, whereas in academia the scale of the problems in the student population can mean it becomes really consuming, both emotionally and just in terms of time.

@DoorPath

And it wasn't a permanent job!

@Marasme

Righteous? Ok nevermind

So you are in the classroom 9-4 for four days a week? That's 112 hours of teaching time a month, or 672 if you teach over 24 weeks of the year. This is obviously - very obviously - not true.

The 1:100 ratio is quite obviously untrue.

It's the exact same in the UK. The PPs simply mean they don't want to have to deal with the occasional crying student and have to signpost them to the wellbeing service.

All academics who are not on fixed term contracts in the UL have "tenure".

Sorry @gyrt but that is terrible advice

I had a student come to my office and break down because she had been raped over the weekend. She was an international student with no support network here, no idea where to turn, and I was her only tutor who seemed to care about students and she felt comfortable talking to.

I would literally be a terrible human being if I told her to stop talking to me. I think she may have even harmed herself.

I did end up providing a lot of pastoral support over the next months, she had a very hard time but pulled through and is now doing great -- with little thanks to the formal support services I did send her to, which were mostly useless.

If you don't want to do pastoral care, don't take a job with students. It's important to put up boundaries, and I do, but it's an inevitable part of the job.

Incorrect.

At my university there isn't anything like "a full team of counsellors and physicians who treat students".
There's a small central team of over-stretched counselors with whom students can arrange one thirty minute meeting about a month in advance.
There's a welfare team provided through the SU but this seems to be mostly unqualified recent graduates from what I can tell.
The university doesn't provide physicians. If students need medical support while at university, they have to register for a local NHS doctor which means giving up their registration at a GP surgery back home.

As I and other PPs have said above, faculty absolutely are engaged in "that sort of thing". Women in particular bear a disproportionate burden of "that sort of thing".
And its not "the occasionally crying student" by any means. It's several students per year disclosing incredibly traumatic experiences.

Perhaps your one of those colleagues that've managed to cultivate a reputation such that students offload problems to you. It doesn't mean students aren't offloading their problems to faculty, they're just not offloading to you. But I guarantee that one of your colleagues at least is picking up that workload.