Ludicrous situation to be in, and name changed for this one!
This past week I’ve been off sick. Probably back tomorrow. But I needed to get things in order for the new semester.
so I took a week off, downloaded and printed everything so I wouldn’t be ‘available’/ ‘last seen’ bloody Teams etc online and quietly worked through:
- two theses I needed to read
- writing up a research report
- amendments to a paper
it was lovely. I did my job, without doing all the other stuff other people wanted me to do (stupid meetings, filing out spreadsheets, creating things on corporate templates, attending training that’s pointless, etc.). There wasn’t anything for colleagues to cover for me, so I don’t feel bad about putting more work on others. It was a real golden window of opportunity to take.
There will be a tiny bit of catch up tomorrow, but not a lot. I haven’t been off sick for years so I’m not worried about a sickness record or anything
What a ridiculous scenario to be in, but I feel quite validated that it was the right decision and will be back at work tomorrow feeling much more in control and less pressured. I have so many colleagues on the edge right now before undergraduates have even arrived. We’re all working in reduced teams after sumner’s redundancies, workloads not even finalised for the year yet (what will I be doing? 🤔) and our cups are totally empty.
academia is just bonkers in this way. Solidarity to everyone staring at a new academic year with panic or bewilderment. Take whatever strategies you can.