I'm an academic and I've dedicated 5 years of my life to getting here and DH wants me to leave my job....

[Choices123]

Just that really DH hates my job and wants me to leave. I have spent the last 3 years doing a PhD, which I completed early last year with no issues and was extremely lucky to walk straight into a permanent senior lectureship (like gold dust in my sector!). However the strain on universities now and what they expect from their staff is immense (or maybe it is just my institution?!). To do my job well (which is the only I way I want to work) I have to put in 50+ hours a week, often more, and continuously dart from stressful situation to stressful situation. I've seen a number of colleagues go off on long term stress and mental health problems, which sadly then increases the strain on the rest of the team. The thing is I love my job, I absolutely love it, I just don't like the amount of it I am supposed to do on a weekly basis.
Dh, quite rightly I feel, hates it, he feels it is impeding too much on our family time, quality of life and more than anything my emotional state - which impacts on me as a parent etc. He is extremely supportive at home and takes on 80% of the household stuff and children school runs etc. I've tried lowering my work load, seeking support from management etc and all to no avail. I'm expected to teach a ridiculous number of hours (with all the prep, assessment and marking that comes with that), oversee students well-being, provide students with one to one support, carry out high level research, generate income, publish high level academic articles, oh and of course write a book or two on the way.... Just not sure where to turn - stick it out and hope it gets easier, or go back to the career I had where I was on equal money, and closed my inbox down at 5pm each day, but I was unhappy!

I found the first year or so after my PhD the most labour-intensive in terms of teaching. However, once you've taught for a few years then it gets easier as you're recycling/ updating rather than writing lecture material afresh.

But, if you're new to the post shouldn't you be on probation? Staff on probation at my institution have lower requirements in terms of teaching and research to reflect the fact that they're ECRs.

Also, I wouldn't get too worked up about REF yet. No one even knows what the requirements will be (most likely they'll be averaged across a dept, rather than everyone having to submit 4 like last time). When I went back to work in between DC1 & 2 I totally flew under the radar, research-wise. I put in the absolute minimum (by necessity, not desire) in order to remain research active so that I could have a reasonable work-life balance. I picked up the pace later. Unless you've actually got an HoD micro-managing you by asking to see evidence of your research outputs on a monthly basis, you can do this too.

But yes, agree with previous poster. Get yourself a mentor. Ideally someone not in your dept (but in an allied one/ field) and someone who's a parent so they understand the work/life pressures. They will be able to help you navigate the workload.

Me again ... Just re-reading your posts, you sound so stressed that I wonder if a visit to the GP is in order. Get signed off for a bit. You are not alone. I know several (brilliant, hard working) academics who have had to get signed off for stress recently.

You need to learn some coping strategies to manage your workload. I think we've all been there. It happened to me when I took on a financial director role and I tried to do too much, at too high a standard, delegate too little and didn't plan my time properly. It's very common when someone moves up to a higher level.

First thing is to start to learn to work to "acceptable" standards, and not the highest standard. Pointless doing one task to a top standard and not having time to do another - far better to do both at a lower standard that is still good enough.

Then time management. How many of those pinging emails really need your immediate attention? How many can be ignored completely? Break your tasks down - is it urgent or not, it is important or not. Do the urgent AND important stuff first. Ignore the non urgent and non important - yes, you may feel you're letting someone down, but if it's not urgent and not important, just forget it - deal with it when it does become urgent or important.

Learn to delegate. Don't automatically think you have to do everything yourself. When other staff pass things to you, try to turn it around and pass it back for them to do something else or take it to a higher level themselves, or encourage them to suggest solutions to their problems they bring. If other staff get into the habit of dumping on you, you'll never stop them and it will only get worse.

Overall, sounds like a management course would be good for you. If the employer won't provide management training, you could read one of the many books, or even watch you tube videos etc.

OP it's about priorities.

I had an academic career before kids. Worked in scientific research, similar hours to you.

I jacked it it completely to stay at home to look after our children.
Never did go back.

Best move I ever made.

People are more important than anything. Kids are young for a very short time.

50 hours a week is pretty normal for a full time job.

Really? I don’t know a single person in a professional job that works 50hrs a week.

Oh yes, and I too agree with the fact that nowadays I aim for 'just good enough' with teaching (in particular) and admin and all my efforts go to research. But in the year or two between DCs 1&2 I found that all I could do was 'just good enough' on all of them, which meant coasting on the research front for about 12-18 months.

Interesting that some say to focus on research and minimise effort in teaching. I graduated last year and definitely saw our lecturers make this shift throughout my time there, very much to the detriment of us students. I would have thought (clearly naively) that teaching was the important part of the job.

OP the only advice that I can give is that it is vital that you look after your own needs too - whatever that might be. No job is worth sacrificing you own well being for. Whether that be remaining in this post or returning to your old one - only you know which option would be best/worse for your health and well being. Good luck

"I have learnt to concentrate all my energy in my research and to aim for 'just good enough' with teaching and admin." As PP said - that's good advice, but it's quite sad, isn't it, that we feel we need to do that? I get the admin side of things (there will ALWAYS be a new initiative you need to write a memo about) but the teaching bit saddens me. When we mostly all went into the job because we loved teaching as well as research.

Anyway, I'd advise doing the least you can to get by with the admin & hopefully the teaching pressure will lessen once you really know your courses and have written your lectures. It does get easier the further into the job you get in some ways. And a massive well done on getting the post. Now try to negotiate that your colleagues do more and you do a reasonable amount. Don't say yes to everything! They'll always try and get the new lecturer with their enthusiasm to do everything...

My DP was like this - to the job as well as she wanted and she loved the job, it took extra hours, to work eves and on weekends etc. There was always something to prep, always a presentation to get ready for, emails pinging in from offices all over the world etc. The stress affected her and our family. We can't even go on holiday without the work laptop coming along. Still.
Thing is - it NEVER stops. There's always an email, always something to need doing, always that manager or colleague who is up half the night sending everyone emails. So no matter how hard you work you can always spend more time on it. SO you need to make a choice, and find a way to manage your time like my DP has had to do ( after one of the children asked why she loved work more than them...)
Carve out family time. Have a few evenings a week where you DO NOT work, Have a weekend day when you don't do any work at all - doesn't have to be both. Don't respond straight away to out of hours emails - even if you write them don't send until office hours ( something I do to discourage colleagues thinking they can get hold of me night and day, it really cuts don't on the stuff they send and the response they expect).
The hours you are working aren't sustainable which is shown by the number of your colleagues going off ill.
I also think you need to have sometime to yourself - running, swimming, yoga etc. My DP did this and it's been a revelation.
No-one, and I mean No-one, ever lay on their death bed wishing they'd worked more and spent less time with the family and friends.

I am also an academic and have been doing this, albeit part time, for 15 years. I have some advice:

• say no when asked to take on extra duties. If your dept is like mine they will get huffy or make threats but they never come to anything. Just say sorry no too busy.

• have one office hour for personal tutees and if they need an urgent appt in between then refer to senior tutor

• give yourself a few years where you do bare minimum of research and make all papers you do this year and next based on your phd so just a reworking of that

• have a year off foreign trips - they will still be there in future

• make sure if your uni has a sabbatical system that you are on the rota. Mine is every 9 terms.

• take your holidays

• if you are going in rather than working from home because of one meeting with a student then do it by Skype instead

• send apologies for dept committees where possible

• opt out of the promotion track for a little while. You have tenure. Sit back and enjoy it. In a few years you can re-enter the rat race

• make life easy for yourself - do not suggest new modules etc which will create their own paperwork

• there should be a counsellor for staff. see them

• is there a workload modelling sheet? Check how the work you do compares to others

• That 20% of time in your contract for research (that is what we have anyway) - take it as 'thinking time' for future projects i.e. use it to see your kids. Believe me that will help you think rather than stress

• have a smallish email paper trail where you have asked for help in case you need time out for stress later. Eg email head of dept and say you are a bit worried about how many hours you are working and can they advise you on what is necessary and what cannot be dropped and help you prioritise

• join any support groups for early career academics - they will have great advice

pm me if you want xx

You need to work less! Why are you answering emails at those times? Is it because you feel you should answer them or are you being told you have to? I don't send emails to students outside office hours (although sometimes I compose them late at night!) You have to push back at unreasonable expectations.

I found the first year or so after my PhD the most labour-intensive in terms of teaching. However, once you've taught for a few years then it gets easier as you're recycling/ updating rather than writing lecture material afresh.

This.

And with Admin too. You become familiar with all the processes.

But it also helps if you ring fence your private and family time. Limit the work you do on weekends, early morning and late evening. Just don't open emails. People get used to you being on call, but they also get used to you not being there all the time.

Assign defined slots for student support. GPs do 10 min appointments. Aim for a defined time period that you think matches the issue.

MissDuke teaching at universities is research led. Without the research there would be no teaching, so by default research has to come first

BTW, I don't have my work email on my phone. So, I only check it when I'm on working mode. Otherwise, I simply don't even know there's an email.
If there's anything urgent the people who matter have my phone.

Stop meeting deadlines. Seriously. No one in management will take your cries for help seriously until you make it their problem.

You must have very long holidays though? I am sure you are spending lots of time with your dc then? And dh?

Every job has negatives, and you are unlikely to find anything that is perfect however you need some boundaries.

No emails are 5.30pm leave an automated note on your account to say all emails are answered during office hours only. This will free up your evenings to spend time with your family. You are not on call 247 and are not a heart surgeon, there is no need for you to be available all of the time.

Time should be set aside to prepare at the weekends, but this needs to be limited and you need to be disciplined so that you have time for your family.

Do the bare minimum some days so you can get home even if it is once a week.

You don't need to be the best, you just need to be good enough.

are - after

You must have very long holidays though? I am sure you are spending lots of time with your dc then? And dh?

What you are describing is really normal for early career academics.

Can you Leverhulme your way out of it for now, do you think?

What would actually happen if you did NOT open your laptop or phone after 6pm?

Early careers get massively dumped on and I think that people will keep on unloading stuff onto you until you actually lie down on the ground and cry in front of them. I know you have to suck it up to a certain extent, but can you try to look clearly at it and see what you can say NO to without harming your "optics" in the department?

I'm also in academia, though not nearly as far along as you. I'm a postdoctoral fellow, so I have a relatively easy time of it. Though I understand the pressures and I see how ridiculously stressed out our lecturers are (and I'm grateful that I'm not one!). I think the thing is that you've gone from a somewhat stressful but relatively flexible role as a PhD student into a senior lecturer position so quickly that it's likely been a shock to everyone involved. I imagine there isn't going to be an easy quick fix, but you need to find a way to set aside some time (maybe over the Christmas break when things are a bit quieter) to talk about what you both need and how to figure out a better balance for your family.

I would say personally I wouldn't be willing to kill myself to have a job that I loved. I did have a decent enough research post and I'm now on maternity leave and I'm not going back to it, but planning to look for something different. The expectations on academics and the pressures are ridiculous. There is no such thing as a 'job share' or slacking off on research or teaching to focus on the other. You have to do all of it, plus managerial and admin duties, plus answering student emails at like 11pm whining about some course requirement, plus pastoral care. It's completely all encompassing and you could work days, evenings, weekends, and still have more to do. Which is why so many of us have mental health struggles from all the stress.

I think though that you need to start maybe by talking with someone in your department. There must be someone who helps with these sorts of things and can suggest ways to manage the load or lighten it. I know we had folks who did exactly this, plus you could arrange informal mentors through HR, who would offer support as well. Beyond that I do think it's reasonable to talk with your husband about what you all need as a family now and it may be that you need to be in a less intense role. I think it's reasonable for one partner to ask the other to consider making some changes to how they work so the family can function better, especially if the load is too much for one person to carry. I know I had to do this with my dh when my first was small. He is self-employed, so equally works all the time potentially, and I really just needed to make sure he carved out evenings for us. I couldn't do him working all week and then all evening every night. I was exhausted and we never had any time together. It's made a huge difference and we have a much better quality of life because of it (also made it possible for me to pursue my career while still maintaining good work-family balance).

One thing to consider is if it's possible for you to go part-time? Do you need the full-time salary? Never mind REF and all those other things, but do you really need to be doing everything you're doing to keep the family afloat? If not, then maybe part-time or more flexible working hours or like a pp suggested, a grant to buy out your teaching could be something to pursue? Me personally, though I love what I do, I'm not sure I could do that sort of intensity, at least not while mine are small (have a 4 year old and baby on the way). I've found I can still love what I do, while doing it not 50 hours a week. It's meant taking lower level positions and I don't make as much as I would as a lecturer, but I'm keeping my head above water. I think talk to someone in your dept or school and keep talking with your dh. You have to take care of yourself and that may meant taking some changes. Definitely find other mums in academia too. I found that really helpful and refreshing and it was nice to have someone who understood what I was going through.

Interesting that some say to focus on research and minimise effort in teaching. I graduated last year and definitely saw our lecturers make this shift throughout my time there, very much to the detriment of us students. I would have thought (clearly naively) that teaching was the important part of the job.

I don't want to get into an argument about this here, but part of the problem is that (probably quite rightly) student expectations have rocketed in the last few years. If I was doing only just 'good enough' teaching then it was still so much more than what I received as an undergraduate: expectations surrounding things like help with assessment means that something that pretty much didn't exist when I was a student (extended office hours, reading and commenting on plans for student work, preparing exhaustive documents explaining every part of the mark scheme, answering dozens of email enquiries about each assessment, even though the answers to those were often 'this is in the module handbook') can take up half a working week. When I was a student there really was much more of an expectation that we'd figure it out and muddle through ourselves - but then a) I'm not sure that's a good thing and b) we weren't paying £9k a year.

I would have thought (clearly naively) that teaching was the important part of the job.

Number of papers and IF matter more than hours teaching or student feedback.
The students who do matter the most are research students. They produce the data.
Taught course students are not supposed to be taught like in secondary schools. They should be more independent and teaching is mostly about guiding to the subjects that will be assessed.
The drive is for more and more independent learning.

OP, how much training in teaching have you had? Invest in a couple of workshops and you may get a few good tips on how to save effort for better results.

"long holidays" Ha! Yeah, that's a myth. No, academics usually work more over the holidays when there's no teaching. Universities are open year round. There are no 'holidays' (apart from Christmas, my university does shut down between Christmas and New Years) though sometimes we work from home when there is no teaching. The bulk of academic work is admin, marking and research, not teaching so there's always loads to do when students aren't around.

I tend to notice that if you are not an 'immediate responder' people do not expect instant replies. It can take me days to get back to people now, and they soon get used to it.

Anything urgent you will know about. The rest can wait or be deleted.

Be ruthless with your time. You will do absolutely nothing on Sunday but relax and be with your family or Friday evenings are family nights etc. Unless you can successfully reclaim your time and turn off your emails I feel you will always feel overwhelmed.

In response to the posters saying 'ease off the research' ... I'd say the opposite: ease off everything else! The'everything else' will happily expand to take up all your time if you let it. My strategy (when I'm disciplined enough) is to do an hour of writing first thing, before checking email etc. Then turn to the other things and if necessary cut corners to get it done.

Academia is unique in that the aspect of our jobs that matters most for career advancement, prestige etc is also the aspect that our employers resent us doing. If you doubt this, say to your HoD 'I'm afraid I can't make the next Departmental meeting because I've got some research I want to get done' and watch her LOL. By contrast, 'i can't make the meeting because I'm teaching' would be fine. At least in my discipline.