Any other academics feeling totally worn down?

[peppapighastakenovermylife]

Sorry being a bit miserable here. Grateful to have a job etc.

The cuts have started with us - threats of redundancies, departments closing, courses reducing. Management seem to be taking this as a fantastic opportunity to make everyone work harder. They haven't actually said it but there is the expectation that doing our actual jobs is nowhere near enough. People on teaching only contracts seem at risk because they havent done enough research .

There is only so hard we can all work and I am exhausted at the constant working evenings and at weekends. My marking pile is the height of a toddler, we have meetings coming out of our ears at how we are going to work harder and with the best will in the world we can't conjure up papers and grants out of nowhere. Somewhere in the back of all of this the students are unhappy at the amount of face to face hours and feedback they get.

And despite the 60 hour weeks and rarely having a day away from the place let alone an actual holiday we are all worried for our jobs.

Anyone else feel totally miserable about it all?

It is the type of field yes where you need lots to get a chance at funding.

I am glad you think it is madness. At least my CV will look pretty when job hunting

That is really crap. Don't know how you have managed all that marking while heavily pregnant and with two kids - they should be giving you a promotion for that alone!

Thank you. It is nice for someone to be nice about it . That is what I am struggling with - the fact I have genuinely worked so hard yet am just being pushed harder / at high risk of redundancy.

Should have married rich

Hello don'trunwithscissors. I remember you from some other threads. Sorry that you have had a time of it and I hope things get better from here on in.

Thank you inveterate, peppapig and domestic. I'm doing a lot better, and have great support from a HV and Community Psychiatric Nurse. I've told a few people from work all about it, and they've been very understanding. (Thankfully I work with some lovely people. )

I read Boice's book a while back. I'll have to go back and look at it again. I really need to produce something before I go back to work. I was supposed to be on sabbatical this semester. I was assured before I went on maternity leave that I would be able to take it in 2011-12, but I'm now being told that this might be refused if I'm not producing enough research. So everyone else will have had a sabbatical in this REF cycle, except me. It feels like I'm being punished for being on maternity leave.

peppapig That's absolutely shocking. I really hope you can manage to take a bit of time to recuperate and enjoy your baby. Best wishes for the rest of your pregnancy.

A paper a month? . That's really crap. We are expected to produce a minimum of 4 per year and that's in a RG university with average number of undergrad contact hours around the 100 hours per year mark (on a research and teaching contract). I think at our place the people on teaching only contracts are not necessarily expected to publish, but I might be wrong there.

I was reading a newspaper article recently about the budget cuts in academia and some of the comments following it made me really . Obviously so many people with no experience of academia think it's just a really cushy number and apart from turning up to do the odd lecture every now and then, academics don't really do very much at all. It's amazing how many people think we get the same holidays as the students too. Chance would be a fine thing!

dontrunwithscissors, I had a similar thing with sabbaticals. I was supposed to have a sabbatical leave in the last RAE period, but then I went on maternity leave and didn't get it. When I returned from maternity leave I had to cover someone else's teaching in addition to my own because they were on sabbatical . I then had a sabbatical leave scheduled at the start of this REF period, but again it coincided with my second maternity leave. I was told I could not take my sabbatical at another time as they had already had to cover my teaching whilst I was on maternity leave. Again, I came back to work and in the next academic year have had to cover someone else's teaching as they are on research sabbatical.

I was told by a more senior colleague in another department to complain about this as it is sexual discrimination, but well, you just don't do you? I'm too worried about getting a black mark next to my name. (Some people already think it's bad enough to have had two children and still have a career). Can you tell I work in a very male dominated subject area?

That stinks UnseenAcademicalMum I have had a couple of (male) colleagues refer to my maternity leave as 'research leave'..... I'm sufficiently p**sed off that I'm considering complaining if they don't let me take my sabbatical.

dontrun and unseenacademical - denying you your sabbaticals because ou were on maternity leave is sex discrimination, without a shadow of a doubt. It is absolutely disgraceful.

I know how hard it is to make a fuss, but I am so livid on your behalves. Are you in the union? Could you have a word with them about how to handle it?

another academic here - not in the UK system though, in Ireland, which is a whole other bag of cats. I've had a 25% salary cut in the last year (I am secure and senior, which helps - contract staff everywhere are treated like dirt), hiring freezes, lots of early retirements, pressure to find external funding (I'm in the humanities, in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s ), increasing student numbers, excessive managerialism etc.

I'd love to show this thread to some of those sceptics who think that academics all sit around sipping sherry (ha, they never sipped, they guzzled the stuff) puffing on pipes. Many of my colleagues are incredibly talented, able, hard-working, committed, but I look at the younger ones and wonder why they want to do it - so many of them (especially the women) didn't get appointed until they were in their late 30s, many of them have probably missed the opportunity to have much-wanted children. It's strange because the flexibility of the job should mean that it's really compatible with having children, but the opposite seems to be the case (again, this seems not to be the case for the fathers in my place, whose level of productivity generally goes up after they have kids, often, ime because they use 'the family' as an excuse not to do tedious admin/teaching related jobs).

I think there can be very few other jobs where so many very different things are required of you at such a high level and such a huge skill set is demanded (I'm not even talking about academic specialisms here) - teaching, budgets, timetabling, pastoral care/counselling, strategy, management, independent research. It's no wonder so many of you are on the edge, particularly when you combine that with the unstructured nature of family life.

I'm so sorry to hear these stories (although they simply confirm my own experiences) - I'm in the doldrums with my job. I have a 16mo DD (I'm a gay mum, not the bio mum - which meant that the 3 days I had off when she was born was only because I have lovely lovely colleagues who covered for me), but I've been in post a long time, held a very senior admin/change management role (much good it did me) so kind of have chips in the bank. I also think that Irish academics are far less managed than UK ones - this is both good and bad, as so much of the burden then falls on the coalition of the willing (increasingly, young/ish women) whilst everyone else exercises learned incompetence at key tasks in the name of concentrating on their 'research' (my scare quotes are related to my view of a lot of humanities 'research' - thinking about the relationship of Heidegger to Beckett isn't research, however interesting it might turn out to be).

just wrote an essay - this thread might just qualify for the largest average size of post prize. Courage mes amies - grading will soon be done, and everything always looks slightly better when it isn't viewed from behind of pile of tottering nonsense student papers

The comment about women not being appointed until their late 30s reminds me of a conversation with a colleague recently where we were looking at funding streams aimed at specifically at women. They all wanted women younger than 27 in their first permanent academic post and having taken maternity leave to apply.

Most women we knew had done on average 6+ years of postdoc research on temporary contracts before getting their first permanent post. Those who did get a permanent post then did not dare to contemplate children for fear of being frowned upon.

I have several male colleagues with 3+ children where the fact they have children is considered a positive thing. They are stable, trustworthy, reliable. Not a single full professor in our department has more than 1 child.

Whaaaaat? I am contracted to work in the holidays. I have 30 days per year, with not more than 1 weeks holiday during term time and not more than 1 months holiday out of term time.

I only wish we had student holidays.

Can I just say that it is not normal employment practise to harass a newly delivered mother about work? I believe are not allowed to put any pressure on women for at least 2 weeks after the birth. That was the situation back in the mid 90s anyway, and I doubt those rules have been relaxed since then. Asking you to do a pile of marking at 4 days postnatal is quite probably illegal. I understand though that you may be quite reluctant to refuse to do it for obvious reasons. Anybody with tenure can surely refuse without too much fallout to return to work before the end of their maternity leave?

Oh god no, I have tenure and would most likely not refuse much. The problem is although there's not much which can remove me from my current job, I want to progress in that position and get promoted. That certainly won't happen if I make a fuss about anything.

That said, I am (slowly) learning the ability to say "no" now.

I sympathise, starlight. Although ds2 is not disabled, he does have certain health problems which mean we are reluctant to put him into childcare during the day.

I must say, although the HV has offered to sign whatever SS forms we need (personally I'm not sure we're eligible for anything), my colleagues have been less than understanding.

DP actually had to give up his job to care for ds2, but he also had little/no understanding before he left (industry). Maybe its not so much an academia thing as a UK culture thing?

starlight - forgive me if this is totally stupid, and you've already tried it, but could you not give ss a copy of his contract? or a letter from his head of dept outlining his terms and conditions. Very for you - that's just outrageous.

Sometimes I long for the structure of an 'ordinary' job where you do your hours, work hard and then go home and forget about it all rather than continually taking work home, doing it at all hours, thinking about it even when not doing it etc etc. I'm no doubt deluded about other jobs, but it seems to be that many of my friends in other areas have much clear boundaries in their lives and are the happier for it

LOL, He's an 'academic' fgs, he doesn't know where is contract is or even truly what his hours are!

But actually, the thing with SS is that you give them minimal information, because the contract will probably contain other details that, should they ever get hacked off with us in the future will 'investigate'. Won't find anything, but will do it to harass. A least that has been my experience so far.

unseen That sounds hard. I'm sorry.

Sorry for not writing back earlier, but I was busy with the usual juggle of weekend working whilst trying to not be a stranger to DH and DS! I am very grateful for the messages of support from inveteratenamechanger and peppapighastakenovermylife. What made up for the prattishness of my colleagues was that some of my students were absolute delights, sending me sweet messages of condolence as well as gratitude for feeding back to them when I'm going through such a hard time. I suppose that's what makes up for the stress and over-work.

I also feel somewhat guilty to complain as so much of the time this is a dream job. I cannot think of many professions where you're paid to read and think about the subjects that fascinate you the most. It's just hard sometimes to remember this when you've got mad deadlines and unreasonable demands..

Justagirl - I am really trying to remember the positives. I do love my job - I enjoy teaching, the students are mostly great and I am passionate about my research area. I wouldnt want to do anything else and I dont mind it being my life rather than just a job.

I think it is just the current climate and our university is particularly awful at the moment. The pressure is immense to perform over and above the actual job.

I have to get funding now or I will lose my job. How on earth I pull in significant funding on a teaching only post in this current climate when I only got my PhD a few months ago I dont know . I have been told to work harder (not an insinuation that I am not working hard but what I have to do) and I dont have anything left to give.

Academia is really hard as a mum . I have noticed that the key players seem to have no kids or older kids - the same isnt true for the males. What I find particularly hard is conferences, especially international ones. I just cant bring myself to leave the DC's for a week when I am already away from them so much.

Perhaps we can set up our own universities just like Dave's idea for parent led schools

Peppapig, I couldn't sympathise more (and sorry if I sounded preachy - that wasn't my intention). I too am constantly amazed at the small number of senior female academics who have children (or at least, more than one child). I'm also familiar with the ridiculous pressure to pull in research funding. In my own teeny field the success rate of research council applications is 20%. I'm now under warning for having "failed" to obtain funding too many times (for "fail", read having got 3 reviews of my proposal as 'excellent' and 1 as 'good', but only ranked in the bottom half of a panel that considered dozens of other "excellent" proposals). My research group head tells me to keep plugging away, but bearing in mind each proposal takes a good six months to write (not full-time, obviously) and another nine months to get a response, it's like shooting at stars.

n.b. for what it's worth, I was lucky to have a wonderful female mentor when I first got my PhD, who encouraged me to apply for a First Grant and - more importantly - insisted on reviewing and commenting on the proposal. Once you've got your first grant approved (and first grants only compete with other PhD newbies), it's relatively easier to get the second one.

And as for international conferences, I know exactly what you mean. The tricky thing is of course that without attending the wretched things, you cannot do that all-important networking, that leads to those all-important invitations to give keynotes, which lead to that all-important promotion!

Peppapig, have you considered looking for a postdoc rather than a teaching only position? This would allow you time to concentrate purely on your research for a while longer yet and would therefore buy you time to build up your track record (essential for successful funding).

In the longer term, work on getting some PhD students of your own in. This means that although you might be spending longer on teaching, data and papers will start generating themselves via your research students. Personally I've found that having a good group of PhD students and a couple of postdocs working in my lab has been crucial to maintaining my research output even when my undergrad teaching has been worryingly heavy. It also allows that as a group you can have more of a presence at conferences by ensuring that at least one member of your research group goes to conferences even if you don't. Personally I tend to only go to European (I'm including UK in that) conferences. If there are any in the States for example, I send one of my post-docs. They are always willing for the chance of -a- -free- -holiday- being able to attend and it takes the pressure off me to be everywhere, but people still see the work as output from my group.

anyone know if the ARM study is continuing despite the association folding?

www.yorku.ca/arm/motherinacademia.html