Keep getting emails from work: you should be taking annual leave, you need to take annual leave, we very much hope you do get some quality down-time to recharge over the summer. Keep booking annual leave then un-booking it when I remember meetings, deadlines, work to be done.

This isn't an academic-cult-of-busyness thing. This is because we don't take leave during term time, so it builds up - we take a little over Christmas, a little over Easter, some more in the summer. But Easter this year exploded into crisis-management, and the summer is the same.

(Lots of academics with kids and no childcare have the opposite problem -- having taken leave to care for their kids, they are now stuck over the summer.) It's a clear imbalance between universities wanting to TELL staff that they have their best interests at heart, but... not.

Lots of universities gave their staff some extra holiday days during April and May. And that's great! That was a nice thing to do! Except... the amount of work they needed to be done wasn't reduced. So it just took away some working time, when we're overworked already.

Reducing your working time without reducing your work does not really do anything for burnout. If I take my leave and ignore my emails, but come back to immovable deadlines and a to-do list that has been added to in my absence, that won't help anything, certainly not me.

Our industry is going to apparently pull off a huge restructure over the summer, having been in crisis management for the last three months, with staff who have been on strike throughout the last academic year because we are overworked and exhausted. Good. Times.