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Dear @FacultyUbc, @UBC_Arts, @ubcHR, and indeed @UBC @ubcprez: we need to talk about faculty workload. It’s lovely that the university has received lots of money. Less lovely? I’m working what in any other job would be FT + unpaid overtime, and that’s just summer teaching.
My current teaching is ⅔ of what it will be in the fall. And about 20% of the expected number of students. To whom I owe the same individual personal attention. That is barely manageable now.
Right now, teaching also means:
—preparing classes
—creating asynchronous materials
—fixing issues with the learning “management” “system”
—and learning on the job
—including doing so when things break or mess up in a live session (I’m +/- OK, for many people it’s very stressful)
—preparing classes
—creating asynchronous materials
—fixing issues with the learning “management” “system”
—and learning on the job
—including doing so when things break or mess up in a live session (I’m +/- OK, for many people it’s very stressful)
In my case I’m also coordinating large multi-section courses next year. (Yes, as a mere lecturer.) This means:
—designing these courses
—building Canvas course site, inc. quizzes etc.
—preparing materials and guides for unknown future colleagues (sessional faculty & TAs)
—designing these courses
—building Canvas course site, inc. quizzes etc.
—preparing materials and guides for unknown future colleagues (sessional faculty & TAs)
Add, of course, that I don’t even know if there will be course materials for students, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
Course preparation alone would be a full time job. I’m doing it in left-over corners of the week. I’m thinking about or doing work constantly.
Course preparation alone would be a full time job. I’m doing it in left-over corners of the week. I’m thinking about or doing work constantly.
We in the humanities and arts do kinds of work that might not look familiar to other areas. Our work includes thinking, reading, researching, writing.
Thinking in turn includes asking questions, hypothesising, planning, strategy, modelling, logistics, critical thinking.
Thinking in turn includes asking questions, hypothesising, planning, strategy, modelling, logistics, critical thinking.
Thinking along would be a full-time job elsewhere. If I were logging hours in which I spend time and energy and attention on work, that’s probably getting on for 100 hours per week. It is every waking hour. I might get a few hours of clear head walking in the forest.
It’s been like this for weeks. Months. No-one could aftord to pay that overtime bill. But also: there is no institutional recognition of how big that unpayable debt to your workers is.
This thread is not about money.
It is about things that have actual real value and worth.
Human beings and their lives, humanity, and health.
It is about things that have actual real value and worth.
Human beings and their lives, humanity, and health.
Sure, I’ll have a “reward” and things will improve in September. But until then I’m alone until I get that TA support which only starts in September, doing work that needs to be done before then.
That includes a massive monstrous gargantuan quantity of learning.
That includes a massive monstrous gargantuan quantity of learning.
That is: more research, reading, thinking, questioning, rereading, thinking further and deeper, and so on. More time and intellectual energy.
Thousands of pages, hours of webinars. I’ve kept an approximate log, out loud in public, via https://metametamedieval.com/tag/covid-19-online-teaching/. Might be useful.
Thousands of pages, hours of webinars. I’ve kept an approximate log, out loud in public, via https://metametamedieval.com/tag/covid-19-online-teaching/. Might be useful.
I was already sleeping badly, like so many other people, when the pandemic hit us here and we went into physical distancing and work from home. I need a solid 8-9 hours to survive. When that’s under assault, I get ill. I’m probably surviving on adrenaline. That only lastsso long.
Lack of sleep affects work; if, in “human” “resources” terms we must think of workers as mere human capital, cogs in an industrial machine for its greater profitability; would that we could return to the idea of “personnel.” But I digress.
I can work at what for others might look like about 200% and for a long period of attention, zoning out into work, and multitasking: if and only if I have had sufficient sleep, and am able to rest completely in between bouts.
I can’t do that right now. I’m working till midnight, 1, 2. If I try to go to sleep before, I wake up then, usually worrying. I wake up at 3-4. Nightmares about September teaching, worse than any of the usual pre-start-of-academic-new-year regular faculty & student nightmares.
And then trouble getting to sleep is worsened by worries about what new turn the nightmares will take tonight.
(Anyone working in psych or medicine, and with backgrounds there, this will sound familiar.)
My big worry is about students. Teaching and being able to listen and pay attention to and work with individuals as individual people—this is vital in teaching languages, though should be the norm everywhere—even more so, and more supportively, than in a physical environment.
This is unsustainable.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe:
https://twitter.com/ubc/status/1286789895382380544?s=21 https://twitter.com/UBC/status/1286789895382380544
https://twitter.com/ubc/status/1286789895382380544?s=21 https://twitter.com/UBC/status/1286789895382380544
