Thank you so much for writing this. So much of this is happening right now and sorting it out and seeing others’ viewpoints and experiences is tremendously important. Keep putting it out there, it’s helping!
And when you’re an adjunct (which, let’s not forget, most of us are), most of this is still required of us. In such precarity, how do we dare divide anything into those three categories? What happens to us when we decide there’s things we just can’t do? And would we ever decide such a thing, ourselves, in this job situation?
The struggle is real! Without wanting to sound too sour grapes, I can't help but feel the demands on our time are much greater than previous generations in academia. The list of checkboxes to get promoted is enormous. I've had to take the decision to forget about promotion for a bit and slow down and downsize just to be able to stay in this career for the long haul. Trying to juggle everything and do it all well is just not sustainable.
It becomes problematic when most of the stuff on your personally preferred task repertoire falls into category 1. A healthy mix of the categories, in theory, is fun. However, I personally struggle to stick to my own priorities, and often end up filling the other categories with my time working for others, whereas the time working for me often gets allocated to category 1. This juggling game is hard! Nobody told me this beforehand!
Thank you so much for writing this. So much of this is happening right now and sorting it out and seeing others’ viewpoints and experiences is tremendously important. Keep putting it out there, it’s helping!
And when you’re an adjunct (which, let’s not forget, most of us are), most of this is still required of us. In such precarity, how do we dare divide anything into those three categories? What happens to us when we decide there’s things we just can’t do? And would we ever decide such a thing, ourselves, in this job situation?
The struggle is real! Without wanting to sound too sour grapes, I can't help but feel the demands on our time are much greater than previous generations in academia. The list of checkboxes to get promoted is enormous. I've had to take the decision to forget about promotion for a bit and slow down and downsize just to be able to stay in this career for the long haul. Trying to juggle everything and do it all well is just not sustainable.
It becomes problematic when most of the stuff on your personally preferred task repertoire falls into category 1. A healthy mix of the categories, in theory, is fun. However, I personally struggle to stick to my own priorities, and often end up filling the other categories with my time working for others, whereas the time working for me often gets allocated to category 1. This juggling game is hard! Nobody told me this beforehand!