Read on Twitter
So I said yesterday I was going to do a short #UCUStrikesBack thread on working conditions and health, so here it is.
NB - I am by far from the worst affected by these issues. I am comparatively secure. But we're discouraged from thinking of ourselves as embodied in this job.
NB - I am by far from the worst affected by these issues. I am comparatively secure. But we're discouraged from thinking of ourselves as embodied in this job.
So, as most of you know, I have an #infans who is a joy. What you probably don't know is that while pregnant, I started getting really horrible headaches. I'd always had headaches, but these were knock you down, lie in a darkened room headaches.
During the PhD, I'd had trouble with headaches which turned out to be an incredibly tight trapezius muscle, which responds well to osteopathy/muscle massage etc. I assumed this was the same, or that it was a pregnancy thing which would stop. Dear reader, it didn't.
If anything, it's got quite a bit worse. I'm pretty sure most people I've taught for the last couple of years will remember me saying in a class or a meeting that I've got a splitting headache and would they please bear with me and I'm sorry I can't string a sentence together.
Because once one of these sets in, it's there for the rest of the day and only a good night's sleep will clear it. Over the counter painkillers might blunt it a bit, but not much. But the teaching and the student meetings still have to happen.
You'd think that, after a while, I might have thought 'perhaps I should speak to the doctor about this'.
Well, on Friday I finally did.
It's only taken me, what, four and a half years to do it. And that's with a comparatively secure job and a regular GP.
Well, on Friday I finally did.
It's only taken me, what, four and a half years to do it. And that's with a comparatively secure job and a regular GP.
Turns out that the things I thought were just unpleasant headaches actually now count as migraines, even though I don't get an aura, which is what I thought you had to get for it to be counted as a migraine. Who knew?
On the plus side, there's a different kind of over the counter medication I can try, and then various prescription options which might mean I don't have to struggle through my teaching duties whilst losing focus and not being able to find words, which would be nice!
But this raises the really important issue that we need to listen to what our bodies are telling us. We need to listen to our bodies saying they aren't well, that they need help, that they're overworked. We are not just brains in jars. Our force of will won't overcome weak flesh.
I've written about this before, in terms of stress levels and gum bleeding - where I noted that not being precariously employed seemed to have improved both of them for me. https://twitter.com/lizgloyn/status/996702230085558272
Precarious colleagues, in particular, have strong incentives to forget their bodies, forget their health, forget to eat properly, forget to see daylight in order to do All The Things that supposedly will get them a permanent job. That has long-lasting physical and mental effects.
If it takes me, now a senior lecturer, four and a half years to get to the doctor to talk about headaches which stop me effectively functioning in the classroom, think about what it must be like for someone working multiple fractional contracts for the third year running.
We have to stop seeing work as a thing which happens without the body's involvement. We have to see physical well-being and intellectual excellence as being inextricably linked. And we have to support each other in getting the rest and recuperation we need to be our best selves.
