Some #UCUStrikesBack thoughts on workload and anxiety in HE. 1/x

I have an anxiety disorder. Can't snap out of negative thought spirals about things I can't control. It manifests in a lot of ways. It first surfaced when I started my doctorate. 2/x

It took me a long time to acknowledge that it wasn't a failing or me just not being able to cope with adulthood. Now, am perfectly happy saying that it's not me, it's a little bend in my brain that I can iron out if I take some steps. 3/x

Some of these are CBT oriented. Mindfulness, when I am mindful enough to remember it (universal problem), helps a lot. Massive fan of the Headspace app. 4/x

Others are chemical. I could be hired to be a Prozac spokeswoman at this point. It stopped the spirals in their tracks. Wouldn't have survived Brexit as a possibility let alone a reality without it. (SO MANY UNKNOWNS!) 5/x

Thing is: I don't suffer from the inescapable room thinking anymore, really. But I'm still anxious ALL THE TIME. And that's not my brain. That's my working life. 6/x

Doom, not room.

Academia is presented as one of the free-est, most relaxed, do as you like jobs in the world. Cushy, I think is how people think of it. 7/x

I have never found it to be anything but the total opposite. The supposed freedom is incredibly stressful. You're never quite sure it anything you're doing is right - your work usually precedes the arbitrary targets it's then measured against. 8/x

Any and all deadlines you work towards are a) YEARS in the future and b) competing for your time with an unimaginable ever increasing load of supposedly urgent things that are scheduled by people who seem to never talk to each other. 9/x

There are rare weeks where the only thing I'm working on is eventually required 6yrs from now. Requires heavy self motivation. They're heavily outnumbered by the weeks in which I can't think about 6yrs from now because I'm drowning in nonsense to be dealt with within a day. 10/x

By nonsense I never mean actual teaching activity, by the way. I have all the time in the world to spend on student stuff in terms of where my own priorities lie. It'd be great if the greater university system actually let me! 11/x

And I'm REALLY GOOD at admin crap. So good, in fact, that I'm destined to get overloaded with it my entite career. And there's something satisfying about the form filling and box ticking, perversely: unlike that thing due 6yrs from now, this gets ticked off the to-do list! 12/x

Yeah. Satisfying. Until you stop to think about what it is you're *actually* doing. Which is never the research - 6 years from now, man! How could you ever prioritise that when people will start screaming for your report on Nonsense Metric X by next week? 13/x

And when the realization that you're never getting around to the thing that matters, that you don't know how you be evaluated on, that'll be career making for you - when that realization hits, good luck not having anxiety. 14/x

That's my whole career so far. A stifling freedom in a climate that forces you ignore your actual priorities before it then slaps you in the face with them. A system that rewards those who dodge unrewarding required tasks because they are all 6yrs from now all the time. 15/x

A job in which I frequently think that I really have 1.5 FTE jobs and given that I can't sack off teaching because it actually matters, and I can't sack off admin because I'm an idiot, and so I end up sacking off research because people yell at me about that least often. 16/x

You know what part of the job I'm actually trained up in and qualified for?

Haha. Yeah. 17/x

I'm not having panic attacks at the moment or anything. But what I'm coming back to next Thursday isn't much different from what I feel like on most Sundays: oh God what'll my inbox look like how am I ever going to find the time to and what if something else 18/x

It's an exacerbated version of that. I already feel guilty about the admin deadlines I'm going to be screwing up because I can't make up for 8 days in 2.

The thing I keep having to remind myself of is that I shouldn't be feeling this way. 19/x

Not because it's okay to sack off on a job. But because no job should be structured in such a way that sacking off a third of it is the natural state of being.

I've legitimately been advised once that I spent too much time preparing teaching and it was hurting my career. 20/x

I was appalled at the time and still am. Colleague meant well - meant make space for research. But screw that. My career IS teaching and research. And it's what I should be spending "too much time on", by which I mean a good 80% of my job. 21/x

The fact that I don't, because I *can't*, is why I spend a good 60% of my time unnaturally stressed out and feeling like the ceiling might come caving in. And that's now how academia is destined to be. It's just how it is these days. 22/x

So yeah, I've an anxiety disorder. But nothing gives me anxiety like the unmanageable workload and the cultural acceptance of research overtime because we love it.

I don't love it. Not because I can't. But because the way HE is currently set up, it feels like it's my enemy. 23/x

This is entirely fixable. If I am asked to do the job of 1.5 academics, the obvious solution is to make 1.5 academics available to do that job. Treat them all fairly. Set reasonable expectations of them. And let them do and love the things they're trained to do. 24/x

All it requires is the willingness to invest in staff the way there does seem to be a willingness to invest in marketing, internationalisation, and new bloody buildings.

I dream of a day where that's the environment I work in, really. No anxiety. Just pleasure in the job. 25/x

And the fact that I know about 90% of my colleagues feel exactly the same way is why I'm on strike. We can make academia the dream job it supposedly is - but only if we're being listened to, and we're just not. 26/26