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1/I appreciate that Dr. Bruner is trying to provide helpful productivity tips (many of which my 15 person research team has implemented), however this article normalizes that faculty should be just as productive but in different ways. https://twitter.com/fairmanjulie/status/1252672691716468737
2/This is an impossibility for so many, many reasons, in particular for early career faculty and this cannot be the message that we in leadership roles and as tenured faculty send.
3/I'll use myself as an example, & I have the privilege of tenure, multiple grants, exceptional study staff, co-investigators, PhD students and post-docs who work together as a team with to allow > productivity. It's an impossibility for me to do what I did b4 even with all that.
4/Let's start with "make a schedule" that kids are going to adhere to. Our family bought a whiteboard and we write out a schedule every day for our two kids (9 and 4). For starters, 4 year olds don't stick to schedules and zoom classes aren't really developmentally appropriate.
5/Thus, I spend the day reading with him, writing, practicing his violin, encouraging self care and good behaviors. Even with a schedule, it has to be flexible in this age group and requires a lot of 1:1 attention. Can't just plop them in front of netflix for 8 hours.
6/My 9yo mostly adheres to his schedule as written but needs intervention to ensure he is on time to his synchronous classes, that the work he is doing is correct, answering questions as he is naturally inquisitive, etc...So should I just ignore him for the sake of my work?
7/Also, they need lunch, they need to go outside (socially distanced of course), so that has to be done too. What would be called "recess" or "PE" at school has to be supervised (and god forbid we actually want to interact with our children that we love so much).
8/Maybe this is ok for older kids, teenagers, who tend to be more self-sufficient but a large % of early career faculty these days if they have kids are younger (not that we should ignore our teenagers either who are going through A LOT as we all are with this pandemic).
9/When my wife comes home from her job (also a healthcare provider), I get 3 hours to squeeze in as much work as possible, which is invariably all meetings that I can't do during the rest of the day. I then have to cook dinner and help get the kids ready for bed.
10/Sometimes I can sneak in a mid-day zoom meeting but it requires a lot of planning. Thus, to get to an 8hr work day, I have to work 5 hours after my kids goto sleep at ~8pm, which is not feasible or advisable.
11/And mind you, I'm a guy, and there are gender differences no matter how much of an "Equal household" you are. Expecting a full workday also sets a terrible example for my mentees that this is what is expected (many of whom also have young children).
12/Then on the weekend, I go work 12-hour night shifts in the hospital caring for #COVID19 patients as an NP, so let's add 24-36hrs of additional work time to the mix that has nothing to do with academia and everything to do with serving your profession and your patients.
13/Even without practice, which I voluntarily took on, there is NO way to maintain normalcy and full productivity. No, not everyone has young kids, but that isn't really the point. Everyone is disrupted, anxiety is high regardless of individual circumstances given the pandemic.
14/And lets not forget that many nurse scientists/faculty are out there on their own without a huge research group, as I was for the first few years of my career. Thus it is all on their own shoulders which is even harder.
15/Thus, rather than act as if there is a way to have normalcy and productivity, let's acknowledge what this situation is, an unmitigated mess that will take time to improve and heal, and rather than normalizing it and maintaining the same expectations, we...
16/legitimize that this is not a normal time and thus don't make early career faculty feel pressure to do things that they physically and mentally cannot do. It's why many universities have extended tenure clocks, but to go with that we must message that...
17/whatever you get done during this time (or not) it's ok. It is ok to be productive, it is ok to be mentally unable to work, physically unable to work, or have unordinary circumstances that make one unable to work.
18/I truly believe the article is attempting to provide helpful strategies, ones that I agree with. But the unintended message is that productivity needs to be maintained at the same level, and we need to explicitly say that this should NOT be the expectation.
