I have been thinking a lot about the academic lament, "I didn't get any (or, enough) work done this summer." And I find it insidious that we all mean by this, "I didn't write as much as I wanted to," as if NOTHING ELSE we do--or did this summer in particular--counts as WORK. 1/

When in actual fact, we moved the entire curriculum of our campuses online, and went to hundreds of hours of meetings or trainings or workshops, learned new technologies, developed protocols for campus responses to a public health crisis, invented & reinvented our courses. 2/

We mentored students and sought faculty development and supported our colleagues and built websites and thought and wrote and talked and read and reimagined our entire delivery of higher education. 3/

We did SO MUCH care work. For students, campuses, departments, peers, colleagues. And that's only the work part of our work. We did all of that while at home in towns rocked by pandemic, racism, murder, fire, protest--through all of which we had to shepherd our families. 4/

As classes begin, I'm refusing to utter, "I got no work done." I wrote exactly nothing this summer, if we're talking about books or articles. But if we're talking about pedagogy, letters of support, syllabi, mentoring, email (oh, email!), I wrote tens of thousands of words. 5/

So did you. You kept your community going, amidst crisis and tragedy and loss after loss after loss. That is work. And it's work you shouldn't sell short. 6/

Academics of color did all of that while being called upon to offer the wisdom born of their experiences & their research--intellectual & care work yet again distributed disproportionately.

"I got no work done this summer" negates all of that. We all deserve better. /end