I have reached burn out. My university is too student friendly, the students are too whiney, and I wanted to reach through the phone and choke some students today. I teach some distance courses, one of the assignments is to have a meeting with me at a time they schedule. It is in a specific time zone, which is posted in big red letters in the class. Do you think they pay attention? No of course they don't, they call an hour late because it's "4 pm where they are". I known am reaching burn out because I can't put on my customer service face and smile. I snap at them "you're late."
I feel bad for doing this but I am over whelmed with everything I am expected to do in the name of student retention. So I ponder. As an adjunct do I take a lighter load next term? Cut down on my number of classes? Talk to the dean about how overwhelmed I am?
As an adjunct you stop being an adjunct. Just don't do it. Find something else to do.
ReplyDeleteDepends how much you need the money. I suck it up and act friendly in the face of student idiocy and hostility because I need the income. When the snowflakes fly, I remind myself how easily replaceable I am.
ReplyDeleteMy version of Stella's comment is this: draw a line in the sand. By X date I need to be in X situation, or I leave this profession and go to Plan B. It's amazing how taking control of your fate gives you the energy to survive whatever it is you need to survive for X years, knowing it will be temporary.
ReplyDeleteAs someone in the social sciences that studies concepts related to burnout, I can give you some research-backed advice. You have to step back. Don't keep trying to make it work. Cutting back on classes will just make you more frustrated with the class you still have. Take a semester off. Take two. If you're still burned out after an extra-long vacation, it's time to switch careers (or at least schools). There is not much else you can do.
ReplyDeleteAnd telling the dean that you're burned out and want to take a semester or two off will likely go better than snapping at a student, which is what is likely to eventually happen.
Old-timey Strelnikov:
ReplyDeleteShoot the dean, crush the students with a tank, sell the house, sell the wife, sell the kids, I'M NEVER COMING BACK!!!
Newer Strelnikov:
I would follow the plan laid out by Frog and Toad/StellafromSparksburg: come up with the maximum number of years you want to suffer, and if it doesn't work out have a plan B or C. So I second those ideas, for what it's worth.
Yep. I waited far too long, but now I am finally moving. My plan requires putting up with the BS for another year to 18 months. Then my workload will be about the same, but more regular. My income will double or perhaps even triple. The work will be better. Meanwhile, with my eyes on that prize, I simply jump through the hoops. When the new thing finally arrives, I will perhaps keep some adjuncting going on the side, but only on my terms, within much stricter limits. If I sound certain that the new gig will in fact materialize, it's because I am. I put the odds at well over 75% that it works out if I stay the course.
ReplyDeleteThis advice isn't for everyone, but I here I go: My partner was an adjunct, and sincerely loved teaching. She left to become a high school teacher: benefits, salary, a sense of place and belonging, and a classroom that everyone considered hers. And, I must admit, she taught better students than she had in the miserable gen-ed courses adjuncts usually get. To some of our friends, it was as though she was leaving campus to go to live and work in a "third-world country" as some one said. But she was happy in that Yaro way of being happy--truly making a difference in young peoples' lives.
ReplyDeleteThat was my Plan B -- a small independent high school or a university-based gifted & talented program. I said 5 years, up or out, and got my job in that last, 5th year. I swear, I came off as less desperate and more confident in that final stretch.
ReplyDelete@Tuba, I hated that my professors and grad school friends treated my decision to teach high school with overt chagrin. Honestly, grad school taught me that I wasn't cut out to be a research-oriented academic, and that was an important discovery. I enjoyed teaching, so I went someplace where I could do what I loved full-time. It was a happy and exciting decision for me, but everyone wrinkled their noses and acted as though I'd just declared my allegiance to Lord Volemort.
ReplyDeleteThose bright, well-prepared, and highly motivated students that you love to have in your college classrooms? Guess what? They had great high school teachers.
@ Tuba & Surly -- Fair 'nuff. It's really cool that your Significant Other and you, respectively, made the switch and were happy with it. There's the other side of the coin, though, in that some profs make the switch and are miserable.
ReplyDeleteI had one particular 7th-grade teacher, Mr. Brown, who fit that mold. He told us that he had been a professor but was dismayed at the incoming students' low levels of ability, so he switched to teaching grade school in order to make a difference. Mr. Brown barely made it until Christmas, and he left with an ulcer.
You knew one guy who taught middle school for a while and didn't like it? What does that prove? Middle school and high school are completely different academic environments.
ReplyDeleteNobody here has said that teaching secondary school is for everyone. It was just thrown out as something to think about. Hell, Tuba even began his post by saying: "This advice isn't for everyone."
I definitely don't think teaching high school is for everyone, but I sometimes mention it because for SOME academics, it can be a good fit. I'm always mystified by the people who feel as though they need to chime in about how they've heard second-hand that teaching high school is a nightmarish hellscape in which nobody could possibly find professional happiness. What is the motivation for this?
@Surly: Bless you, I wish there were more people like you, who see teaching as the profession into which the best people should go.
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