Something inside me broke this weekend. I stared at a pile of exams and couldn't bring myself to grade them. I have another stack of papers and yet another stack of quizzes.We're reaching the drop date for the term. I'm going to get in a lot of trouble if I don't have the information in the book.I just don't care.
I forgot a grading pen when I went to the coffee shop. I forgot the rubric to properly assess the work when I went home. I didn't feel like driving back to campus for either of those things.
I have to report to Big Boss tomorrow. In person.
I realized that I hate my job because I have no control over it. I really hate teaching an introductory, weed-out, required for graduation class. The students are fighting me over every point--even if they don't do the work or if they do a shitty job. I've got too many super keeners in the class. Holy cowpie on a cracker super keeners: you will most likely get anywhere from a B+ to an A, but you need some pills for the level of anxiety you're causing me and yourselves right now.
At the end of the night, I looked back on the piles of grading, and just cried. Sobbed until I couldn't sob anymore. I looked at my gas stove and the papers and wondered how much trouble I would get in if I just let them all go up in flames. Burn baby, burn.
I will, however, get my shit together in the morning. I am a professional, even if it means getting up at some ungodly hour and being ready for my stupid, soul-crushing job on time.
I'm not making it to the end of the term. Not in this state.
Oh, Maybelle,
ReplyDeleteWe've all been there. As my SO is fond of saying when I hit this point; the only way out is through. So pick up that pen and rubric, sit down somewhere you will work, and get them started. Your goal is not student development, or constructive feedback, or other such nonsense right now.
Right now your goal is to GET SHIT DONE.
Godspeed.
You're almost done.
ReplyDeleteYou're almost done.
You're almost done.
You're almost done.
Just keep repeating that. Except with "I'm" instead of "you're." Otherwise, it wouldn't make much sense.
Good luck to you!
Hang on there, sista!
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry. This sounds a lot like my semester. I had days where I just wanted to melt into nothingness and disappear. I, too, discovered that I have no control over anything in my job. I also teach a large grad requirement course that is just awful. But after 9 years, I decided just to care as much as the students for their half-assed projects. It worked well... So as someone above said, just grade the shit for what it is and be rid of it.
ReplyDeleteBig hugs, Maybelle. I just want to stay in bed for the remainder of the quarter--I so feel your pain. As said above, the way out is through.
ReplyDeleteRight now your goal is to GET SHIT DONE.
ReplyDeleteI need that on a sign over my desk. Just lower my standards to the standards they are paying me for, and cut through the crap. Get it done, and move on. That's what I try to tell myself over and over, but I keep getting caught in the grind, taking way too much time. I'm getting better. I'll probably be good at it by the time I quit. Sigh.
OH man. I feel ya. I know exactly what you mean -- I had a sobbing Sunday a few weeks back. The work was just piling up: classes, commuting, grading, book script due, conferences back to back weekends, and a personal tragedy. All in one clusterfuck moment.
ReplyDeleteThere are two ways to get out of it: a super wonderful break, where you get a massage or go to a movie or drink and eat something terrible for you, just to get the stress off, OR you double down for a shitty day of super productivity and THEN shrug it off.
And you use the summer (or the brief break between terms) to figure out where you can go next and have a better work/life balance.
I'm so sorry you're going through this. It sucks. May I recommend crepes to rid the stress?
Maybelle, you're not burned out. You're disillusioned. There's a difference. You do care; you care enough to post here to share that misery, which tells me that you wish it were different...which tells me that you care in more ways than you realize.
ReplyDeleteThe problem comes from feeling like everything you're doing doesn't matter one bit. I understand this, intimately.
We want to feel connected to our work, to feel like what we do matters, but we are teaching at a point in history when knowledge isn't valued, when learning isn't valued, when everything we care about--all the things that brought us to teaching--matter to no one but us.
You're not burned out from your job, my dear. You're disconnected. You care about the job, about why you got into teaching in the first place. You just feel isolated and unvalued.
We all get this. Like Annie, I'm sending big virtual hugs. Like Isis, I'm urging just to get the shit done.
Hang in there.
"At the end of the night, I looked back on the piles of grading, and just cried. Sobbed until I couldn't sob anymore. I looked at my gas stove and the papers and wondered how much trouble I would get in if I just let them all go up in flames. Burn baby, burn."
ReplyDeleteI too can relate to this all to well.
*Hugs*
Wish I could be more helpful. But remember there's a jack and coke waiting for you at the end of the stack. Have one on me.
Oh, Maybelle. I, too, can identify. And I agree with Greta that the problem is most likely structural, not personal (though depression screening wouldn't hurt if you keep feeling this way; even situationally-induced depressions can become self-perpetuating over time, and depression can make it hard to make good decisions -- including a decision to change, or just plain get out of, the situation that is making us miserable. And if you start eyeing the gas stove with Sylvia Plath-ish rather than incendiary intent, by all means consult a doctor).
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to look up the references right now, but I'm pretty sure that studies have shown that having no control over one's work (or other life) conditions is a major source of stress. I'm not sure the people who are trying to standardize and "normalize" (hat-tip to Hiram) college classes, despite what are often good intentions, realize how much they may be taking away one of the last few major sources of intrinsic satisfaction in our work underpaid, underappreciated faculty have: the freedom to experiment with new ideas, incentives, approaches, etc. They're also, of course, reducing the possibility that hundreds of professor-conducted informal experiments nationwide, and conversations among said professors, will come up with new and successful ways to reach our ever-changing student bodies (this, of course, is called "crowd-sourcing," and, along with teamwork and bottom-up management and employee entrepreneurship and a bunch of other current buzzwords, used to be a hallmark of colleges and universities staffed primarily by tenured and tenure-track proffies who were required, in the process of fulfilling service requirements, to talk to each other. Then somebody decided to "administer" and "manage" and "norm" us, and generally stifle exactly the sort of creative energy that businesses are trying to generate among their workers. I've filled out the Crampicle's "best places to work" survey more than once, and am always amused by how the questions -- which are really designed more for staff than for faculty -- reveal how much the old, lost model of college/university governance mirrored current managerial wisdom about "how to get the best out of your team," and distressed by how little the current employment conditions of most of the faculty reflect that wisdom).
It sounds like, right now, you have to get done what you have to get done. But as soon as possible, I'd suggest sitting down and figuring out when you can take some time off, preferably an hour or two a day and at least a day a week. That may seem absolutely impossible, but I find that, one way or another (sickness, extreme sleepiness, the inability to get started on the simplest task that you describe), my body and brain force me to take periodic time off. It works a lot better, and the down time is much more enjoyable, if I schedule it pre-emptively, rather than letting it overtake me at the worst possible time. Mind you, more often than not I don't manage to follow this advice myself, but things go better when I do.
How are things looking today, Maybelle? I hope you're feeling better, and have shifted a bunch of things from the "Do" stack to the "Done" stack.
ReplyDeleteMuch. I finished a lot of things that I had been avoiding/putting off for over a month, in addition to the new work that came in last week.
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