Can endless dealing with very bad students cause mental issues to professors?

[hamburger]

How's that job search going?

This adjunct position is a bad match for you.  Go do something else for less stress and more money.

I failed to get any interview for faculty positions in universities. I heard that not having any publication for the past few years was the main reason. Applications for jobs in companies also failed.

What actions have you taken that will put you in a better position as you continue to apply for jobs?

Have you contacted your academic colleagues inquiring about a soft money position so you can get back into research and peer-reviewed publishing while being employed in a relevant position?

Have you participated in some of the open activities to bring your relevant computer/AI/software skills up to current as well as starting the new professional network of people who are looking for those skills?  Having relevant examples of recent professional research activities that aren't peer-reviewed papers will help with the transition to certain industry jobs.

Have you done local networking with social groups so that people who know you can recommend you for jobs that you don't even know exist?  Remember, the suggestion was to join groups with the activities you enjoy so you make genuine acquaintances who think fondly of you, not just running in and immediately asking about jobs.

I have contacted academic colleagues in local universities and research institutes to ask for jobs/collaborations. Didn't work. I got a volunteer position in the past but two PhD students there treated me as their technician and they were not very nice. They wanted me to do the dirty work for them to get a PhD. I heard from two persons that due to insurance and security issues, unlike 30 years ago they cannot just give me access to their lab. They also have no money to hire me. As I got my PhD many years ago, I am also not qualified to be a postdoc.

Tried to do local networking by joining many meetup events in AI/DS/ML. I don't live in downtown. It took about four hours to travel back and forth between home and the city center. As far as I know, most of the people who joined those events are average joe who want to get a job in AI/DS/ML. They can't help me.  Once the pandemic is over, I could try again.

In terms of publications, somebody mentioned that even I entered the field long before the boom, not having any publication for the past few years is very bad. That is why I was not invited for interviews. So unless I get published again, I should forget about applying for TT faculty positions?

[Parasaurolophus]

In terms of publications, somebody mentioned that even I entered the field long before the boom, not having any publication for the past few years is very bad. That is why I was not invited for interviews. So unless I get published again, I should forget about applying for TT faculty positions?

I mean, yeah. You can try, but if it's posing problems for you now, you can expect those problems to get worse over time.

What are you bringing to the table that other applicants aren't?

[the_geneticist]

Look, I've been following your posts for a long time.  You are clearly miserable in your job.
I have some blunt advice, take it or leave it.
Stop dreaming of the tenure track job.  You think it comes with respect, prestige, and diligent admiring students.  That is an absolute fantasy.  You'll just be the newest, smallest fish in a bigger pond.  And as you have said, you are getting 0 interviews and the market is saturated.
I'd say apply for teaching jobs elsewhere, but I think you would still be miserable.  And your absolute contempt for your students will bar you from getting a job in any sort of teaching college. 

So, my advice?  Quit your job and walk away from academia.  Apply for other sorts of jobs (industry or government).  If you need money to pay the bills and keep the lights on, there are lots of service industry positions.  The pay can't be that much worse than at a CC and you won't have to interact with students.  Maybe in a couple of years you could circle back to academia as a consultant/tech specialist.

[polly_mer]

Let's try this again:

1) For the soft money position possibility, you contact people from your previous academic life who know you as a fabulous researcher.  You don't ask strangers; you ask your erstwhile peers and colleagues if they need a co-PI or an advanced postdoc.  Those are the only folks likely to work with you on finding a joint project on which you can be funded for a couple years.  If you don't have anyone you can call and start the discussion, then your academic career is at an end.

2) You don't go to networking events once or twice and get a job.  You make friends through church, the local birdwatching club, volunteering at the library, taking cooking classes, or something else that has a reasonable number of people doing interesting things that then think fondly of you because you are one of the group.  That is how you get, say, an unadvertised job at the local non-profit or the hardware store.

3) In terms of ML/AI/whatever, you join an online challenge team or similar endeavor to work with people in that direct area.  This is something you do for free to learn the skills and have code/results/whatever you can show prospective employers who want to see current skills including technical and the ability to work as part of the team when you're not in charge.  Employers sometimes recruit from the winners of those challenges and we all, as employers, look for evidence of recent, high-quality activities in the relevant areas.

Nothing you have listed indicates really wanting to get a new job.  Instead, it looks a lot like the students who insist that whatever they are doing should count and therefore the standards should be lowered.

[mahagonny]

I think this is a sign that teaching is not the right job for you. And that you probably should not have a job that involves responsibility for people from different backgrounds.

I find the idea that some people have grown up without toilets or toilet paper fascinating. I'd want to know: what was their first response? How have they adapted? What other fundamental things are different?  What can we learn from them?

I remember a student from Africa who described accepting an invitation from some Americans to go hunting. On the way to go hunting, they stopped for something to eat. He said, "If you can afford buy something to eat, why are you going hunting?"  In his home village, there was so little food that the boys and girls ate on alternate days. I learned far more from that student than he learned from me.

OP, I hope you will get some help and support for your emotional difficulties, and find a profession that is more suited to your strengths.

Agree with this, but add: I can't read hamburger's various threads of assorted teaching calamity without thinking, it's not really surprising when people such as hamburger, who obviously are not finding their groove in the teaching world  and don't appear likely to any time soon, do not feel they have the financial security to switch careers. Can anyone explain why we don't deserve this? It's bad all around. I'm not saying anyone reading this could do anything to dramatically affect the landscape. I'm just saying, big surprise? Not.

[polly_mer]

who obviously are not finding their groove in the teaching world  and don't appear likely to any time soon, do not feel they have the financial security to switch careers.

"lack of financial security to switch" has never been part of hamburger's saga.  hamburger's effective mantra has always been "I literally can't get any other job even after applying.  Thus, I sign on the teaching dotted line every time it is offered".

I don't know what to offer people who cannot get a minimum wage job by asserting they are literate and passing the criminal background check.  Every time I've been in that position, I had a minimum wage job within hours of applying because the barrier really was "literate enough to fill out the form in under an hour and likely not a violent criminal based on visual observation".

Getting a professional class job usually is substantially harder with a longer search time, but getting a minimum wage job with at least 20h per week was not all that hard in the time before COVID-19 shutdowns for people in places large enough that downtown is plausibly 2 hours away on public transportation.

[adel9216]

What I have noticed is that the OP seems to have a pretty solid contempt for foreigners.  Bias like this is exactly what we do not want in education. It also strikes me as ironic, as the OP him/herself appears to be a non-native-English speaker.

This is completely wrong. I am a foreigner myself and I made friends with many foreign students. I am not against foreign students but I do not like students (even they are locals) who don't listen, who don't follow rules and ask for exceptions all the time. Their excuse is so stupid that you can tell right away that they are fake. One student told me that he got robbed but the police was too busy to visit his home. Thye would see him on the next day when there was a test. Another student told me that she forgot to bring her purse and had no money to take a bus to school to take a test. Last semester, in one test alone, I got over 10 requests for exceptions. My colleagues told me that some of his students had grandfather/dog dying multiple times and they had to attend funerals instead of going to school to take the test.

I also don't like those who do not study but like to complain to the department head to get higher marks than they deserve. It is a culture in this school. I do not like students telling me that they have paid for my salary and I have grant their endless requests. I do not like students who abuse the use of "human rights".  I also dislike those who made up their version of the stories and posted nasty insulting comments about me on RMP to ruin my reputation. Unfortunately, there are many such students in my CC.

I tend to agree with Hegemony. Just as a note and with all due respect, saying "I have friends as foreigners" is the equivalent of "I have a black friend" card. Having friends from other cultural background is not a protective tool against bias or prejudice.

But other than that, you seem to be very unhappy and frustrated at your job. And from the way you're speaking, it truly feels like you've been feeling this way for a long time.

[mahagonny]

Whatever the cause of your current issues, you have them.

Seeking out psychotherapy would be a good choice.

Probably a change of scene would also help.

Psychotherapy is expensive. You have to have good insurance to get it once a week from someone who can prescribe medications and knows them well. I think a change of scene would help, but I don't know how feasible that is.

[Caracal]

Every semester I get endless requests to change the rules. That is one of the major stress factors. In one class, we gave an exception to two students due to sickness. Then, the majority of the class had health issues throughout the semester and asked for exceptions. In another class, one student had IT issue. Then, the majority of the class had IT issues and asked for exceptions. Colleagues have been telling me that students always try to push around to test how far they can go with their professors at the beginning of the semester. Then, they behave accordingly.

Everybody gets requests to change the rules. Sometimes those requests are reasonable, sometimes they aren't. The consistent thread is that you take everything as a personal affront, instead of just part of the job. The reason most of us have standard operating procedures and policies around things like missed exams, late work and absences is because it keeps us from getting emotionally invested in every request. Then you don't have to waste your time gnashing your teeth about students trying to take advantage of you.

[mahagonny]

How's that job search going?

This adjunct position is a bad match for you.  Go do something else for less stress and more money.

I failed to get any interview for faculty positions in universities. I heard that not having any publication for the past few years was the main reason. Applications for jobs in companies also failed.

Maybe you need to work on your interviewing style. Do you come across as relaxed and confident? Practice your lines. On this forum you go from zero to sixty on the anxiety scale quite quickly. How about some Kava kava tea or a nice brisk walk before interviewing? Not too much coffee.

I don't know what to offer people who cannot get a minimum wage job by asserting they are literate and passing the criminal background check.  Every time I've been in that position, I had a minimum wage job within hours of applying because the barrier really was "literate enough to fill out the form in under an hour and likely not a violent criminal based on visual observation".

A person who sees insults too readily in common dealings with people won't last in a retail position. Of course I don't even know if one can survive on minimum wage in hamburger's area.

[hamburger]

It has been to my attention that most of the TT jobs that I applied last Fall had selection committee chairs who are in completely different areas. How could they be asked to be the SCC to judge applicants who applied for positions in areas completely unrelated to theirs?

[Parasaurolophus]

It has been to my attention that most of the TT jobs that I applied last Fall had selection committee chairs who are in completely different areas. How could they be asked to be the SCC to judge applicants who applied for positions in areas completely unrelated to theirs?

That's how it works.

A large department might have a few people working in the same area as you, but at most institutions, if they're hiring you it's because they don't already have someone with your area of specialization. Chairing a search doesn't usually give someone special discretion or powers; they're just tasked with organizing the small group of people who will comb through all the files to identify the best candidates, interview them, and bring the best of these before the department for the entire department's vote.

[hamburger]

It has been to my attention that most of the TT jobs that I applied last Fall had selection committee chairs who are in completely different areas. How could they be asked to be the SCC to judge applicants who applied for positions in areas completely unrelated to theirs?

That's how it works.

A large department might have a few people working in the same area as you, but at most institutions, if they're hiring you it's because they don't already have someone with your area of specialization. Chairing a search doesn't usually give someone special discretion or powers; they're just tasked with organizing the small group of people who will comb through all the files to identify the best candidates, interview them, and bring the best of these before the department for the entire department's vote.

Thanks. So it means my applications were evaluated by people who are not really qualified to judge my research.

[Ruralguy]

I think that's a cynical conclusion. They are qualified to judge a broad set of achievements, but no, not necessarily able to say Hamurgers paper on  Field Topic 1 is better than Hotdog's paper on Topic 2.
But then neither are university wide tenure committees, and they somehow manage, though of course often have the same complaint registered.

In any case...who cares....you are always going to be hired by people who aren't great judges of the specifics of your work. Expressing disdain for them is likely only going to result in not being hired.

[Puget]

It has been to my attention that most of the TT jobs that I applied last Fall had selection committee chairs who are in completely different areas. How could they be asked to be the SCC to judge applicants who applied for positions in areas completely unrelated to theirs?

That's how it works.

A large department might have a few people working in the same area as you, but at most institutions, if they're hiring you it's because they don't already have someone with your area of specialization. Chairing a search doesn't usually give someone special discretion or powers; they're just tasked with organizing the small group of people who will comb through all the files to identify the best candidates, interview them, and bring the best of these before the department for the entire department's vote.

Thanks. So it means my applications were evaluated by people who are not really qualified to judge my research.

Hate to break it to you, but if you were applying for research university TT positions, and  haven't published in years no one was evaluating your papers-- they spent a couple of minutes looking at your CV, saw you weren't research-active, and gave it a pass. And if you were applying for teaching-focused jobs no one is interested in your papers. So either way, this is a moot complaint.

You have gotten a lot of tough love advice here on how your approach and attitude are getting in your way of building a better career and life for yourself outside of academia. I don't expect you to start listening now, and I get it-- it's really hard to give up on your picture of what your career should be. But it's not working, so why not try something else?