Anyone Else Hit a Wall?

[lightning]

I've been in this business a long time, so I can kind of almost predict when burnout might happen (for either me or my students).

Students have definitely hit a wall, but I had intentionally built in a slowdown in curriculum pace and assignments around this time (although all I did was push that content and corresponding assignments to later in the semester).

And this year, there is election day to use as an excuse to cancel classes for the students (as well as me). Since I don't teach Mondays nor Fridays, and there are no meetings scheduled for me, and most thankfully, COVID-19 has eliminated stupid pet project events, I've got a five day weekend beginning now.

[wareagle]

I'm four months on the new job, and haven't had a day off since the Fourth of July.  We lost all fall holidays to the compressed semester, and I am so strung out I'm shocked that I'm not becoming an alcoholic.  I can't seem to get anything accomplished.  There is no way to meet people, all meetings are via Zoom, and I am in an office that is nowhere near any of my staff or programs.  (Why?)  I feel incompetent, isolated, and completely stymied.  My staff are exhausted; several have battled COVID, most have had to be quarantined, and I don't think I've had a full crew since the semester began.  I can't bring myself to ask them to try new things, build new programs, etc.  They're all just trying to survive.

Survival seems to be the currency of the realm.

[sinenomine]

I develop a headache every day as the work keeps piling up. While I appreciate my campus's goal to get everything ready for Spring in the next few weeks so we can enjoy the break between semesters, I feel like everything's in warp speed right now, and a semester with no break is coming around the corner. Adding to my stress is the loss of two personal stress relievers: choral singing (out for the duration of COVID) and hanging out with friends in my back yard (not doable in the coming winter weather). I just keep telling myself to take things one day at a time and to not beat myself up for letting some things slide.

And I just ordered myself an advent calendar of 24 single servings of wine.

[mamselle]

The quiet room is also open for anyone's use...

   https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=1878.0

M.

     

[smallcleanrat]

So last week I hit a wall and dropped the ball on my classes. The virus and the shitshow at my university and general terror at the state of the nation beat me down. For about five days I did not answer emails, did not clarify some very unclear assignments for my grad students, could not answer emails. I shut down and left them hanging.

And then I came out of it. Yesterday and today I had Zoom meetings and began with apologies and moved forward. In one class I noticed that a lot of students were also behind and announced Amnesty Week where there would be no assignments only opportunities to make things up without penalty. It all went well, and the positive response of the students lifted me out of despair. Mostly. For now.

Anyway, I don't even know if this is a real question or just an offer to commiserate. Who else has hit a wall and how are you doing?

Glad you are feeling a bit better and that people were understanding, larry_c. Was anyone freaked out at all?

Personally, if my research advisor unexpectedly stopped responding to all communication for 5 days, I would be frantically trying to make sure they weren't lying in a ditch somewhere in need of help.

From practically everyone in my life I've communicated with about this, some level of burnout is completely normal given the circumstances.

[Aster]

Most of the senior professors in my department decided to retire en masse this year. Some of these people were pretty active in service and teaching, and their absence is sorely missed.

Another senior professor has decided to retire early this upcoming December.

Normally we might get one retirement per year maybe, sometimes two. For 2020, we're probably gonna clock-in with 5-6 retirements.

[brixton]

 Thanks LarryC for the reminder that these are extraordinary times.  Kindness and forgiveness for our students is wise.  Kindness and forgiveness for ourselves is a necessary coping mechanism.  I'm shooting for completion.  Not completion with accolades.  Just completion.

[Parasaurolophus]

Things seem pretty normal here, and I feel pretty OK. Except that I'm a little tired of trying so hard, and I'm looking forward to giving myself license to try less hard next semester. It's the synchronous discussions that kill me. They were hard to manage before the pandemic, and moving online has re-entrenched all the problems I had when I started here. I don't think I have the energy to do much to address them.

[Stockmann]

I've hit a wall, most definitely. This has been an abolutely horrendous year, apart form Covid we've had a family problem, I had a traffic accident, and while we've managed to avoid corona despite living in a basically out-of-control hotspot, this has come at a price, as we've taken pretty drastic measures. On top of that, my workload rose substantially due to switching to online teaching. Finally, there's the stress of, in the middle of a recession, not knowing how my job will fare next year. Counting my blessings, we're in good health (at least physically) and I still have a job, plus the research side of things has been pretty productive this year. But I find it almost impossible to get any work done, even the simplest tasks seem so daunting.
I've just heard ambulance sirens going by. I live not too far from a couple of major hospitals and, quite aside from official figures, sirens are a daily reminder of how bad things are here. I'm tired and stressed.

[Parasaurolophus]

Wait, holy crap! There's a reading week next week!

[nonsensical]

I'm sorry to hear everyone's struggles and exhaustion. I am also tired, though less than some of what I'm reading here and hearing from others. I've been having a hard time sleeping during the week, but so far I've been able to catch up on rest on weekends, which makes the beginning of the week easier. I also feel like there are some clear points for me to look forward to: I'll have some time off around Thanksgiving, our semester ends pretty soon after that, and I won't be teaching this spring. Knowing that opportunities for rest are coming up is incredibly helpful to me.

[polly_mer]

Reading nonsensical's post, I realize one thing I miss about academia is how many tasks were either done by the end of the term or moot and therefore off my todo list anyway.  The middle weeks of the term were packed in a way that my current job doesn't have, but academia, even as an administrator, had more breaks that were substantive and clearly delineated time.

I haven't hit a wall as hard as other people here describe, but I'm definitely in slow for anything that isn't urgent and almost nothing has felt urgent for months as deadlines continue to be pushed back for things that have to be in person.  One particular presentation was due in April 2020 and is now looking like January 2021 with the expectation that more work would be done since so much more time has passed, but the ability to do the work was limited by lack of access to the tools to do the work.  We've lost people from that team as they resigned from the company to pursue other opportunities or were reassigned within the company to tasks that could be done at home.

With the new-to-us everyone-who-possibly-can-must-telework mode, we don't get snow days any more (pity with more than a foot of snow we got this week all in one go) and the winter closure between Christmas and New Year's Day is not a complete shutdown this year.

[marshwiggle]

With the new-to-us everyone-who-possibly-can-must-telework mode, we don't get snow days any more (pity with more than a foot of snow we got this week all in one go) and the winter closure between Christmas and New Year's Day is not a complete shutdown this year.

That's pretty miserable. Shades of Ebenezer Scrooge, given the season.

[AmLitHist]

I'm real close to telling everyone and everything to fuck off.

^ This. ^   Students, chair, dean, admin, ALHS, Kid #1 (even though I feel really bad--she has CTE and bipolar and legitimately can't help being a PitA, but still).  Politicians, jackass neighbors, all y'all.

I can't even work up the interest to do my self-care/fun thing (crocheting) the past couple of weeks.

When I sleep, I have angry, stressful, weird dreams--e.g., being in bizarre work- or other real-world contemporary situations, surrounded by family members long dead or random people I went to school with from 1st grade through grad school, and those people being completely clueless idiots who cause things to go wrong, put me in danger, etc.  I woke up one night swinging and bopping the poor cat on the ass, waking us both up. 

My ortho problems are acting up (and no/poor rest is making them worse). I've got a 24/7 headache from needing eye surgery that Cigna is dragging their feet on approving, and with COVID numbers going nuts again, who knows when I can get it done? ALHS has developed a new and weird health problem that'll likely require daily outpatient IVs.  And since Kid #1 can't work--yet also can't get disability approved--I'm paying everybody's bills and not keeping up.  Other than that, things are dandy.

Sorry for the wallowing.  I'll be fine.  But right now, most days are like this.  The very rare good day is like this.  I'd even settle for seeing one of those "good" days right now.  (I guess if I can still laugh about it, I'm OK, right?)

[Caracal]

I'm real close to telling everyone and everything to fuck off.

^ This. ^   Students, chair, dean, admin, ALHS, Kid #1 (even though I feel really bad--she has CTE and bipolar and legitimately can't help being a PitA, but still).  Politicians, jackass neighbors, all y'all.

I can't even work up the interest to do my self-care/fun thing (crocheting) the past couple of weeks.

When I sleep, I have angry, stressful, weird dreams--e.g., being in bizarre work- or other real-world contemporary situations, surrounded by family members long dead or random people I went to school with from 1st grade through grad school, and those people being completely clueless idiots who cause things to go wrong, put me in danger, etc.  I woke up one night swinging and bopping the poor cat on the ass, waking us both up. 

My ortho problems are acting up (and no/poor rest is making them worse). I've got a 24/7 headache from needing eye surgery that Cigna is dragging their feet on approving, and with COVID numbers going nuts again, who knows when I can get it done? ALHS has developed a new and weird health problem that'll likely require daily outpatient IVs.  And since Kid #1 can't work--yet also can't get disability approved--I'm paying everybody's bills and not keeping up.  Other than that, things are dandy.

Sorry for the wallowing.  I'll be fine.  But right now, most days are like this.  The very rare good day is like this.  I'd even settle for seeing one of those "good" days right now.  (I guess if I can still laugh about it, I'm OK, right?)

Same boat, different context, but similarly just totally overwhelmed. 3 year old keeps throwing up, mostly at night but sometimes at other random times. Seems generally fine otherwise, but he keeps not going to daycare-which while stressful in its own way with Covid- he needs and we need. (It is not Covid)Probably it is fine, he needs to see a specialist, but chances are its just a weird kid thing. It is making me anxious, but it also just feels like the thing that makes everything totally overwhelming.