Work-Life Balance

[Charlotte]

When I am overwhelmed by email, I take my laptop offline, so I can answer all that I have to deal with at once, and only send them out when I am done.  I log in, send the emails, and then get off.  This stops the water torture effect of getting responses while I am trying to clear my decks.

This is genius! I'm so glad you mentioned that. It is one of the things that takes so much time because as I'm responding to emails several more come in! I'll start doing this immediately.

[FishProf]

You're welcome.  It also keeps me out of rabbit holes.  No Interwebs, no (well, fewer) distractions.

[Puget]

Glad you're getting some ideas you can use.

I'm also looking into those prepared meals that you can just heat up rather than try to cook two meals a day.

If you are really cooking two meals from scratch every day, stop. You could certainly use prepared meals now while you're feeling overwhelmed, but I'd suggest that this isn't a good long term strategy since they are much, much more expensive than cooking for yourself (and often less healthy). Rather, you can change the way you are cooking to achieve the same result--

First, why isn't spouse doing at least half the cooking?

Second, you are actually cooking lunch? That's fine if it's a break you treasure, but otherwise find a quicker way to feed yourself in the middle of the day. Leftovers microwaved in the container are lunch. Veggies and crackers with hummus are lunch. Crackers and cheese and an apple is lunch. Salad greens straight from the pre-washed container with some protein on top is lunch. And of course a sandwich is lunch. Etc.

Third, start cooking in big batches a few times a week to make leftovers for the rest of the week. Leftovers have a bad rap for some people but many things actually taste better after a day or two to let the flavors meld. I do most of my cooking on the weekend, when I enjoy it, rather than at the end of a long workday, when I do not--

Every weekend in the winter I make a big pot of a hearty soup, and generally also a baked dish of some sort (lasagna, enchiladas) and/or a big batch of roasted or sautéed vegetables that can then be served in various ways (tossed with pasta, over couscous etc.).

In the summer I tend to make a big batch of some grain (farro, couscous, etc.) and prep a mix of roasted and raw veggies so I can then assemble grain bowls (adding various combos of cheese, nuts, dressings, etc. through the week).   

Adapt of course to your own dietary preferences, but you get the idea.

[polly_mer]

I get that the tech allows for easy enforcement of such a policy, but I still wonder what the hell kind of school imposes such a requirement on faculty, which really does convert professors into customer service reps?

Oh, the many discussions you have overlooked or ignored related to the state of higher ed in the US to make that comment anytime after the mid-1980s.

Elite institutions that admit a small percentage of qualified applicants have standards and expect faculty to be professionals who profess, i.e., demonstrate scholarly methods to novices in a given field.  The random student needs the institution's continued goodwill far more than the institution needs any random student to remain enrolled.  The students also generally are proficient enough at being students that asking for help is a reasonable level.  The faculty are sufficiently invested in their faculty job that includes interacting with students that no requirements are needed to promote positive interactions.

Programs with professional licensure have standards and must compete with non-academic jobs for qualified faculty.  Students are unable to shop around for institutions with lower expectations in the same licensure programs.  Nearly all of these programs turn away qualified students due to lack of space.  Weeding students early in the program for underperformance is part of the process.  Again, the faculty are professionals who want to interact with qualified, hard-working students so no requirements to do the positive interactions are required.

Outside those spheres down at the level where every qualified student is admitted and the worry is having enough of those students enroll, focusing on student retention is key.  The educational value worth the expensive tuition well above the state school tuition is substantial interaction with the faculty including substantial personalized feedback.

At these institutions, the faculty workload is high because warm-body adjuncts aren't used.  The faculty are full-time  or professional fellows who are fully fractional.  Because of the faculty workload, expectations related to teaching and service are written.  People do get denied tenure for lack of service.  People are non-renewed for not meeting the written expectations related to positive student interactions.  The college needs every generic student much more than the college needs any individual faculty member.  Most of the students have other good choices and will leave if the faculty interactions do not meet their expectations.


Even farther down the prestige scale, the open-enrollment institutions know that overworked, underpaid, course-by-course, warm-body faculty will skimp on student interactions.  Grading and responding to emails are common ways to skimp to bring the faculty workload into reasonable effort/time for the money.

The need by the institution is to retain the faculty who support the struggling students so the students will rise to the occasion, learn a lot, and graduate with a true college education.  The easily replaced faculty who are ripping off the students to get a paycheck must be ruthlessly weeded to maintain standards for the mission of helping the students who most need the best teachers who will focus on student learning, not faculty teaching and definitely not professing.  The straightforward way to weed faculty is to have written requirements and fire people who clearly are trying to avoid meeting minimum requirements as not their job.

[Morden]

Hi Charlotte, Several times you've mentioned the time spent providing personalized feedback. Other posters have described some useful strategies, like cutting and pasting from a comment bank or using a rubric. Have you ever tried asking students to submit a letter along with their assignment specifying what they would like you to focus on in your feedback? (Try to make the prompt quite specific so you don't get people saying "everything.") Then you can focus your personalized feedback on what they ask (you also have back up documents in case they complain that you didn't mention something else) and use a rubric for the overall grading. This has the additional pedagogical benefit of getting them to think about their strengths and weaknesses before they submit. You shouldn't be working harder on the assignment than they are. Personally I use a rubric without specific points involved because it leads to less point-grubbing.
best wishes, Morden

[FishProf]

Another thing that can knock-down some of the feedback hamster wheel is to have a rubric and require students to fill it out for their own work when they submit.

When they have to check Zero - Not Provided on the Abstract section, they are far less likely to ask why they got points taking off for not having an abstract.  "I didn't know" is the fallback of the unengaged.

[Ruralguy]

Polly does a good job of outlining general faculty expectations at student-centered institutions, by which I mean that the institution needs the students more than the other way around. I'd say my school certainly fits into that middle category she spoke. I don't think anyone didn't get tenure because of poor service (at my school), but it does take up discussion time on P&T and awards committees. We really want senior faculty especially to take turns chairing stuff, etc.. We want junior faculty to go up the ladder of committees a bit and take interest in college wide programs. We especially want faculty to be academic advisers. Its very hard to juggle all of these duties by ignoring everybody, even for a day. It will only get worse!

[Vkw10]

Puget discussed meal prep as a time and money saver. I recommend buying a Hot Logic Mini, which is basically a hot plate in a lined and insulated lunch box, for re-heating meals. You put your single serving food container in, zip closed, plug in, and forget. When you're ready to eat, your oatmeal, grain bowl, soup, lasagna, or whatever, is warm and waiting, without those nasty hot and cold spots the microwave creates.

I often make a dozen grain bowls over the weekend. I'll use the same grain, legume, and veggies in all of them, then add different jarred sauces and/or sprinkle on different toppings. Monday's might have salsa, Tuesday's stir fry sauce and chopped nuts, Wednesday's marinara with a half dozen olives tucked on the side. My grain bowls aren't exciting, but Partner and I can eat a healthy hot lunch with no prep time every day, allowing us to take a walk or do some yoga during our half-hour break.

[Caracal]

I get that the tech allows for easy enforcement of such a policy, but I still wonder what the hell kind of school imposes such a requirement on faculty, which really does convert professors into customer service reps?

They want to be very student centered. We are encouraged to be very much like customer service reps. If a student is late on their work, we have to accommodate them. We can't have a "no late work" policy in our class because it's against school policy. I haven't tested this to see how enforced it is by the school.

We are also told to include the 24 hour email deadline in our syllabus so students are aware. They will contact the administration if we are not responsive enough. We have to include the contact information for our boss in the syllabus so students can go directly to them.

It has already been made very clear to me that administration will back the student over the faculty. Our main job is to make the students happy—not teach.

I think that is what is contributing to my frustration. First year teaching and maybe I was a little idealistic but I'm shocked with how terrible the students are and how the school does not seem to care if they actually learn. I can only hope that there are schools out there who still care about teaching and aren't so focused on keeping the customer/student happy.


One area that does take a lot of time is giving feedback. There is so much wrong with the assignment! I know they can only process so much but if I skip over something and then later on mention it they argue that I didn't tell them that before!

Of course, most of them don't even read the feedback. But my school does expect detailed, personalized feedback for each student so I have to provide it anyway. I'm working on the copy and paste method some of you have suggested and I think that will definitely help.

Often, some adjustments in how you structure classes and feedback can help with some of this. I had a lot of frustration with student expectations and attitude when I first started teaching as well. In retrospect, the students weren't jerky or entitled, at least most of them weren't. Their expectations are based on what they have encountered in previous classes.

Once you have a better sense of what those expectations are, you can manage them. For example, I give pretty limited feedback on most exams, but I explain that the rubric explains the points. However, I also tell them again and again that if they don't understand what went wrong based on the rubric, I'm always available to go through an exam in more detail and work with the student on how to improve. I emphasize that I've found this is a much more helpful and effective way for them to learn than me writing a million comments all over their exams.

Similarly, you can avoid lots of the issues with late work by just dropping a certain number of low stakes assignments. That way when the student tells you the long story about why they couldn't turn in the response paper, you can just listen sympathetically and then tell them "oh, no worries, that's why I drop two of them at the end of the semester! This kind of stuff happens, so no need to worry about trying to write it now! Just make sure not to miss more than one more! You're still not accepting the late work, but now students are going to think of this as a great policy that makes their lives easier, not something unfair and punitive.

On meals, I agree with everyone else. I'd also think about stuff you can freeze and then just have for nights when you don't have the time or inclination to make something. Tomato sauce is good for this. Its easy to make, it tastes much better than the jarred stuff, freezes well and then you just boil some noodles, defrost it, and that's dinner.

[cathwen]

Echoing Caracal:  I've had a drop-two policy for both discussions and quizzes for my online asynchronous class for several years now.  That policy is a real time-saver as well as an angst-saver, as I don't have to deal with many panicky emails, nor do I have to weigh the value of various excuses. And for those who do write in a panic, it also allows me to be chirpy and positive when writing back and telling students not to worry.  And, if you have a large number of quizzes/discussions/whatever, then even one zero isn't going to ruin them (although it will have some impact). 

For longer written assignments, I have a due date, but accept them up to one week late, with a one-point penalty per day late.  Therefore, the maximum penalty is seven points (out of 100), so no one suffers greatly.  I think this relieves some stress and anxiety and conveys the illusion that I am a generous person, which is never a bad thing when evaluation time rolls around.  Those who do take advantage of the extension are usually no more than a couple of days late—so a 95/100 becomes a 93.  Also, I use a rubric, and just check off the boxes and write brief comments.   This, too, is a time-saver.

As for emails, I honestly don't know what the university's policy is, but I always respond promptly—because I get rather few emails.  I don't know why that is.  If I had emails pouring in all the time, I would certainly put limits as suggested by others in this thread.

Finally, I have some idea what you're going through.  I had taught at two universities where the workload was reasonable—then got to UrbanU and got slammed with four different preps my first semester there, three of which were substantially different from courses I'd taught before.  I just could not prepare as thoroughly or imaginatively as I was used to doing—and that fall, on a visit to a doctor who asked me some "how's life" questions, I broke down sobbing because I was used to doing a better job.  He convinced me that adequate was good enough, certainly for that semester.  I took his advice to heart.  That probably saved me from a nervous breakdown.

[fishbrains]

The food angle is interesting. I hadn't thought of it before this thread, but we tend to buy big food and prep and freeze it. We'll buy a big pack of chicken breasts, roast or poach them, and then cut them into cubes and freeze them in family-size portions for future meals.

Our six-quart crockpot rarely gets put back in the cabinet because we are always making a big crockpot full of chile or stew or something and freezing lunch portions. Last week we bought a whole Boston butt pork roast and crock-potted it overnight. Plenty in the freezer now for future quick street tacos with some mango salsa. [I do get the feeling other posters have healthier eating habits than we do at times.]

It doesn't really take that much more time to make a larger pot of something or cook meat in massive quantities. Just a little more planning and plenty of freezer bags.

For busy weeks, we will also buy a pre-made veggie tray or fruit tray and gnaw on that for a while. Just having these available keeps us away from the chips and candy.   

Side note: We learned to label and date it all, or we'll just end up pulling out mystery packages from the freezer and staring blankly at them.