This is not a vocation

I want to end this series of 9 blogs with a particularly challenging concept: academia is not a vocation.

You are not on the front lines (probably) battling Covid. No-one is clapping for you. Even the handful of academic scientists working on a vaccine like science for science I bet. Finding stuff out. Everything after is a bonus. 

Why is it important to recognise this? It is about creating balance in your life, and enabling you to set boundaries about what is and is not reasonable working hours. It is about being able to carve out time to do the various aspects of your job without sacrificing the rest of your life (health, family and friends) on the altar of academia.

Some academics bridle at being told it is not a vocation. It REALLY winds their clock and I’ve seen a lot of angry social media exchanges on this topic. I rarely use generational / class tropes, but forgive me, I am going to. The belief that academia is a vocation is particularly prevalent amongst a certain millennial-and-later generations, and I have to say it, folks from the middle classes more generally. Millennials and the after millennials (and the middle classes) have been brought up in a world where they believe work should be:

• (a) rewarding (on a personal level)

• (b) they should receive personal recognition of their greatness and be taken care of, nurtured and cherished by their employer

• (c) that work should be their passion.

There are outliers of course, and I personally know a few Gen Xer’s who need a reality check. Whilst these are lovely sentiments, they are just that. Sentiments.

I call bullshit here. This became a thing only to convince people to work for free and be enslaved by neoliberalism. Also it’s a thing that makes you feel important and special because I know we can all think of jobs that do not fulfil a, b and c and yet are critical to the functioning of society. The people that do those jobs are not inferior to you. 

Work is to there to pay you for your labour. It puts food on your table and a roof over your head. The minute it is unable to do this, you are engaged in charity. It is not work. When people use the phrase ‘vocation’ they mean working for free. You work for free, for nothing. There is a certain kind of self-indulgent bullshit in this narrative I cannot imagine my father, who worked down a mine, ever partaking in. 

This is not academia. Academia is for profit. Yes, you may enjoy some parts of your job, and that is wonderful. It’s still a job, and there is a lot of bullshit nobody enjoys in that job. You would not think working for Goldman Sachs was a vocation (trust me, I did, it wasn’t), and if anyone suggested it to you, you would laugh. They are for profit too. You probably don’t think working in Tesco’s is a vocation either, yet I think if recent times have taught us anything, it is a far more important job than yours. 

Academia is not special. It is a job. Nothing more, nothing less. When you frame academia through this lens, things look a little different. You may start to ask questions like ‘why am I working on Saturday to do the 30th open day this year when my contract states Mon-Fri 9-5?’. Why am I working evening and weekends and never taking my contractually entitled annual holiday? Why do I revel in busyness exchanges? Why do I not call in sick when I am in fact sick? Why am I checking my emails at all hours? Why do I allow myself to be routinely exploited, and then feel terrible about not meeting the norms of my exploitation?

It is not a vocation. It is a job for which you are paid. 

This is important to remember as in 2020/2021 all kinds of requests are going to be made of you that engage some kind of latent charity (vocation) instinct. They are not reasonable, humane, or your job.

Why I am saying this and making your feel bad? Because 2020/21 is going to be tough, and if you want to preserve your sanity and your writing and research career you need to start saying no to things otherwise you will have a mental or physical health crisis in the name of a vocation that does not exist. 

It is nice to like your job. But it is much better to have a life beyond it.

(If you are not being paid, please find a job that actually pays you. It is the very least your humanity demands for your labour – being an academic is not that great you should sacrifice your life trying to achieve it. It is a literal human right to be paid for your labour).

Changing gears in your writing practice

The purpose of the Academic Coach Writing Course is to build up writers who feel stuck, and writers who are not stuck but need better habits through a series of modules that gradually increases your writing time to solid blocks that are regularly scheduled. 

The psychology blocking many academic writers from being more productive and efficient is based on the one of the toughest writing myths to crack: ‘I can only write when I have big blocks of time’. Because big blocks of uninterrupted time rarely materialise, writers who believe this don’t write, or if they do write, it is gruelling through the night binge writing. And when sabbatical or other ‘big block’ opportunities do arise, they still don’t write as they are so out of practice writing has become a THING of fear and loathing. They cannot work without being 3 months over a deadline.

 Cracking this particular nut is hard work.

The course progresses from writing for a mere 30 minutes to longer periods (perhaps 2-3 hours). This is about bringing you into the writing habit, making it like the brushing your teeth habit. No fuss. No drama. We call this rhythmic writing, from Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work’. Writing is just a thing that, at a particular time of day, appears in your diary and you do. The aim, by the end of the course, is to move you from not writing, to writing regularly, to writing in fairly large regularly scheduled blocks. Once you become proficient at this, the course aims to move on from this type of rhythmic writing (regular scheduled slots) to so called journalistic writing – anytime, anywhere.

We look at other types of writing practices of course, what Newport calls bimodal scheduling (big blocks of writing and big blocks of non writing time) and monastic scheduling (the archetypal cabin the woods, or writing retreat). These two particular writing philosophies are generally not that practical, but it’s possible in the time of Covid 19, at least some element of monastic scheduling might be either necessary of attractive depending on your particular life circumstances.

The changed practices of HE in 2020/21 are going to pose a particular challenge to those writers who are welded to the ‘I can only write in large blocks’ myth. Even small blocks of time might be hard to come by. Practicing the art of journalistic writing will be crucial for moving projects forward. Dipping in and out of writing, 15 minutes here or there, will move your writing projects forward enormously, but this type of writing requires a massive mind shift and a writing practice that facilitates it.

If you’ve never done this before, it can sound rather fantastical, but with support this kind of writing can become second nature. Join us on Academic Coach to find a supportive writing environment where we can change up our writing practice together.

Happier writing needs a flexible mind.

Planning in the new reality

Academic Coach is a big advocate of planning: it is a prerequisite of becoming a happier writer. Many academics don’t like to plan, and in the case of reluctant or sporadic writers, there is some underlying writing anxiety that provokes a disdain for planning. Without a plan, you don’t write, and if you don’t like writing, well that all works out just fine. 

Here are ten reactions I see when planning is raised as a must to be a happier writer. In no particular order:

1. I don’t plan – I’m not a planner (the absolutist rejection of planning as a concept)

2. I don’t plan my academic writing because … (this accepts planning might be beneficial per se, but has one thousand excuses about why they don’t do it, along the lines of ‘I can only write when…eg all the planets are aligned).

3. I don’t plan as it never works out (the defeatist position)

4. I don’t like planning (I only do things that make me feel good position) 

5. I can’t plan because I don’t know how to do this effectively (the perfectionist position: this I can help with)

6. When I plan and it doesn’t work out, self-loathing occurs (the perfectionist position)

7. Things never go as I planned (the fatalist position)

8. Planning makes me feel bad (the fear of failure position)

9. I don’t like to estimate how long things take me (the fear of reality position).

10. Other people ruin my plans, so I don’t make them (the lack of personal agency position). 

To hijack Silvia’s phrase, these are specious barriers to writing. None of it is real, it is a story you choose to tell yourself. Excuses 1-4 are simply excuses not to change your behaviour. But these excuses are a substitute for a more visceral fear of writing that has developed over time, and accordingly you have reverted to the Ostrich position. 5-9 are rooted in perfectionism, the twin of the fear of failure. The last one is my absolute favourite because it’s so very common and so easily cured by taking control of your own diary.

If you recognise your reaction to planning in this list, fear not, Academic Coach has the cure where over 10 weeks we engage in some gentle brain reengineering about planning, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, procrastination, and all the other reasons you don’t like to plan.

Planning has always been important to being a happier writer, but in the next year or two, planning is indispensable to your happiness, precisely because ‘here there be dragons’. When the unknown presents many terrors, planning is the remedy. You will have to take control of your diary or you will do absolutely nothing of merit writing wise. Enough with the Churchill nodding dog routine. It is not possible to do all that is being asked of you, so choose the things you will commit to and accept there are things you cannot do.

Micro planning

Once your teaching has been allocated to you, you can plan all your writing and research activity in slots in your on-line diary. At the beginning of term, there will be official meetings you have to attend – exam boards, boards of study and so on that are planned a year in advance. Put these in. When unplanned meetings appear out of the ether, missing a fixed agenda, you can ask yourself: do you have space in your plan, or don’t you? If that slot was allocated to writing, you do not move writing to attend that meeting. You would not move teaching. Don’t do it.

Macro planning

This is the part academics struggle the most with. Or should we say realistic macro planning. Planning the year, or two, when it comes to your research is seriously important. You set (realistic) targets for yourself, that in turn requires the micro planning above to achieve. Let’s say it takes 100 hours to complete an article to submission, and you are planning your diary from Sep-Sep. If you have not started, it is pointless putting in ‘article completion by October’. It is not going to happen, because you can’t find 100 hours in your diary between Sep-Oct to complete it. This is why planning upsets people. The cold hard reality is, this stuff takes time. But with realistic deadlines (perhaps you can find 100 hours over 3 months), stuff does get done. This also means sticking to your allocated slots, which helps when saying no to meetings. It is a lovely virtuous circle of writing harmony.

A viable plan for the year will differ depending on your teaching load, career stage, and discipline, single or multi authored, theoretical or empirical research, so I am not here to say X is a realistic target for you. This is something you learn after trial and error (note, error, not failure).

I have some planning resources you can find here if you absolutely don’t know where to start, but the basics you need to consider is what, why, how and when. It’s that simple.

 Happier writing begins with serious planning.

Research rescue: how, why and when

Today I want to talk about stalled research and how (and if we should) rescue it. Stalled research is perhaps the trickiest type of research: this is the research that you were engaged with before Covid, but have not looked at since. If you have project deliverables for a funder, you do not have the luxury of abandoning this project. In that case, fortitude is needed and extensions need to be negotiated. But at least you have somebody to be accountable to and with. You are also probably working in a team that will also keep you accountable.

If you are not tied into a funder, it can feel easy to just bin it, and move on. Dispense with the guilt. Stalled research lacks the shiny new excitement of the freshly started project. Like relationships, research is just better at the start. You don’t know how hard it’s going to be, and it’s all a wonderful discovery. It’s the follow through that is tricky. It is absolutely possible that you have started new research during Covid, but left that stalled project in a box marked ‘failed’. 

 The question is, will you leave it there?

If you have a stalled research project, it is possible that you have convinced yourself you have legitimate reasons for not bothering with this research anymore, eg your research method became unfeasible because the lab was shut, samples died (do samples die? I don’t know anything about Stem), or you were unable to observe participants, or carry out in person interviews etc. Someone else has written the thing you were going to do (unlikely). Maybe this is true, and you are not able to adapt your specific research method, or maybe, could it be, that you could not face making the necessary adjustments to the project to move it forward? 

Picking up old research is hard. Often we have just ‘gone off’ it. Eight months ago it was cutting edge and timely, now it feels a bit ‘bleurgh’.

Should you continue?

Writing and researching slots are going to be incredibly precious in the next 12 months, so whilst in my usual writing advice I would say never abandon research (wasted time!), I think this is a genuine time to make a pragmatic call. Answer these simple questions to help frame your decision making, and take away the guilt, feelings of failure and all the *emotions* of it. Get practical.

1. How far along is it? Are you closer to the end than the beginning? [If Yes, this is a tick in the continue box]

2. How critical is this to your own personal goals (this might be tied into promotion, REF, working with certain people, publishing in certain journals)?

3. How difficult is X problem to overcome (new ethics committee to change research design, or just tweaks around the edges)?

4. Do you have partial data you could reframe into a different article / piece?

5. Can you work with someone who can bring a different theory/angle and ditch the empirical parts (also bonus – half the work)?

Sometimes it will not be so much abandonment than rescuing a project by changing its shape or angle, by bringing others on board or only having a partial dataset that answers one question (or poses further questions for research).

Do you want to continue?

It is only practical to engage in research rescue if you are motivated to do so. And I mean really, really motivated. In normal times, you ought to have a full research pipeline where you can move projects up and down the list, and pick up and leave off depending on deadlines, waxing and waning motivation and so on. 

These are not normal times.

The next 12 months will be HARD on research and writing time. Motivation, which is always key to being a happier writer, really comes to the fore. Do you really want to do this research in the next 12 months? If there is any doubt, abandon it now and begin something you actually feel motivation to work on. In the coming academic year you will have severely waning motivation to do anything beyond just making teaching work, so you need all the help you can get in moving any research forward.

Why should I care?

Although this all feels a bit *who cares, we are in a pandemic* it is important to remember it won’t always be this way. Or, worse, it will. Regardless, you are still going to have to produce research to keep your job, and I can guarantee you this, University promotions and hiring committees will not give a fig about the pandemic as an excuse for a publication gap because other people will have continued production because this is a super competitive career. You know it, I know it.

 The classic writing advice to finish the thing that is closest to completion (regardless of how much you like it) still stands. If the pre Covid research is nearly done, bite the bullet and finish. But if you are anywhere else further back than nearly there, it is seriously time to ask those five questions and decide this: if I have only got time for one piece of research in the following 12 months, is this going to be it?

Next time: This is not a vocation

The value of rest

The Academic Writing Course is big on scheduling. Many a module is on the joy of scheduling. I am big on scheduling. We don’t find time or make time to write. Time is not lost down the back of the sofa. We are not a time traveller, or God. The best we can do is schedule time (I hate the phrase manage time, as though it’s an unruly toddler -  you are not chasing time around the living room). 

Scheduling time is thus important to being a happier writer (and a happier academic). You may have noticed that your schedule is presently looking zoom bombed. 

 That is something we need to talk about.

 How do you fill your diary? Do you allow others to simply control it by filling it with endless meeting invitations? Or do you take control, map out your hours and what you will do with them, and then should meetings appear, either you are free or you decline as you are otherwise scheduled.  You do not schedule your work around other people’s meeting whims.

The single biggest hack for becoming a happier writer is taking control of your own diary. It is like magic!

 People who don’t write love meetings because it gives them a legitimate (in their mind) excuse for not writing. If you are a regular academic (not a head of department, dean etc) and you had previously a small x number of meetings per week, there is no reason you should be attending an exponential of that number now. Most ECRs and junior staff generally don’t have weekly administrative meetings (I’m not talking about teaching here), and if you do, you are probably doing  role that is so far above your pay grade you are being exploited.

 Just because other people can’t get their shit together to have one meeting, does not mean you have to become their zoom slave. Meetings without written published agendas are not meetings. They are opportunities to ambush you – don’ fall for it. If it’s critical, they will put it in writing, and you can read it at your leisure. If they have not committed it to writing, they are, variously: using your time to do what is their job; fake consulting you on decisions already taken; or giving you updates on things likely to change next week.

This is the sound of experience you are hearing, not cynicism. 

Time can’t be found, made or managed. But I do believe that time can be wasted and meetings are a classic example. 

Of course, I could suggest tuning in and dropping out as the oldies used to say, but I don’t believe this is a good idea. Be in a meeting, or don’t. If you are in it, contribute. If you have nothing to contribute, then you didn’t need to be there – this is a good early lesson to learn (some people never learn it). When you have tuned in, you have already decided not to write, and that’s a fact, no matter what you do when your camera is off. 

The Academic Coach Writing Course thus prioritises practicing scheduling writing. It is a lot harder for some people to do this than you might imagine. But in these Covid times, I think it’s important to actually practice scheduling rest too. I hear all you parents of small children bristling and laughing at this suggestion. However you are managing your children and work at this time, within that work slot, you must also schedule rest. Even if things remain undone. You are (I’m assuming) not a brain surgeon and no-one will die if your work doesn’t get done. Get some perspective. So what if you are late with your report, your marking, your book manuscript or whatever. So what. The world continues to turn.

Rest is critical to productivity and stable mental health. Those who work all through the night produce less than those who work regular calm hours. Without rest, we become emotionally and physically depleted. Without rest, we have no reserves. Without rest, there are, as doctors are fond of saying, no good outcomes.

So as well as scheduling time to write, you must now schedule time to rest. Rest between any on-line interactions. Move away from the screen, your chair. Have periods where you are in fact taking a break (you are legally entitled to these). This will inevtibly eat into your writing and research time. So be it. The whole point of the Academic Coach Writing Course is creating efficiency in your writing routines – spend less time doing it, getting more done.

Since some academics find doing nothing more agitating than working, rest periods can also be periods where you plan and think and reflect (but not in some hardcore journaling or homework type of activity). I would always encourage that.

Rest is the most important thing you can schedule. Do it today.

Next time: Research rescue: how, why and when

Navigating the (old) new HE context

Today’s blog seeks to draw your attention to the new (old) HE environment. I say new (old) for a reason. It has become apparent to me in the last couple of years that many academics – PhD’s, ECRs, established researchers, and tenured professors have a highly individuated experience of ‘academia’. Sure, we can all get behind some easy tropes: reviewer 2, tyrannical administrators; over-paid Vice Chancellors. But actually scratch the surface, and there is no one ‘academia’ we all seem to recognise. There are good reasons for this. Those at the beginning and at the end of their career have a lot in common in that they understand very little about what it is to be an academic for the vast majority in the trenches. They are both hopelessly disconnected from reality but for completely different reasons.

A professor who never even needed a masters degree to get a job has had (and STILL has) a very different experience of academia than the professor who needed and got their PhD sometime between the 1990’s and 2000. Professors and established academics who got their PhDs and needed multiple publications to get a (probably permanent) job (say between 2000-2010) have had a very different academic experience again. Those who got their PhD, need multiple publications, suffered extreme precarity, and probably needed a monograph and a grant, and needed a huge amount of luck and connections have had a different experience again. Those still doing there PhD know all about precarity and publications, yet still seem to have a hopelessly romantic idea (and ideals) about what it is like to actually work at a University on a full time contract. Throw in the intersections of discipline, geography, race, gender, and disability and these communities will describe an academia that the first cohort can never and will never recognise (although they sit in hugely senior positions).

I’m not talking about different experiences of the job market here either, but different experiences once you have entered academia proper. These shifts in the job market merely reflect the broader shifts within universities, that have in turn moulded the expectations of staff too. These expectations play out differently amongst the different cohorts.

The Covid era academia may look staggeringly different to some colleagues, when in fact all Covid has done is rip away the mask. It’s a business, run by people who know little about business. It has the legal trappings of a charity, but is operated as a purely for-profit enterprise. Accordingly it seeks to exploit its workforce at every possible turn, who willingly, in the name of vocation and believing in the charitable status, passion or a number of other tropes, will work 24/7 in order to maximise its profit. 

This is the old (new) university. It’s one of the most competitive careers out there filled with over-achieving type As. For the last 20 years, it has been nothing but chaos, with restructurings, department closures, redundancies, financial mismanagement, invention of new annual league tables with ever changing goal posts, and continual reinvention of the administrative wheel as an army of administrators seek to justify their existence. Covid is just another turn of the chaos wheel.

The Covid era University expects unlimited access to your personal space via zoom; scheduling classes at any time of the day or night; preparation for teaching on-line (without training) but also for you to come into campus and teach in person in a pandemic whilst offering no meaningful personal protection. 

 Is this so different to the old academia? Not so much. 

 You’ve been expected to work 24/7 for a long time via email and instant responses to students, journal editors and administrators. You’ve been a slave to timetabling officer for time immemorial, and some people have regulary taught on the weekend for many years, not to mention the away days and the open days that eat into your personal time. Training? You can be given a course you know nothing about a week before term starts. Transforming your teaching pedagogy at the drop of hat to meet some NSS target is commonplace. One year, feedback is the priority. Next year, its ‘learning communities’. And the wheel rolls on. Change for the sake of change is the watchword. Is on-line teaching such a jump? Giving more, more and then some more again is hardly Covid specific. 

Granted, being forced to come into work to contract a deadly disease is an untenable step further, but it’s not so far off the well-travelled path. Colleagues have been striking over workload and work conditions for the last two years, with a suicide and mental health crisis in academia ever present. Care for your well-being has been distinctly lacking for some time. We are all a little tired of the downward dog solution.

Navigating with the compass of truth

So, how do you navigate this new (old) Covid University. First, it is up to you to face facts and begin to see Covid academia as an extension of the same academia as before. Once you accept that perhaps exploitative and unreasonable requests are being made of you, most likely in contravention of basic health and safety and your employment contract are not a one-off (this is a crisis) situation, but merely an extension of the previous exploitation, your mind-set ought to shift towards what is possible and reasonable for you to do, and what is not. These will almost certainly fall short of what is being requested from one week to the next. 

Facing this truth will prevent you falling into the trap of self-doubt, imposter syndrome and wondering why you are just not good enough. These thoughts are a spiral downwards to abandoning research and writing in the never ending quest to be the perfect on-line tutor.

The boundaries you can put in place now, having accepted these facts, will keep you sane later. Become your own committee of no. Think carefully about the battles you pick.  It is important you think through your survival tactics early and doggedly define your priorities and stick to them, otherwise the next 12 months are going to be very difficult indeed.

Remember this – just like we don’t all experience academia in the same way, we will not experience Covid academia in the same way. The winners will keep winning. The losers will continue to do all the heavy lifting right until they have worked themselves into the ground. You must see your situation as it is. Be your own advocate.

See the old (new) University as its always been. It’s not you, it’s them.

Next time: the value of rest

Academic writing in the time of Covid: first steps

This is the third in a series of blog about academic writing in the time of Covid 19. Whilst much traditional writing advice is still absolutely valid, it needs to be placed in an entirely new context that raises particular challenges. The tenth blog will transition from Covid to deal with academic life beyond Covid and how this time is likely to accelerate changes we have already seen in the last few years.

 First steps: Your new reality

The mission of the Academic Coach is to create happier writers. The emphasis is on the happier. For some, this means more productivity, more efficiency or more elegant prose, but for others it is about having a more balanced relationship with the research /writing aspect of your career. Having time to write that is not late at night, at weekends, and in place of holidays. Whatever happy means for you, there is no doubt that your ability to do research in 2019/2020, and 2020/21 will have been (and will continue to be) severely compromised for a variety of reasons. A global pandemic and its associated trauma, including but not limited to sickness of you or your loved ones, home-schooling, lack of childcare, a complete shutdown of your research lab and/or research methodology are just some of the reasons that writing and research might grind to halt. Besides the fact that the world as we know it has completely changed, and a toothache can become a significant life altering event. 

Even if you were a super productive, happy writer in 2018, things might have drastically changed. 

Your new reality is something you need to face head on. I know it is tempting to sit and scream that it is all just so unfair. I feel this deeply. But, alas, reality is still there at the end of the tantrum. Facing this reality is the key first step to moving forward.

Your truth matters

One of the key components of the regular Academic Coach writing course is facing the truth about you, your life, and your writing (or procrastinating) habits. Facing this truth has never been easy, and when colleagues come to the part of the course which challenges them to record what they do all day, and record how long each aspect of writing and researching takes, they tend to shy away. Why? Because it is hard to face up to your perceived failings, and hard to look the cold hard facts in the face. Conversely, it is sometimes dispiriting to find out that the component parts of creating a finished piece of writing actually just take a really long time. In fact you are not lazy or procrastinating, it just takes ages.

Because knowing is hard. Denial is easy. 

That denial underpins many bad writing habits that we too easily ascribe to our ‘unique’ style of working (I can only write when…….). We spend a lot of time debunking this nonsense on the course, either practically or psychologically, in order to move into a space where we can accept our particular reality, and create writing routines that fit into that reality as opposed to actively work against it.

Everyone’s reality is different, yet we are all measured professionally by indicators that were designed for and therefore favour the old school norm of the single white male scholar – or the married with a stay at home wife scholar – both of whom are utterly devoted to the singular pursuit of publishing. This is exceptionally tough on those who are not in either of these categories. The pandemic has only underlined this situation with research demonstrating male authors increased submission of articles and female author submissions dropped off a cliff . This isn’t news. Yet…yet…somehow we fail to accept this single truth of academia and continue to hold ourselves to standards that have no relation to our own lived realities.

This is the shaky foundation of the unhappy writer.

Face facts

So, the first critical task in order to get back to your writing and research is to face your new reality. This reality might mean children at home all the damn time. Even if we are now technically in the summer holidays (in some places), your usual summer childcare arrangements will most likely be null and void. Granny is off-limits and so on. Even without children in the house, we face separation from family and friends and leisure, and perhaps we have another body permanently in our workspace (flat mates, partners) who would normally be at work. Our partner (or us) might be a key worker. We might not have a proper workspace at all – a rickety chair, a bad back and a kitchen table. 

This might go on for many, many more months. All our coping habits have been removed. 

These things pose significant challenges to writing. If you normally go to a lab and now you can’t, all your research might be compromised. Endless zoom meetings about absolute nonsense will fill your calendar. No doubt, you are being subject to the ‘will we, won’t we’ two-step of on-line or face to face teaching come September, and the associated disruption that brings. You are probably preparing on-line and in person teaching simultaneously while jumping through endless administrative hoops that try to run you over like a big giant evil trucker every single day. This may well go on and on until September, when student fees have been collected for tuition and accommodation, and the cold hard reality of crumbling, crusty buildings that allow zero social distancing will intervene and settle things. For a while at least.

This stuff is stressful. I mean really, mind-bendingly stressful. Preparing courses takes time and energy, and you are not being given any time and you are all out of energy. Writing everything from scratch for September in a vastly different format: nightmare. You are probably being told there will be job losses, pay cuts, more teaching, less (if any) research time. You are probably still working out how to say no to online meetings, or whether its impolite to have the camera off (I marvel at people who care about this: they are clearly nicer than me). If, on top of this Armageddon, you or your dependents have particular health, caring or disability needs, these are surely not being met either by the health and social care service, or your institution. Stressful doesn’t really cover it.

 All of this is an awful, incomprehensible nightmare. But once you have faced your new reality, instead of trying to operate as if nothing had changed, as if its ‘business as usual’, you will (after the shock) feel calmer in knowing that certain compromises will have to be made and some uncomfortable choices that perhaps fracture our ideals of what it is to be an academic will need to be accepted. This is part and parcel of the Academic Coach writing course in normal times because sometimes the things that hold us back the most are based on an internal narrative about how things ought to be, rather than how they really are.

Here there be dragons

We are now in a place of uncomfortable ‘not knowing’. We are at that point on ye olde world maps that proclaims ‘here there be dragons’. And for good reason. You don’t exactly know how things are going to pan out. Worse still, you know it’s likely going to be unpleasant and chock full of unrealistic expectations (from you, and your employer). This is taking up brain space. The worst part is you will have to be your own advocate, mentor, and champion. What I have learned from running Academic Coach is that most academics absolutely suck at being their own advocate, mentor, and champion. But you will have to. We are all drowning, not waving, and you will be fortunate indeed if your usual support groups have the ability to reach out and support you. No-one is on the life raft.

Nothing short of your physical and mental well-being is at stake here, and rest assured, your institution does not care one jot for either.

This I know is all a bit depressing. 

Over the next few weeks Academic Coach will provide a series of blogs and vlogs to help you navigate this new reality. There will be some hard talk about Universities in the time of Covid, and some strategies offered for caring for yourself and your writing practice in the midst of this new environment.We will cover topics ranging from rescuing stalled research to planning in the midst of the unknown. I hope you will find these useful scaffolds for building a happier writing practice.

Working from home for academics

Being forced to work from home isn’t like working from home by choice

Academics are by and large used to working from home. Even those in purely lab based disciplines will at times write or do other work from their home. But now things are different. Working from home is no longer a choice, but something forced upon us. Not only that, you are now teaching as well as writing and administrating from home.

Worse, you are now doing this with your children in attendance, or your partner, or with your pets, (or all of these), or in total isolation from anyone you know and would normally interact with.

All of these situations are unprecedented in your experience.

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS UNDER CONTROL. You really really should not.

It never happened before. The idea that you can seemlessly transition into this chaos whilst maintaining sanity, let alone productivity, is ludicrous. Absolutely off the scale nonsense. Of course you can’t. No-one can. So let go of that bullshit right now. Breathe. Get through this moment. Then the next. Then the next.

Transitioning to coping

Here is a simple of list of things to keep in mind when transitioning into a being able to cope.

1. Dramatically lower your expectations (oh but the students will suffer, think of the students).

We are all going to suffer, regardless of what you do, and students will not be insulated from suffering as a special category of people. They are going to be stressed, and worried, but we are all stressed and worried. You are not a super hero. You are a person and you can only do what you can do. Grade kindly. Lower expectations of them and of you. This does not come easy for super competitive I-must-always-be-the-best personality types of academics. There is an apocalypse on - get a grip.

2. Stuff will go wrong.

Yes, children will interrupt lectures, tech will cut out, there will be delays. You won’t have all the answers. It will take time to work stuff out and get stuff together. Accept it. Do what you can. Move on. Accept imperfection.

3. Administrators will ask the impossible: ignore them

At the best of times, administrators have no idea of quality teaching. They don’t understand the classroom dynamic because they don’t really know what goes on in there. So the imperative to ‘just put it all on-line’ is yet another way in which they manifest that complete ignorance. You cannot do the impossible.

4. Trust your professional integrity

You know how to teach. You know how to examine and you know how to be kind and generous in recognising that students are not receiving the optimum teaching experience at this time. You know exactly what they need to know and what they can do without. Trust that professionalism. Don’t wait for someone who knows nothing about your course or material to tell you what to do.

5. You will work less

Yes. It is true. You will work less. But you will probably work much more intensely because between homeschooling, feeding and caring for a household there will be little time available for actual work. Accept it.

6. The kids will be alright in front of the telly for a few hours.

Release the guilt.

7. Prioritise yourself and your family.

Work is after all just work. Academics fetishize work above all other things. It is time for a reset. Look after yourself, your family. Eat well. Stay healthy and exercise. Meditate or do whatever you need to in order to get through this uncertain time. Devote a large part of your day to these activities.

8. Research will wait.

Some of you may take refuge in writing and there is no judgment from me on that. For some people, this is a type of escapism by utter absorption in a task, and certainly, we would all like to escape right now. If that is you, have at it. Get a schedule together. Find a quiet space in your house and begin. Block out a maximum of two hours in your day and write to your heart’s content. Get a task list together and slowly work your way through it. At the end, write down tomorrow’s tasks, and repeat.

For many, this won’t be feasible, either due to little (or indeed grown) people in your tent, or the fact that right now you could not give a rat’s ass about research. That is also a completely acceptable reaction. In time it might change, but for now, just breathe.

9. Dynamics of communication will change

Communication will be difficult at this time. By this, I mean that people are worried, they are scared, they might be snippy or downright unreasonable, and at the best of times, email is not a great way to communicate. It lacks nuance and tone is often misconstrued.

Exercise a bit of patience with colleagues and students who are flailing about and are under who-knows-what pressure.

10. Practice kindness

Be kind to yourself and others. Academics are notoriously hard taskmasters with each other, with students, with themselves. Instead, choose to be be kind. It is a much nicer way to live.

Working from home hacks

Some of us work from home anyway outside of a pandemic and have actually experienced little disruption to our daily schedule outside of not being able to get everything they want from the shop. I feel like I have been in training for this my whole life, as I am a natural born hermit and normally work from home.

I have my ways, naturally, but have never given much thought (until now) to how I organise myself.

I have read with some amusement the many ‘work from home hacks’ articles which exhort you to ‘get dressed’ and ‘get up as though you are going to the office’ and all that jazz. Let me tell you, this is not how I work from home.

I have never done any of those things and am a very productive person. You do you. Wear what you want, do what works for you and your family. You will find your own equilibrium through this chaotic and unprecedented time.

My courses are in essence about managing your time well, and in regular life, I would certainly recommend setting a realistic schedule, whilst being absolutely honest about your real life circumstances. Your real life circumstances now include a global pandemic, and an entire disruption to the way we live and work and communicate. Try not to pretend anything is other than it is.

I would recommend setting very small goals, breaking down tasks into very small parts, ticking them off a list, and doing one tiny thing at a time. I would usually recommend a plan, because I am a planner. But right now, I have erased my whiteboard of plans because everything turned upside down and now I can’t leave the house. What I planned before, I now cannot do (or at least I cannot do it as I planned it). Accept it.

Crucially, don’t set yourself up to fail by putting in place unrealistic expectations. We need to really readjust what we can expect of ourselves in this period of unprecedented uncertainty. It is not business as usual.

Writing routines in a global pandemic

We are living in strange times indeed. At this point, you have probably been given 24 hours notice (at best) to take everything you do and put it ‘online’ (as though this were no problem). The last thing you are thinking about is your research and writing. And that is fine. And that is normal.

In the interim, you are going to alternate between terror scrolling through Twitter, and staring at your leg. That is also fine. Whilst marinading in social media terror, you will come across a number of different Twitter asshats who will swing between ‘Shakespeare wrote King Lear when quarantined’ and all that productivity bullshit, and people bragging about how much writing they will get through because they have no child care ( and possibly no humanity either).

You will also come across those who tell you to down tools and do nothing. These same people overworked and will still overwork through this pandemic - they were the ones who raised the bar in the first place, and burned the ladder underneath them.

I’m here to tell you: ignore all this bullshit. It is hard, I know. These are extreme times, and if you are able to keep any writing going I salute you, but most won’t and that is OK too. All those hard fought for writing routines are under incredible pressure right now. Just stop worrying about research and writing at least for a few weeks in the midst of a global meltdown. Eventually you will (probably) adjust to the new ‘normal’ of online lecturing whilst a toddler is swinging on your leg. Or not. Eventually you may find your feet. Your eventually might be three weeks, three months or however long. That is OK.

All your writing progress is not lost. Depending on your personality, you might actually find a bit of solace in writing, since it is a solitary activity, requires utter concentration, and a blocking out of the world. This kind of fits the bill right now. For an hour or two, it might sooth your soul. That is OK. But equally, it might not.

Needless to say your publication pipeline will need some severe adjustment. When you wrote that, a global meltdown was not on the cards.

There are a lot of people holding free online social writing events (check out ScholarShape and the Professor is in offering free stuff, and CampNaNoWriMo). There are some asshats trying to monetise this disaster of course too. I won’t shame them here. When people tell you who they are, believe them.

All my courses will be pushed back a wee bit until we have found some equilibrium in this new world. I will continue with the free stuff as much as I can. If you would benefit from a free Write with Me Friday, I am happy to put these on in the future when we have had time to adjust. Please post any interest on the Facebook page.

For now, stay safe. Forget the rest.