Thread by @jengolbeck

Everyone is really struggling a year into COVID, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the specific struggles of being a professor right now 1/

My students are having such a hard time. Last week, I polled them about how they are holding up. Here are the results from my 2 classes. Scale is 1 (I am utterly drained and exhausted) to 5 (All things considered, I'm doing well)
2/

I am doing everything I can for them. I suspended all late penalties this term because I know from the fall that they can't keep up. It's helped - many have said they would have left UMD without this policy, - but they are still struggling 3/

As someone who cares a lot for my students, this is so hard to watch. But I literally don't think there is anything more I can do. Almost ALL my time is going into managing my classes. My research time has disappeared 4/

(research is supposed to be the majority of my job, so doing very little is a Big Deal)

Also, the students are feeling desperate! They do assignments wrong, lose points, and then send me multiple emails a day begging to re-do them or get extra credit 5/

I know the students see this as an issue about them, but for fairness, if I let one student re-do an assignment, I need to let EVERYONE re-do it. I have 250 students. I can't let everyone resubmit over and over until they are happy. And that's not how assignments work! 6/

But telling panicked students "no" to requests like this over-and-over extracts a big emotional toll. I dread checking my email. Admitting that I dread checking my email right now made me cry. I am fully tapped out 7/

And as a professor (though people outside academia often don't know this), I have a lot of responsibilities beyond teaching! I'm supposed to spend most of my time on research. That is gone. This is the thing I love most about my job and I do not have time to do it 8/

I have a lot of service to do. Committees to lead. People who need my follow up. Stuff that I can't drop. And I'm holding that together, but it is all SO MUCH 9/

I have had to drop everything optional that I love doing in my job
I am exhausted
My capacity for hearing about how I'm not keeping up or giving enough is tapped out
10/

I'm drained. I'm tired of every time I try to talk about how drained I am that someone tells me how hard it is for the students. It's hard for everyone now. It's not a competition. 11/

I'm tired of the trope about how professors are "the problem" when so many of us are doing SO MUCH to make things go as well as they can (without just handing students an A for no work - that's not why you're taking my class) 12/

I wish I had some snappy conclusion. I don't. Just, if it takes me a while to answer your email, please know that I feel really bad about it, I'm probably losing sleep over it, and I will get to it as soon as I possibly can. 13/