The Realities of UK Academia for Teaching-Dominant Staff

There's another round of UCU industrial action taking place throughout February and March this year. 18 days of strike action in total over these two months. I'm not going on the picket lines today (virtually or in person) as I actually have today 'off' as TOIL because I took on 'extra' work on a day that I don't normally work. That was authorised ('official' so-to-speak as it was a full day's work that wasn't on my workload), but it has made me think of all the other days that I've been forced to work on that I didn't get 'back', i.e., Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It has also led me to question my now 11 years of experience working in Higher Education as a teaching dominant staff member; particularly my working patterns. 

My verdict is that to be an academic with at least 50% of your time dedicated to teaching (and all the associated duties with that) means that, inevitably, you have to volunteer a substantive portion of your non-work time to get everything done. This is not breaking news - it has been widely discussed in the media for quite some time now. This is especially the case if you have a multifaceted role (which a lot of teaching dominant academic staff do) where you both lead and contribute to different things. Technically, I'm a 0.8 FTE academic. This means I should only work 4 days a week, 7.5 hours a day. Sometimes, this can be indeed possible. But, the norm by far is that I work over my hours - often logging on around 8am in the morning, taking a very short lunch break (99.9% of the time I eat at my desk and work while I have lunch), and logging off around 7/7.30pm, depending on if I am cooking dinner and/or if I'm travelling from the office. The majority of my teaching is online as well, which means I pre-record a lot of my lectures and I have to design tasks (which involves setting up discussion boards etc) for my students. Because the university lecture capture software seems to be both regionist and classist (I have a thick central belt of Scotland accent), I often have to 'fix' some of the subtitles/captions on my lectures (this isn't on my workload to do this - but I do have students from across the globe and some with learning adjustments that need the captions/subtitles). I don't have time to fix them all (this would take hours - my lectures are often 90-120 mins long with breaks in between), but I will spend around 20-30 mins checking the subtitles, normally at key points where I think it is most needed. All in all, recording lectures, waiting for them to upload (you can't really do much else but respond to emails while this is happening - my RAM can't cope), requesting machine generated captions/subtitles (this can take a while as well), fixing them, and then uploading everything on to the learning platform for the students (with PPT slides, discussion boards and tasks) can take a whole afternoon. And this is just for one lecture - often I deliver 2-3 lectures per week. That's 2-3 afternoons a week for just doing this (I only have 4 afternoons a week I should be working).

This isn't even counting in lecture prepping time. I normally set students four pieces of reading for each lecture at postgraduate level, and two pieces of reading for undergraduate. Good teaching practice (quite rightly) dictates that lectures should be primarily using the reading we set the students in the lectures. So, we have to read this material (and take notes) before we start constructing the PPT. This takes 2-3 hours (sometimes 3-4 if its postgraduate level and the material is quite 'tricky' or long). Then, there's constructing the PPTs which I think takes the longest. You have to structure all that material (and often have to cut a lot of material out to make the lecture a decent length, so you go through versions of lectures - often getting smaller rather than bigger with each version). Then, go through it all and make sure it is 'accessible'. This can take at least another half-day. So, for new lectures that last 90-120mins, you are looking at 12-15 hours of academic time needed to do this. We get 8 hours on our workload. On average, I'm volunteering 5.5 hours of my time for each new lecture I deliver.

And then there's delivering 'existing' lectures that either you or a colleague delivered in the past. Regardless if it was you or someone else who delivered that lecture in the past (and there's PPTs for it available), you get an hour to prep for each hour of existing lectures you deliver. So, if the lecture is 1 hour, I get 2 hours and 10 mins to prep it, record it, upload it, 'fix' it and design all the tasks associated with it. Even if it is my own previous lecture, I still update it, which involves having to re-record it and all the tasks associated with that. It's very rare that I re-use lectures (I did reuse two lectures last year as I had 3 lectures to record and/or deliver face-to-face a few weeks and I ran out of time). But, you need way more than 2 hours to refresh yourself with the set reading, look for any new material to incorporate into the lecture, actually update the lecture, and to go through the lecture notes you made to remind yourself of your key arguments. You end up volunteering another 1-2 hours for each lecture. And then there's the lectures that a colleagues delivered and you've picked up. You still only get 1 hour to prep this, but this can take hours to prep because you have to read all the set reading (some of it you are reading for the first time) and you often don't have the lecture notes that accompany the PPT. If it's a pre-recorded lecture, you can watch your colleague deliver the lecture and take these notes, which often takes at least 2 hours. If it's not a pre-recorded lecture, you need to do the notes yourself from the reading on the slides and, often, this is much more work that just designing this lecture yourself as you have to chase up each citation on the PPT, find the key points, and then make notes for the lecture. It's honestly like delivering a new lecture from scratch. It takes at least 5 hours to do all this prep work, and then you have the recording or delivery of the lecture. So, you are volunteering another 4 hours of your time for each of these lectures.

60% of my contract is teaching or teaching-related activities. This includes all of what I've just discussed, plus marking (I'll come to that), course organiser duties (designing learning platforms, course handbooks, exam board preparation, responding to student queries on the course), dissertation supervision and personal tutoring (I'll come to these as well). So, technically, that's 16.8 hours a week, roughly, I have to do all this. You can see that even if I have one new lecture that week, I'm already reaching this quota. But, that doesn't even count course organiser duties (on my workload it works out about 25 hours for each course - so that's designing the learning platform, doing assessment tutorials, exam board preparation, responding to student queries, having tutorials with students with learning adjustments, organising the marking and moderation, and arranging the moderation for the external examiner all in 25 hours. On average, I end up volunteering at least 10-15 hours more for each course I organise, and a lot of this usually involves working with students with learning adjustments, late approvals or special circumstances that isn't priorly factored in. Last semester I was course organiser for two courses, and this semester I'm course organiser for one course. That's 75 hours of my workload for course organisation, with an additional 40-55 hours volunteering each year to do this role.

The marking is another nightmare; arguably as much of a burden as lecture prepping and what I give most of my voluntary hours to each year.  For a 1500 assignment, I get 15 mins to mark this, give feedback and upload the feedback. There is no additional time if a student gets in touch for clarification of their mark and/or comments. For a 3000 word assignment, 30 mins to mark. 4000 words, 45 mins. If there is academic misconduct, there is no extra time to deal with this. This academic year I have marked 1500, 3000 and 4000 word assignments. It takes me at last 1.5-2 times the allocated time to mark each assignment, especially if the student gets a mark lower than 60% as you spend a lot of time explaining (and referring to the script) how the student could improve the grade for the next assignment. I've had 3000 word assignments where I've written 1000 words of feedback to the student because it was particularly problematic and I wanted to help them as much as possible improve for the next assignment. This ended up taking me three times the amount of time I was allocated in my workload to mark this. Each year, I can volunteer at least 40 hours a year marking course assessments at undergraduate and postgraduate level. This is not counting Master's dissertations which are another beast.

The dissertation supervision and personal tutoring are difficult to quantify because it really depends on demand. I am a personal tutor for 20 plus part-time Master's students and I get 1 hour for each student, which means 20 mins a semester. This includes email traffic to and from the student. It also involves meeting with students to discuss personal issues, special circumstances applications, interruptions of study, return to study and planning course choices. Some students, it's very light touch and may be as little as 10-20 mins a year through emails. Other students, it can be very intensive and with some students I have spent at least double this time. With Master's dissertation supervision, we get 15 hours a year for each student and in my experience so far, it is in reality more like 20-25 hours per year, especially when you are going through their final draft at the end and making some 'light' suggestions. It can take longer than 3 hours to read the full draft itself and make notes. 

The reality is that teaching dominant academic staff are volunteering a lot more hours to do what is actually on their workload. And the rest of the workload is the same. It takes more hours in reality to do the programme director, research lead and scholarship work. And then there's the meetings and training that goes into the 'citizenship' black hole and half of them don't even end up on your workload in the first place. All in all, I work way over my 28 hours a week and I have been doing this role for over 11 years. I've gotten 'better', i.e., faster, at things, but I can never match the tariffs. The only real defence we have is to push-back on meetings (both with staff and students) but this inevitably ends up in complaints. And when you explain that you literally do not have any time in your diary for the next three weeks to fit anything in because you've micro-managed everything to get the basics done, you are told to 'manage your time better' as it is in your workload (and often it isn't) so you should have time to do it.

But, the real pushback is academics refusing to volunteer and only give the amount of time they are allocated for tasks. This will involve lectures being half-finished, assessments not fully marked, leaving meetings actually on time (I was recently in a meeting than ran over by over an hour), and stopping supervision and personal tutoring as soon as the allocated time runs out. So, it is the student who will suffer. And that's why academics volunteer their time, because they want to give students a good education and they are making up for a system that doesn't appear to value that - it just wants as much work out of academics for as little as possible. I think this needs to be stressed in the current UCU dispute - if academics didn't volunteer things would only get half done and we would have to stop providing provision as soon as a student came to the end of their tariff. 

It's the workload that is the killer for me. The pay, pensions, precarity and inequality is for another post. But the workload really is not fit for purpose and inevitably results in academics volunteering their time to 'humanise' a system where students are numbers and expected to conform to a 'ideal student' model. It puts staff in increasingly punishing situations where we are front-line and students want / need more than what is allocated but we can't give anymore because we're already going way over and above to deliver the basics. I'm tired. I'm fed-up and I don't think I can sustain this any longer without major overhauls. I don't think they are coming any time soon, unfortunately. But, we are fighting. And putting ourselves into debt in the process while, still, volunteering our hours to either do what we can for students in the minute spaces we have left and stand in picket lines protesting. 

These are not good times.

Some book reviews: The Shadow King and A Woman in Amber (plus The House of Leaves so far)

It's been quite a while since I last posted here. I had begun getting myself into a habit of posting here a couple of times a month, which is good for me. But, May and June have turned out to be extraordinarily busy months, and my attention has been diverted elsewhere. Well, into more than one 'elsewhere' to be exact.

First up though, I want to share that I did actually manage to set foot on a plane and spent a week in a country that's not one of the UK four nations. At the end of April, we flew to Fuerteventura and had an amazing holiday. It was the right mix of everything - going on day long trips, long walks, playing sports and then lazing by the spa pool reading. It was exactly what I needed, but it was a nightmare carving out the time for it. University just isn't what it used to be (hence why people are striking). Things don't start to calm down until the end of June now, with assessments, personal tutor meetings (choosing options courses for the next year) and exam boards. So, of course, I ended up doing double the work before I left and when I got back because it just doesn't stop because you do. But, the holiday was exactly what I needed.

I managed to finish two books when I was on holiday: Maaza Mengiste's 'The Shadow King' and Agate Nesaule's 'A Woman in Amber'. I hadn't planned that these two books would cover such similar content in such contrasting ways, but there you go. I had bought Mengiste's book pretty much as soon as it came out in early 2020, being sent back to the UK from Ethiopia due to fears over the pandemic. I had read Mengiste's previous novel 'Beneath the Lion's Gaze' while I was in Ethiopia and loved it. I thought she was a great writer and had a unique feminist-esque lens that she expertly utilised to analyse quite emotive Ethiopian history. But, I never got round to reading 'The Shadow King', having given it to two other people to read while I was finishing off other books. The book gained some traction by being Shortlisted for the 2020 Brooker Prize, which Douglas Stuart's 'Shuggie Bain' eventually won; another book I have in my bookshelf that I haven't gotten around to reading. Maybe I need to go on holiday again?

'A Woman in Amber' was recommended to me by one of my students, and it proved to be very difficult to get a hold of. I eventually got it second-hand, having been out of print for many years. So, in Fuerteventura I managed to make my way through both of these novels. First up are the similarities. They are both about war and invasion, and its aftermaths, from a woman's perspective. Both women are from nation states that imperialist European nations are trying to invade and colonise, i.e. the Italians in Ethiopia, and the Russians and Germans in Latvia. Mengiste's novel stays rooted in Ethiopia however, while Nesaule's spans Latvia, Germany and eventual emigration to the US. Both novels are also rooted in lived history - Mengiste's in the Ethiopian rebellion against the 1935 Italian invasion (although there are some chapters in the future, but these are inter-sped throughout), and Nesaule's of the Soviet and German armies fighting for European territory during WW2. Mengiste's story is based on her own family history and a lot of research she undertook thus based across the spectrum of tightly and loosely on actual people who lived through those times. Nesaule's book is autobiographical, and is split into two halves: the first living as a refugee in Europe, the second as an immigrant to the US.

Overall, I preferred Nesaule's book by a country mile, which I was not expecting. Mengiste is a great writer. She definitely has a flair for words and for conjuring emotive imagery and dialogue. Her book was also an illuminating piece into the senselessness and barbarity of European 'foreign policy', and the pride that Ethiopians have of their country (having taken part in one of the yearly Battle of Adwa celebrations in 2020, I can well imagine this). Overall though, it was just too long. It took about half of the book to start building up to what 'The Shadow King' actually was / was going to be. This time was spent instead on characterisation. But, even at the end, I felt some of the characters needed a bit more development; particularly some male characters. Still, Hirut is a great character, and both Aster and The Cook are engaging paradoxes. 

It took equally as long for Nesaule to make the connection between the title and the main characters, but a bit more care was taken to make sure you could put the pieces together when the right moments came. Also, I felt the characters were much more richly written. Perhaps this is the true difference between fiction and non-fiction characters, and it is a chasm that is very difficult to bridge. Also, due to Nesaule's longer time span, the development of the main characters (particularly the author herself) was much more on point for me. I could foresee the heartbreak and misfortune that was coming to the main character, foreboded from her own early experiences and family trauma. I actually cried at the end of the book, seeing for once a true glimmer of a different coloured lining that could let the author break the spell of her past. Mengiste's ending packs a punch, but there are a lot of strands to tie together and I'm not convinced she fully manages it. It also lacked the emotion of Nesaule's, which made me think how performativity and authenticity can differently manifest in writing. Maybe Mengiste was reaching too big with her wallop of an ending (bringing back in Haile Selassie to boot) thus it fell a bit flat with me. I found Nesaule's smaller scale and unique personalism (including the deep reflection of how much trauma had imprinted on her life) much more haunting. Nesaule wrote a second autobiographical book, set after the events of this book and I've already downloaded it for my Kindle. Again, one needs another holiday to keep on reading...

Although, that isn't technically true. Over the last 2-3 months (minus being on holiday and working very hard) I have been working my way through the genre defying 'The House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski. This was another book recommended to me, this time by a creative writing lecturer. I'm a huge horror fan. I blame my diet of horror movies when I was a kid and reading the entire Point Horror book series in my tweens. By the time I became a teenager, I was reading Stephen King, Clive Barker, Patricia Cornwell, Thomas Harris and Anne Rice religiously. Horror finally started to subside into a preference for academic (Sociology and Politics mostly) and self-help autobiographical / spiritual books in my late teens; but I do pull back very strongly to the genre of horror and feel myself being like a teenager all over again when I get my hands on a very good horror novel.

'The House of Leaves' (HOL) really is something else. I've still about 1/3rd to read, and it really is a challenge. In a good way. There are three core narrators in it (although there are chapters from other character's POV as well) and you are not quite sure which of them are actually telling the truth. Because of this, it slightly reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis' 'The Rules of Attraction' - but these novels are very different beasts. All narrators in HOL may be writing about something that doesn't even exist in the first place (which plays throughout with your mind). HOL also doesn't fit neatly into the category of 'horror' although I can't really think of any other genre it more belongs to. The 'horror' part is exceedingly well written, using experimental font, text and spacing to atmospheric effects. But, it's also laugh-out-loud funny. The author has an exceptional 'go' at academics throughout and some of the footnotes had me howling with laughter. Academia can indeed get like this. Sometimes, it does get quite cluttered though, and there are two stories vying for centre stage and they can interrupt each other to the extent that I lost momentum to keep reading. Still, I keep coming back to it. And this afternoon will be no different. I really would recommend it, and I'll write a full review when I do finish it.

So, some reflections on books I have read this year. I have read well into double digits of books this year already, encompassing fiction, non-fiction (often autobiographical, self-help literature) and academic writing. After the review of HOL, I'll do some academic reviews next. I'm in the middle of reading Thea Riofrancis' 'Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post Extractivism in Ecuador'; an edited volume titled 'On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis', and about to start two books on the relationship between capitalism and psychoanalysis. When I finally do die, I wonder how much of my time alive will have actually been spent reading. I also wonder if I will regret any of it (I suspect not) ;)

Youth, Music and Political Commentary

I've had an unbelievable amount going on in my life, including a major life transition. So, the pace of life right now is quite frenetic and I have been spinning quite a few plates in the air. In the middle of all this I experienced two events which have set other, related events in motion. The first event involved an old work colleague getting in touch to say he had found my 'Touching From a Distance' book that I loaned him over 15 years ago. 'Touching From a Distance' is the biography of Ian Curtis from Joy Division and the last section of the book contains all the lyrics he wrote for the band before his death. It arrived at my workplace and I have been marvelling, once again, at just how good a lyricist Curtis actually was. The second event was going to a Killing Joke gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands (still one of the best music venues ever). Throughout that gig I had nothing but respect for Killing Joke who began their existence as a band a few years before I was born. I didn't find that gig a nostalgia trip but instead an in-your-face political commentary of the times we are living in.

For a bit of context, both Joy Division and Killing Joke formed in the late 1970s and were predominantly inspired by punk music, but also grounded in other music genres. They felt they had something to say in the dark times they perceived they were living in (the Winter of Discontent was building up and they were on the precipice of a huge political and economic change which was Thatcherism and neoliberalism). They even toured together and are still regarded as two of the first post punk bands in Britain, getting their ideas from art, politics, cinema and literature. Both bands loved the energy from punk music, but found it was too manufactured and was failing to live up to its aims of subverting expectations, challenging listeners and, crucially, being authentic. 

Both bands shaped my teens. I never got into Britpop, although I admit now with hindsight it produced a few classic albums. I grew up political, born into a traditional working class family (both sides of my family were all miners, lorry drivers, steel workers and manual labourers; not to mention the women being domestic labourers and low-level labourers such as cleaners) with a twist (my parents separated when I was very young, and I was one of the first children in my town to grow up in a single-parent household headed by a woman). My family were die-hard Labour supporters and as anti-Thatcher as you could get. Britpop never encompassed for me what it was like to grow up feeling like you are on the absolute fringes of society, receiving horizontal violence on a daily basis because of the double-whammy that you were poor and from a broken home. I wasn't an angry, young white man so even punk, although I loved its energy, never fully connected with me. It was bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Killing Joke and Siouxsie and the Banshees that drew me in and were able to encapsulate a darkness and emptiness that I felt inside, whilst still connecting to a larger narrative of being a puppet of cruel, political regimes. These bands were also teachers and mentors, connecting me to literature, film and philosophy that would exponentially shape my education choices and (zig-zagging) career path.

The dominant demographic at the Killing Joke gig this month was definitely older than me (or at least looked a lot older than me), but there were also smatterings of young people; some of whom seemed to know / recall the lyrics better than I can. What struck me throughout that gig was just how political it all was. Killing Joke are one of those bands that go on a hiatus when there is not much controversy happening in Politics, and then come back with a vengeance when things get really murky. Their leader and lyricist, Jaz Coleman, may have ingested one too many conspiracy theories along the way, but right now he sounds more contemporary than many artists out there. His scathing political commentaries are on point and he expectorates an unfliching counter-narrative that has remained remarkably consistent throughout the (many) years. This makes him a surprising anchor in a world that has been increasingly devoid of a coherent left critique of the state of Politics and the economy.

For my birthday last year, my partner bought me both the tickets to the Killing Joke gig and Chris Bryans' 'A Prophecy Fulfilled' which is a compendium of the impact Killing Joke have had on music, art and culture from the perspective of the band, those who know them well and have been influenced by them, and their fans. After the gig (he is now a fan), we have also watched documentaries and interviews with Killing Joke, including gaining news that I'd missed that members of Killing Joke and Joy Division had collaborated in the early 90s and had recently released this collaboration (K÷93). What I found interesting is their insistence that we are on the precipice of another zeitgeist, which is in tune with my previous post about a paradigm shift, interregnum and/or a populist moment being our current reality. They are adamant that this current state of affairs cannot continue and it's up to the arts to bring about a political, economic, philosophical and cultural shift to lead us to a better tomorrow as the world presently implodes within itself.

This got me thinking about music and youth, and what is emerging from this scene. It made me wonder if we are about to witness another, early, Manic Street Preachers that will come along and pave the way of counter-culture but spit it out in their own, unique and insightful way. This ruminating led me to watch an ok 'No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers' which was released in 2015 but I'd somehow missed it until now. A truly political band that were once on the pulse of the impact of politics, economics and culture on the psyche of the young (re-visit 'The Holy Bible' - by God they don't make them like that anymore). Like Killing Joke and Joy Division, they saw music as an avenue to expose this impact and as a way to unite against it. 

I do hope another Manics are finding their sound right now. We need them. I don't pretend to know how young people are feeling right now more than the young people themselves. I see the world filtered through the lenses that have shaped me throughout the years, and these are not necessarily the same lenses (nor experiences) that young people are using right now. I look forward to hearing what is going to emerge and I will be looking out for it (interestingly, I just discovered a band called Enter Shikari but I think they, as polemic as they are, might be a generation away from contemporary youth in their own lenses and experiences). It really is time and the conditions are made for it.

Interregnum, populist moment, or paradigm shift?

This year I have had the absolute pleasure to be heavily involved in the running of a 'new' course for the MSc Social Justice and Community Action, of which I am the programme director. The course has been on-the-books since the inception of the programme, but, so I'm told, it has never run for a variety of reasons. The course is called Learning for Democracy and it has been an absolute joy to run, even in the middle of intense industrial action. In fact, being locked into a period of upheaval like this has, arguably, augmented the content of the course and made it even more relevant.

At its heart, the course is about the paradoxes inherent within liberal democracy and how different models of democracy all - implicitly or explicitly - attempt to reconcile such paradoxes to make democracy more relevant to the demos. It also examines the recent crises in neoliberalism and capitalism, and challenges its students to ask the question: are we currently going through a crisis of democracy. And, if so, what can / should be done about it? The students have a plethora of models and tools at their disposal, and they need to consider, as informal or formal educators, what are the 'best' ways to respond to such crises with different learning groups?

Co-organising this course in the middle of intense industrial action has been a very educational process for me. The typical recording of asynchronous lecture format had to be radically re-thought as industrial action has left us very little time between lectures to actually do the preparation for the next one - all of this course is new content and material and any academic will tell you this can be extraordinarily time consuming. So, about three weeks in we realised we had to do something different or we wouldn't be able to deliver a substantive amount of this course. We started lectures as dialogues, between two of the teaching team each week. I've been involved in every dialogue since they began and not only have I found it a great way to teach, but the 'bouncing' ideas off each other during recording has really provoked some stimulating discussions about very important issues we are all going through, whether we recognise these or not.

What has been equally exciting is the students working together to produce learning for democracy projects, each to tackle issues that are important to the groups they work with IRL or prospective groups they want to work with. This has led to some very rich discussions about issues that groups are facing all over the globe and the barriers that our students face implementing projects such as these. What has been discussed at length is a growing preference across some parts of the globe of 'removing' politics from education and the powers-that-be creating increasing sanctions for teachers / facilitators who don't. This has provoked some interesting discussions about if this is contributing to what Chantal Mouffe calls 'a populist moment' and, even more worryingly, leaving citizens unprepared for the lure of populism and/or authoritarianism?

All involved in the course have been struggling for years to find the 'right' way forward for politics. Charges of corruption are espoused in most parts of the world and there is a admission that democracy has suffered from the expansion of capitalism, neoliberalism and globalisation which leaves politics increasingly vulnerable to market interference and, potentially, domination. Within such processes, it becomes more difficult to separate political ideologies or even recognise when political parties and/or political leaders are espousing contradictory or pick-n-mix ones that can - and do - have disastrous consequences for citizens across the globe. Within such an 'interregnum' or populist moment it surely makes more sense for educational processes to engage more with political education rather than less.

But, less overt engagement means that politics is still being transmitted, but in taken-for-granted ways which are treated as 'normal' and part of the 'natural order'. This is torturous, where people 'know' that the systems they are embedded within are unfair but they lack necessary toolkits to be able to evaluate and analyse these systems in a systematic way. It's not easy to do this and there are debates galore about what is the appropriate role of the educator, how much knowledge they should 'transmit' and how much to enable students to develop their own toolkits, even though they may be problematic. There are other debates as well, around partisanship and around what models you can use in educational spaces to enable debate and difference, and whether it is the best outcome to come to a consensus or not. Nevertheless, it really is encouraging to be able to have these conversations and hear about the great work that is being done around the world, despite shrinking spaces for this type of work to flourish.

The optimist in me hopes we are moving towards a paradigm shift, a shift where a new or existing model of democracy - or something very much like democracy - materialises to get us out of this interregnum or populist moment. Like Zizek, I don't think populism is the answer. It requires the political - and politics - to be excessively simplified to build questionable alliances that benefit some groups more than others. We need more political education, not less, and in a critical way. There are no easy answers but, in many ways, this is exciting. A new horizon is waiting to be seen and embraced, somewhere just out of sight. I need to keep focused on that and keep questioning or I would become increasingly pessimistic as authoritarianism incessantly creeps. I'm in the right place to do that though, surrounded by great people. There is a lot, for which, to be thankful.

Rolling With The Punches

I watched a video on Youtube recently about the Monkey forecast for the Year of the Water Tiger 2022. For those not au fait with Chinese Astrology, we are currently going through a Water Tiger year, and I am a Metal Monkey. The Monkey and the Tiger are enemies, nemeses so the speak. They are also opposites which means that they actually overlap in lots of characteristics. My mother is a Tiger so I know all about this. I love my mother very deeply, but we fight and disagree about almost everything. It's a difficult relationship to sustain with the clashes, but the other person's viewpoint is crucial when big crises arise. They see what you don't and vice versa. They are indispensable.

Your nemesis year happens when you are (or about to turn) 6, 18, 30, 42, 54, 66, 80, 92 years old. So far, they have been growth years but the pace can be exhausting, leading to the following year (of the Rabbit / Cat) being a recovery year. Indeed, at the tail-end of my last Tiger year (2010) I contracted glandular fever and the following year was spent recovering from it. The Tiger year before (1998) I was watching a primary caregiver succumb to cancer and she finally left us at the end of that Tiger year, and I spent the following year on mood stabilisers and in psychotherapy. The Tiger year before that my parents had just separated and we had to live with elderly extended family until my mum was able to get her own house. What I do remember was lots of instability and anxiety.

Unsurprisingly, I have been quite anxious about how this year is going to go. It has already thrown me a couple of curve balls (striking at work, pension cuts, etc). I usually consult astrology on a fairly regular basis to see what's coming up and what I need to work on. I have been apprehensive about doing that this year, because the forecast is usually along the lines of 'batten down the hatches, a storm is coming and it will wipe you out!'. I was actually surprised to hear that although this will be the case in a lot of respects this year, actually this is a very good year for Monkeys. We have a lot of stars working in our favour, more than any other sign. It will be a tough year as unexpected barriers will keep popping up to challenge us. But, we will have enough resources and support to not only get through it but to thrive.

There was an expression that the astrologer used that I thought was brilliant. She said, 'Monkeys, this is the year you learn to roll with the punches'. I thought about what that really meant, and I found it very insightful. The majority of the time, we see barriers as blocks; as objects stopping us from going in the direction we want to pursue. But, what if the barriers are telling you that you need to go off piste for a little while and develop in other directions? What if you actually commit to learning about how the barriers can actually develop you? Instead of putting all your energy to hit an immovable object and keep bashing your head against it, you learn all about that object and the skills that are needed to overcome it; and learning about yourself all in that process? There's a very different conception of agency there. It's like being tied to a huge weight in the sea leaving you to be bashed about by the waves. But, you are unlikely to drown. Someone will eventually find you and the weight will be removed. So, take that rare opportunity to meditate on life and yourself, and keep the faith. It could end horribly, but the chances are it won't. Roll with the punches, they are trying to teach you something you haven't yet learned to the necessary degree.

That's my motto for this year. Things are going to come at me, but it's how I respond that is crucial and, particularly (I have learned from previous Tiger years), how I expend my energy. My aim is to be empowered, not disempowered, from everything that comes at me. To not see myself as a victim of some sort of cruel fate, but as water adjusting itself to get through the cracks to get to the other side. The only way out is through. Monkeys cannot beat Tigers. They can tease them mercilessly and get a few one-ups on them, but they can't beat them. They are too fierce and will go in for the kill if provoked. The truth is, Tigers go for larger prey anyway. So, fight alongside the Tiger. Learn its lessons and ally yourself with its mission for the year. Tigers draw their strength from adversity, and take their time to regain ground on battlefields and territories they have lost. They wait and pounce at the right opportunity. They also play the long game. They are mavericks, and use innovation to move forward bit by bit. Be more like the Tiger. It's going to be punch after punch after punch. But, roll with the punches and learn the lessons. If you do, you'll come out of this year in a better frame of mind, body and spirit than how you entered it.

Social Media, Activism, Politics, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Reading and Writing

The last few weeks have been tough in many ways. I expected them to be more grounding in some respects - time removed from day-to-day working to engage in activism work. That part, overall, has been extremely rewarding. Over the last few weeks I have been picketing and Striking on behalf of UCU (University and College Union) UK for five fights: pay, casualisation of workers, equality and diversity, workloads and pension cuts. What has been wonderful about all that activity is the camaraderie I have directly experienced with other staff at the University of Edinburgh. We've had the time and space to talk about our jobs, our lives, our values, our needs and our wants. Some of that has been framed by university expectations. But, most of that has been negotiated by us - re-assessing ourselves in this highly charged moment in time and having the space to think about alternative futures.

In the last few weeks I've also spent more time on social media than I have in a long time. Striking UCU members have been very active on social media, getting a particular (and more accurate) narrative out into the media about the calamitous and quite frankly, ruinous situation in which academics are increasing finding themselves. There have been some great posts that I've shared on Twitter about the realities of the work we do, and about how much of that is unrecognised. But, also expected. Academia is not immune from a prevalent instant gratification culture where we feel pressure to do everything now rather than stick to realistic goals that allow us to have a decent work-life balance in order to be mentally strong. We are constantly spinning a multitude of plates in the air and trying to carve spaces to work on important pieces while balancing a formal workload that is crushing in itself. The onus is left on us to put down boundaries that always leave people dissatisfied. In that process we also have to constantly remind ourselves that we are not failing but coping as best as we can. It can be demoralising.

Then there is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have also been following this on Twitter and LBC (Leading Britain's Conversation) and doing pieces of work in the background to help where I can. At the beginning of this week it all became too much. I found myself scrolling through Twitter with a buzzing going on in my head and feeling very lightheaded. Once I came off Twitter, I found it very difficult to concentrate on anything for even short periods of time - I was constantly checking my phone to see if there had been any updates. Not only that, but Twitter's algorithm had chosen both UCU and Russia / Ukraine posts as issues that I 'wanted' to focus on, so my home page was over-saturated with new takes, news and opinions. So the cycle would begin once again and I would be locked in the virtual world for even more time, coming out feeling even more lightheaded and struggling to concentrate.

It's really a no-brainer that my conclusions from this 'experiment' is that social media isn't very good for my mental health. Of course, social media is the vehicle and is not (fully) responsible for this tumultuous time in which we find ourselves. But, I do appreciate more now why there are informal guidelines about using social media in ways that are not detrimental to mental health. So, I've been taking a bit of a step back the last few days - from both social media and the picket line - to try and ground myself when I actually have the opportunity to do that because of strike action. It is equally the time to consolidate as it is to act. The former includes giving yourself enough space to think through the realisations that have been coming at you, not solely stoking them and reifying them until they become mental prisons.

What I have found more useful is taking the time to listen to podcasts, watch debates and read key texts that are all directly related to the moment in which we find ourselves. Where the underlying issues and structural mechanisms are exposed and there is a narrative of change. Where we can connect these particular issues to more broader issues that have been permeating for some time and there is debate how we can get out of this. I've found the work of Yanis Varoufakis and Rebecca Solnit quite illuminating. Whilst I have read some of their work before, it was just the space to listen to debates they've been having recently which gave me some hope, albeit a bit morose hope. The issues that we are all facing today are not new. But, in between the punishing analysis in these debates, both also speak of how they cope with having all these thoughts and realisations, and how they keep going. Self care, unsurprisingly. Putting down boundaries when they need to. Rebecca Solnit was especially good on this, talking about how there are many emails that she doesn't even respond to. She can't. Though many people want her time and expertise, she can't give it out to everyone. She has to be selective, to give herself the scope to keep writing which seems to be as important to her as breathing. I'm sure parts of Rebecca Solnit would cease to exist if she couldn't find the time write regularly.

I've also given myself some 'me' time and been listening more podcast discussions, this time about creativity and writing. I've also followed up some of these podcast discussions with reading some books on the importance of writing for mental health, and about how to write. I have been concluding for a while that most academics do in fact enjoy writing, but it is the gun to your head to do it in very particular ways that has taken the joy out of it for some of us. It has become one other thing, on top of everything else, to 'achieve' and through which we are judged. Everything that I have been listening to and reading has underscored the necessity to not write for these reasons. Writing is an expression of you and sometimes it reflects back to you thoughts or ideas you didn't know you had. Start from there, and if it becomes something more than that, then that is just a bonus. Easier said than done with current pressures, but crucial to stress. In both meanings of the word.

Reflections on Academia and Taking Action

It is widely known that academics up and down the UK have been striking for the last 6 days, and we will continue to strike for 4 more in a more staggered way. There are five fights currently in academia: pay, workload, equality, casualisation of labour and pension cuts. In summary, academic work has become more precarious, is less financially rewarded (our pay has actually gone down in real terms for over a deacade), we are doing more and more voluntary labour (as a result of crushing workloads and pressures), women and minority groups are still coming into academia lower on the pay scales than their white, middle-class male peers (even if they have the same qualifications and experience) and are likely to be overlooked in promotions, and now our pensions are going to be cut by 35%.

I've been working in academia since 2010. My journey started in Nicaragua and I was paid as casual staff. I then returned to the UK and had two short-term contracts: two years and then three years. I was finally offered a permanent post in 2017, satisfactory to a one-year probation. I passed that and then was submitted for the REF (Research Excellence Framework) in 2020. The future looked bright. But, I have to be honest in that I've always smelled something rotten at the core of academia.

I've had an ambivalent relationship with academia from the start because of this. There are many paradoxes inherent within it. Senior management teams tend to be white, middle-to-upper class, middle-aged men who are either promoted through the ranks or bought-in. But, the stories are very often the same - ex-colleagues will discuss how they put themselves forward for every opening when it became available and, often, were not very good at the roles they obtained; leaving the crap for others to mop up. Often women, minority groups and younger, more precarious, staff would be left to do this mopping. On top of everything else they had to do. In addition, the 'vision' that these teams would have for academia, academics and students, as a whole were often out-of-alignment with what those on the ground really needed and wanted. More and more business talk entered the equation, and staff were pressured (some would say bullied) to fill very particular roles of 'academic' to fit this vision. Which, surprise surprise, were very often out-of-alignment with the values and principles that the staff had entered into academia with. 

There was an often talked about 'split' - where academics performed what was expected of them, but they used whatever time was left to pursue the things that mattered to them. This could be small scale research, scholarship, student support and guidance, building relations with outside professionals, and being active in their communities. Soon, that was also incorporated into the role of an academic. But, not just one part. ALL of it. To the point that you were forced to work crazy hours to get it all done. No surprise, the joy was gradually being eroded. It's like doing your favourite thing but constantly having a gun to your head while you are doing it. You will begin to associate what you love with what you fear. Which can become traumatic and eat away at who you understand yourself to be.

Fear is all around us. We are currently living through a peak in populist politics which has fear at its very core. Media is all around us and elevates fear even more. Then there is precarity. Few of us know how we are going to support ourselves in retirement, if we ever get there. I am directly experiencing a parent who does not have enough money to make ends meet and watched the indignity of that. She can't understand my own fears because, to her, I have it made. I have a PhD. I speak three languages. I have been a go-getter since day one and lived in seven different countries. I have a Masters in Social Research am also a qualified ESOL teacher and youth and community worker. It is incomprehensible to my mother (who never finished high school) that I could end my life in a similar way to her. That's not the narrative we were all fed.

On the picket lines there have been many discussions about leaving academia and entering into industry. Most of us could earn higher salaries out of academia. What is heartening is that the majority of academics on those picket lines did not enter into academia for the salary. But, most balanced this with aspirations of stability and a good pension. They have gone through grueling PhDs, precarious contract after precarious contract, worked 50 hours a week often for years to get to a position that feels stable and at least offers a fairly comfortable pension. That is gone now. And academics are, quite rightly, angry.

So, the question is: do we stay or do we go? If we choose the former, we can't do it without fighting. Most of us want a prosperous future not only for ourselves but for our students. We can't leave things as they are, with those at the top creaming off even more of the cheese while those at the bottom scramble for the leftovers. In addition, this will happen outside of academia as well. Pay and conditions will continue to be eroded for those on the lower to middle rungs under failing neoliberalism and hyper capitalism.

The only thing left to do is fight. It's not just a fight for academia. It's a fight for all to have a decent standard of living and some security in our later years. It shouldn't be a fight. But, that is where we are at.