Why I Collapsed on the Job
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
Much like when I was in flying training and we were subjected to the altitude simulation pressure chamber so that we could each identify how we individually experienced the onset of hypoxia, I think it is important that everyone notates down the onset of burnout at home or at work.
For me, Stage 1 is when I start feeling myself getting irritable and snapping at those close to me for no reason at all. S2 is when I start having trouble sleeping, and get a really stiff neck leading to headaches. I've got to catch it at that point otherwise if it moves to S3 - crippling headaches, inability to focus on simple tasks or S4 - inability to even get out of a chair due to the feeling of extreme fatigue, then the recovery process is SO much longer and harder.
Keep a working journal, or better still, ask someone close to you that you can trust to note any out of character behavioural changes and advise you of them so that you can start to detect patterns and take action to mitigate.
Later stage burnout usually means taking myself away from even my home town for a bit and soaking up experiences in a different place. Which is exactly what I am doing now - tomorrow I hop on a plane for a 20 hour flight to the other side of the world, to spend a week on a ship (never been on a cruise before). Maximum recharge, no work.
Addendum: Important to realise that burnout recovery doesn't necessarily mean sit on a beach and do nothing. Often, my recovery time is some of my busiest, but it is doing something completely different from programming which recharges me, like learning a new song on the guitar, or doing other audio work.
But I was faced with multiple deadlines and some unexpected work came up and I was called up for jury service ( a not very nice case). I took my laptop home and tried to finish the projects after a day in court.
One day, at lunch in the court, I was thinking about a project and found myself silently weeping. So I got straight on the phone to my boss and explained that I;d just found myself crying, thought that this was probably a bad sign and thought I should stop on that project.
I'm lucky in that I have an employer that values me, trusts me and takes their duty of care seriously. It probably helps that I'm a man in my 50s. They told me to knock off the project completely and commanded me to stop thinking about it until after Christmas.
So, IF
* You have a good employer. * You have the courage to admit weakness
The most effective thing to do is to tell your boss asap and ask for reasonable accommodation until you feel better.
I'm back to doing stupid amounts of work, but my boss trusts that if it feels like it is causing me problems I will tell them, and I trust that they will deal with me reasonably.
Thinking about the issue in terms of time-efficiency will likely not help. It takes as long as it takes until you are back in balance, and accepting that is part of the remedy.
It is important to 'shed the load' when you feel the onset of burnout. Don't take on anything new - just focus on finishing what you have, and then take a break or reward yourself accordingly before doing any more.
People need to be told to stop and take a step back. Hard borders are a necessity. No longer than 40 hours (better 35) per week for EVERYONE. Being it doctors, university professors, steal workers, teachers, cleaning personal.
There are enough resources and money flowing through society to enable everyone having work that pays to live and time to live itself. No need for multiple jobs and getting torn apart to make a living.
We are not in the time of industrialization. This time is long gone and we should be further than running people down and get a pair of new ones if they are broken.
How much do grading, lesson planning, and extracurriculars contribute to that figure? 8 hours every working day seems kind of excessive; I graded well over a hundred assignments a week in college as a TA in 10 hours flat.
It certainly seemed to me to be a very cushy job at the time but I'd love to hear your perspective.
I know for a fact that’s what my HS math teacher did because we got ahold of the old tests and assignments a couple of times and they were almost identical.
Side note: I’m making him sound like a lazy slacker but he was the best teacher I’ve ever had in my life. He taught so much so well that I had perfect grades and didn’t learn any new math in university for the first 6 months.
Well - I'm American. It's anecdotal - I know - but I have two good Canadian friends who teach in the Northwest Territories. They each (individually) make 2x my wage, have better benefits, more PTO, and work demands that are significantly narrower in scope. There are entire parts of my job that are simply "not their problem". They have - only half in jest - offered to sponsor my immigration.
Not to belittle what was - I'm sure - a demanding TA job, but the educational mission at the k12 level is explicitly different from that of a higher education instructor. Most simply, in a higher education setting the learning is the student's problem while in a k12 setting the learning is - increasingly - the teacher's problem.
For example, what kind of conversation would happen between administration and the high ed. instructor if they had a student that only showed up to class 50% of the time, was always stoned, and inevitably failed the class? There wouldn't be one. The student chose to fail.
When I have a student who only shows up half the time, is always stoned, and fails because they won't do work - well - I get asked this question: what are you doing right now to help this child succeed?
Fair question. Here's the wrong answer: I maintain a positive relationship and attempt to integrate him into the class - but, really, I barely know him. He only shows up to class half the time, is always stoned, and refuses to do any work.
The correct answer: These are his discrete skills proficiencies and how I assessed them despite his apathy. These are his discrete skill gaps and the curricular interventions I have attempted to implement with him. This is how he interacts socially. This is what I know about his friend group. Here is what I have learned about his family situation. Here are my documented contacts home, to his councilor, to his social worker, and to his coach.
There is intense pressure to prevent students from failing. It's now becoming apparent that schools are fraudulently passing students who have not met minimum graduation requirements [0]. Even if they're not - teachers are coming under increasing pressure to "find ways" to individually intervene on the behalf of students. It's a laudable goal with good intentions.
Now, I have 29-35 students in each of my 5 classes for a total of 163 students this semester. Keeping in mind that the expectation is not only that I know 163 students by name - but that I am able to know their individual skills strengths/weaknesses, social entanglements, home life & problems, etc. so that I can adequately serve them. It then becomes a numbers game. Of my 40 hrs per week, I am actively teaching for ~33. If I assign one piece of writing per week which takes five minutes to assess I am already at 13.5 hours of work in addition to my instructional time.
Now, I don't just assign one assignment per week, nor do I teach out of a textbook. A good lesson can require 1-3 hours to write and maybe another 30 minutes to create an assessment for that lesson (as I need to be able to explain that 'this is how I have documented their learning was successful today'). Five lessons a week, so let's say 4-12 hrs of lesson and assessment planning.
Of course, most of my classes have a significant diversity in skills levels - so I need to modify the lessons so my students who work at a collegiate level are chewing on texts/ideas that are adequately challenging while also re-writing or substituting texts so my students at a 5th grade reading level are not completely lost. At then, there are my English Language Learners who need language specific accommodations. And my students with IEPs that need their texts and assessments with individualized modifications or via specific modalities. And alternative assignment for [this], [that], and the [other kid] who were absent this week. And - Oh - standardized tests are coming up so you better create time to talk grammar and test strategy. And we have three weeks left in the semester so you better make phone calls home to everyone who is struggling. And - and - and... it all comes out of the teacher's hide.
I know HN is a community with a lot of people who work long and hard hours. We all make our choices and I do this job because it matters in a way that most do not.
But, goddamn - it's emotionally exhausting to be a role model, a cheer leader, a stage performer and a social worker every second of every day. Sometimes, I just want to walk up to my desk, sit down, shut up, and do work like a normal human being. Instead, I show up with bells on to draw the map while I fly the plane and hope none of my passengers kick the doors out. So far - I hear I'm pretty good at it.
But in the end, it would be a lie to deny that when I think about how my wife and I would like to buy a house, have a baby, I don't start whispering to friends with jobs in the private sector.
[0] www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/28/564054556/what-really-happened-at-the-school-where-every-senior-got-into-college
It certainly sounds like the job description is somewhat different than it is here:
A) My teachers didn’t have to care if I skipped class beyond marking me absent. I probably skipped 60 classes in Grade 12 alone and nobody ever said anything beyond a machine making automated phone calls to my parents.
B) We had no standardized tests or college entrance exams (other than an English assessment in Grade 10)
C) My teachers only had around 110 students and 20h a week of instructional time.
D) We rarely had graded or custom assignments more than once a week per class. You were on your own to do ungraded optional problem sets from the textbook most days.
You sound like you really care, respect.
Most experienced PIs never actually make it back into the lab once they get tenure (assuming they are lab researchers), which is a real shame. It becomes difficult to say no to all this stuff because thousands of people are fighting tooth and nail over a tiny number of positions, and they get used to slaving away with this kind of workload because it's what academia demands of you to get a tenured position. Once you have it you just keep doing what you've been doing.
I whish she had tell us more about this, more precisely about what exactly convinced her the real cause was her burning out rather than an exceptionally nasty infection.
Not that I doubt it was, but honestly it's what I'm most curious about.
These struggles are universal for all teachers, not just women. Saying 'xyz is hard in education, especially for women' creates an environment in which men should just suck it up and 'stop whining' because women have it truly hard.
Saying no to people is hard for many people of both genders and regardless of gender it is hard for couples to have children and both have a demanding career, whatever the underlying cause. Taking care of children and the house are not the only things that can cause stress outside of work and all of those reasons are not gender bound.
This sexist approach is unfair to the men in education who can't say no, have to take care of a family on their own, etc. Furthermore it signals to me that all of the other information in the article should be taken with a grain of salt just as an article on space exploration by a flat earther should be taken with a grain of salt.
This subjective approach should not be rewarded here on HN or anywhere else.
It isn't a competition. Everyone's experiences are valid and correct. That women, on average, face the problems of (profession) plus the problems of being a woman in (profession). This doesn't mean that men don't have problems, that their problems are somehow invalidated, or that they should "man up" and take it - the idea that men should do so is actually a problem of _men_ in (profession), because men also have their own set of problems.
That women generally, on average, face more and more significant issues does not invalidate anybody and should not cause a competition to find who is most disadvantaged. It should be one component of a rallying point by which everyone's lives can be improved, men and women and everyone else.
The whole premise that women's issues are more significant or important deserves some skepticism. We can cherry pick certain groups of privileged people, such as computer engineers or CEOs, where I'd agree that women have it harder. (In education, I'm less convinced.) But in the general US population (which is majority female):
- The unemployment rate is majority male
- The homeless population is majority male
- The incarceration rate is massively majority male
- Women do better in school
- Women live longer
Please do not put words into my mouth. Somebody with a broken leg has a significant and important injury. Somebody who has had their leg torn off has a _more_ significant injury. This does not mean anybody is suggesting a broken leg is not awful, nor that we as a society should not do something about broken legs.
I think that as a society we should prioritize dealing with issues that cause the greatest harm to the most vulnerable people. I don't think the gender of the victims should be the first order concern. My message to corporate America is that I'm unimpressed by diversity hiring quotas. I'd be much more impressed if they ran programs that put ex-cons of any race or gender to work in good jobs. I would favor using a company's product if they did that.
Double standards aside, that is exactly my point. It isn't a competition and it isn't fruitful to talk about gender when describing the struggles of people in a profession unless those struggles are directly related to gender. Which in this case they clearly aren't.
I think reducing every problem, in this case getting overworked, to gender devalues the real discussion about gender inequality.
One real problem with people getting overworked is budget. More money for more workers will make everybody's job easier. Another aspect is people's personal lives in which they can face challenges that cause them stress and make it hard to balance work and life. Solving things like this will make everybody's lives better regardless of their age, race, gender, sexual preference, etc.
You also say: "women generally, on average, face more and more significant issues" "men also have their own set of problems." "Everyone's experiences are valid and correct." Again this is the 'men have problems but women have the real problems' argument. "Everyone's experiences are valid and correct." some are just more valid and correct.
Just because a worse thing exists does not make something not bad. The world is allowed to be made out of shades of grey.
I never said it isn't. I just don't see how voicing an opinion on who has it worse or not in a discussion about a different subject can lead to anything else than the polarisation of the discussion.
You can do whatever you want of course. I was just pointing out that I feel that there is some underlying sexism in the article and that it should probably be taken into account when determining its value.
That said, to be fair, I don't think she made the article particularly slanted or gender focussed. I think she was just talking about her experience, and identifying her gender is probably a by-product of our time, a time when women are maturing into, and pushing for, equality.
If you are talking about investment banking or civil engineering, sure systematic discrimination is a thing. Teaching is not one of these. If you want to see discrimination, talk to to male K-2 teacher.
Otherwise women aren't inclined to throw away their life for their job.
-- EDIT --
Sorry, was on mobile.
What I wanted to say is.
Normally, women aren't as fond as men to invest a big bunch of their life into their job. They have the skills, but realize they don't want to work 100h a week to get to the top, when 30h are more than enough to make enough money AND have freetime. They control their work life ballance much better than most men.
If you now see that >90% of people working in the education sector are women, it isn't surprising that they have more women with burnout. The more women a sector has, the more of women with burnout they have.
I don't really follow your conclusion though. Why is it education is so attractive to women? Why do you presume that other professions are considered by women to be 'throwing their lives away'?
Teaching is a sweet gig if you intend to have children or want to travel. It’s also an income enhancer in blue states, as teacher benefits are usually good and makes it easier for a spouse to take career risks.
Nursing is a similar deal. My sister in law is a nurse practitioner. She has unlimited job options to bounce around and can ask for and get whatever schedule meets her needs.
Female dominated jobs have less flexibility on average then male dominated jobs. It is mostly that primary caregivers after they have children need more flexibility, but original choice of occupation does not reflect this later need.
> Teaching is a sweet gig if you intend to have children or want to travel.
No it is not. It does not allow remote work nor flexible hours. You have to be there at time for teaching students who came. I am programmer and have waaay more flexibility then teachers.
> Nursing is a similar deal. My sister in law is a nurse practitioner. She has unlimited job options to bounce around and can ask for and get whatever schedule meets her needs.
That would be unusal, nurses I know have to be on the job on time and at schedule.
Source? In finance I don't see my boss making my female colleagues skip going to the dentist while letting male colleagues go. I do see the lady that sits near me leave all the time for appointments or what have you for her kids. I don't really mind, I think it's good that we have flexibility, especially with all the top-down directive to make sure women (not men obviously just women) have more scheduling freedom. Personally, I'd take the scheduling freedom and work half time and stay at home with my kids instead of being stuck in a high-pressure career - but I don't have that option.
>That would be unusal, nurses I know have to be on the job on time and at schedule
True to some extent. When you're actually scheduled you have to be on there on schedule, obviously, but if you don't like your schedule then you can just jump to another hospital, at least in any mid-sized city with a few different hospitals and clinics. I don't see men working at Ford or something complaining that they can't just come in whenever is convenient for their family. I was actually having this discussion with a pharmacist (obviously not a nurse but a nurse on my team was listening in) and she was lamenting about her schedule - really likes her job but doesn't like the schedule - so I was giving her advice (mansplaining and placing an emotional burden on her and others if you live in SF) on how to handle having this conversation with her manager. Ultimately though you don't get everything you want and you have to be willing to quit the job if it doesn't fit your schedule - some people just aren't because of the money or whatever (not unique to women either, obviously). If you're a nurse (because that was the example) and your kids demand more time than your job allows, you should find a new job - it's not your employers responsibility to pay you for not being there or not doing work. They can accommodate you if they can - tech is easier to do that in, but otherwise it's your life and those are your decisions. Be an adult.
While this is perhaps true in principle, in practice employers pay you not to be at work all the time. If an employer didn't pay you to be sick or take a vacation you'd probably quit.
Setting expectations about what is an acceptable work load is an ongoing conversation between employees and employers.
> I'd take the scheduling freedom and work half time and stay at home with my kids instead of being stuck in a high-pressure career - but I don't have that option.
> you should find a new job
I firmly believe that if you are not happy then you should either make life changes to meet your acceptable happiness criteria, or rethink your expectations and acquiesce. Whichever is easier. The main thing is to get happy. The only thing in life worth anything is happiness, pursue it at all costs.
Nurses can work in all sorts of places. Hospitals run shifts and have 8 and 12 hour shift options. Some hospital units run with two week schedules, so you can stack 12-hour shifts and work 6 days and take off 14. Surgical nurses often work 5AM-1PM. Nurses can also work per diem shifts on hospital floors, 9-5 shifts at doctor's offices or insurance companies, etc.
These professions do require that people actually show up to work and do so on time. Adulting is tough -- Many employers of programmers and engineers have similar requirements. The "upside" of that arrangement is that once your shift ends, your work ends. No boss is calling a nurse to demand that you respond to an email at 9PM.
Teachers are normally expected to work at least one of those months and cant take vacation during year. I can and that saves us money and we have less crowded places to visit. You cant come an hour later or come later from lunch or what have you - perfectly normal things for programmer. You cant work remote - working remote a few days a week is completely acceptable for programmers.
Teachers do actually work evenings - all that grading and similar things.
Nurses shifts are opposite of flexibility. Flexibility as I have, when I can come as I please and leave as I please is unheard of. As a programmer I have colleagues who occasionally take off Wednesday off and work Sunday instead. They have negotiation leverage for that.
I don't know what you mean with stuff about adulting, it is irrelevant. My point was that female dominated fields are not the ones with flexible working time, there was even study about it. The idea that women on average have more flexible kinds of jobs is fantasy based on peoples idea on what is practical for primary caregiver. Female primary caregivers whose husbands cant do (or who want to do everything by themselves) have part time jobs.
"tenure-track horror stories we hear (particularly from women)"
This is a reference to, among other things, sexual harassment. This is not exclusive to women, but they are the vast majority of victims. There was, for example, some upheaval in the astrophysics community, with dozens of stories of younger female researchers finding out at the conference hotel that their professors "had accidentally just reserved one room for the two of them, oops" and so on.
"women are reluctant to say no on the job"
is a reference to the fact that women often feel more of a need to prove that they are worthy for the job. This doesn't imply any wrongdoing by men, especially not by specific men. But you can easily find data showing that women tend to have far more doubts about their abilities and accomplishments, and therefore feel under more pressure to perform.
"Another gendered reality is that women work a double shift"
This is pretty self-explanatory...
Most importantly, I don't understand how such an article provokes the defensive reflexes it apparently does: I'm a white able-bodies heterosexual man, and I have absolutely no doubt that if I were an overworked grad student at the author's faculty, my complaints would get a fair hearing. In fact, 90% of her complaints are indeed independent of gender, and her speaking out will help all troubled by them.
For the rest: if women do feel under extra pressure to appear smart and diligent, which I find at least plausible, I think it can almost completely be solved by just listening and acknowledging their complaint. We do sometimes have gendered expectations: I've personally witnessed a professor who complained abut women's handwriting in lab reports ("I can't read this") while shrugging it off for men ("You've a doctor's handwriting chuckle").
The problem of childcare can also be solved without anyone losing much, and society has actually come a long way. Institutions can open day-care etc. And teams and their leaders can almost always accommodate the flexibility required, and in the process usually creates a more flexible work experience for anyone. Just don't make a big fuss out of it if someone comes late and stays long once in a while because they had to take their infant to the doctor.
In any instance where women fall short of or fail to perform as well as men external factors even amorphous ones can always be blamed. Since powerful men have been in charge of crating social conditions under which womens' identities have developed. Identity which in this case "tends to have far more doubts about their abilities and accomplishments", like you pointed out.
"doesn't imply any wrongdoing by men" is only possible if either of these was true
1.Current society wasn't created/shaped by men in powerful positions.
2. Women are biologically predisposed to have 'far more doubts'
I don't think either of those positions is correct. Whats your logic behind stating "doesn't imply any wrongdoing by men".
By pointing this out I want to highlight the possibility that the author at the very least is prejudiced with regards to gender when it comes to interpreting how others go through life. Which leads me to the conclusion that the author's opinion on why people get burn outs should be taken with a grain of salt.
I have no idea what we are supposed to take away from her story. Don't work too hard and learn to say no, I guess. There is no clear narrative and the article reeks of self pity (she does not get tired of mentioning that she's a "twice an immigrant" and a woman).
EDIT: what bothers me about the article is that there is no root cause analysis and no solution is offered.
Also, I am unsure the n-th order immigrant argument is valid. The very concept of a second order immigrant seems bizarre to me. And if they exist, it remains to be proven that k-th order immigrants have it strictly more difficult than l-th order immigrants for all k>l.
I often consider myself to be very lucky to write JS for a living. I earn a decent wage, work decent hours, have reasonably good employability and portability of work, and if I make a mistake I can only kill the browser.
(Academic here.)
In many ways, yes, and I love my profession. But a potential downside to academia is that all sorts of people will contact you and ask you to do things. Heck, I get regular requests to donate money to my employer!
You should say yes to some of these, but you need to say "no" often. People who find this difficult tend to have a rough time in academia.