Picking Up the Pieces From the Pandemic

As we begin a new academic year, we must look forward and be ready to make changes informed by our experiences over the past 30 months. Countless higher education professionals from every area have sent out similar pleas: “We love our field, but we are tired. We love supporting students, but we are exhausted. We are dedicated, but dedication cannot supersede survival.” Too many of us have been overwhelmed and burned out by an overload of responsibilities and demands.

We have seen some of the largest spikes in higher education employee turnover in recent history as some people have decided the situation in our field is simply not sustainable for their lives and needs. So, going forward, how do we pick up the pieces after the emotional and psychological damage that’s occurred over the course of the pandemic? How do we proceed? How can we change the situation for the better?

For starters, we—the faculty and staff who people the university—must recognize that such change begins with us. Tired and drained as we are, the prospect of still another mission resting squarely on our shoulders is anything but comforting. Yet silence and a return to the status quo at this point would signal that the trials and challenges that have coincided with the pandemic have been simply situational and will increasingly become less severe. It would further solidify the engrained systems within our institutions that have long been problematic. This is not the time to let conversations about our concerns fizzle out: on the contrary, it is the perfect time to voice such problems as we enter an era that could redefine higher education’s status quo for years to come.

At the same time, we should keep in mind that there is no enemy here, as we discussed in a previous article, “Loving Your Field Enough to Set Limits.” The creation of our current higher education system has been a communal effort. We are an evolving workforce made up of people who can each play a part in molding systems, even as those systems can and do take on a life of their own. It takes reflection, compassion and understanding from every level of an institution’s structure to redefine entrenched systems, and we will find our greatest success as a united front.

All that said, on a more practical level, we can only control our own lives. As a result, we will focus in this article on the steps we can take as individuals to help enact change and establish healthy boundaries and working conditions—all the while recognizing that this is not an every-person-for-themselves situation. Our individual efforts constitute a communal wave that has the power to turn the tide on decades-old, or even centuries-old, systems and structures.

So, the first thing we encourage you to do is acknowledge the power you do have. Maybe you successfully wrangled a cranky toddler to bed every night this week, or perhaps you have a secret recipe that all your friends and family swear is the best out there. Maybe you’re the office comedian or the resident cat whisperer in your friend group. Amid turmoil, it is easy to lose sight of what we are and focus on the things we are not. Take a moment to take stock of and own all the things that you are and can do.

Second, we invite you to take a moment to reflect that whoever the antagonist is in your present story is also a person trying to navigate this complex world and time. When things are tough, we look for someone to blame because that gives us an outlet for our frustration. Yet, while specific individuals may contribute to poor situations, it is important—if not always easy—to remember that no one person created or should stand as the symbol for what has gone awry in a multilayered and interwoven system.

Moving Forward

Now that we’ve acknowledged some different lenses through which we can view the situation we’re in, we can start to take action. And starting is, in fact, the most challenging part. As one professor so eloquently expressed in the opinion piece “Academe, Hear Me. I Am Crying Uncle,” we have fallen in love with a field that frequently relies on guilt as a bargaining chip. We continue to push through barely survivable work expectations because we fear that caring for ourselves would mean letting down the students and colleagues who depend on us. Saying no for our own sake might pin our burdens on an innocent friend or co-worker who is already struggling. So we continue shouldering our ever-inflating responsibilities. But saying no to the expanding demands of our positions is one of the strongest tools we have.

Unfortunately, as Beth Godbee notes in her opinion piece “Honoring Ourselves and Each Other Through Burnout,” not everyone has the luxury of using this tool. Yet, even if you are not in a position to deny new and overwhelming responsibilities and demands, you can encourage those around you to consider whether such tasks are genuinely vital or maintained out of habit. Use your courage to begin conversations that may help coworkers and supervisors shift from a maintenance mind-set to one of consolidation, evaluating what tasks and to-dos are central to the department’s or institution’s goals. Although you may feel you have not been afforded the ability to say no, your experience of struggling under mountains of duties is not unshared. Your insights may help others who can say no see ways that they can lighten the load of an entire department.

We can also strive to alter how we think about and approach work on a smaller scale. As people, we often think in dichotomies: a task is either finished or unfinished, and we are either busy or free. But approaching work in a field like higher education as a dichotomy is a recipe for an unyielding sense of falling just short of the finish line, only for that finish line to move farther away when we do take a moment to catch our breath.

Instead, try to develop a habit of thinking about tasks and to-dos in bite-size chunks. For example, writing an annual report is an in-depth task that takes days to complete. If we delay gratification and acknowledgment of our accomplishments until such a project is entirely finished, we’ll end up trudging through hours of work on minimal motivation and drive. By shifting the goal from creating the end product to passing through checkpoints along the way—writing a draft of each section, editing the report, finding and adding the perfect graphic, and so on—we create more frequent and accessible opportunities for celebrating how far we’ve come instead of focusing on how far there is yet to go. While this recommendation does not correct the underlying systems that allow too many duties and responsibilities to pile up, it can at least help improve your daily confidence and energy.

Finally, we can work to evaluate and, if necessary, adjust expectations we have placed on ourselves or have intuited from colleagues and our general work environments over our careers. While people from every walk of life can find a home in higher education, most professionals share caring, conscientious, compassionate and supportive traits. Rightly or wrongly, the field as a whole has started leveraging those traits as the typical higher education professional: someone who gives their very best and then some, who puts students and other stakeholders first, and who derives a sense of worth from successfully helping others.

Unfortunately, that admirable profile has been mutated over time into an unhealthy expectation that the individual behind the professional is a type of second-class citizen—one whose needs always come last if they are even considered. Young faculty members and administrators see co-workers model this apparent disregard for self and often interpret it as an idyllic level of selflessness to which they, as budding professionals, should also aspire. We have unwittingly perpetuated a sectorwide expectation that the good higher education professional is somehow devoid of personal needs, fueled solely by the opportunity to serve others and to further their discipline’s and institution’s goals.

This working definition is not only untrue but unhealthy. Of course, higher education professionals have individual needs and desires, and of course, they—like all other people—will be better equipped to serve others when their own needs are satisfied. We collectively seem to have forgotten that it’s OK to not respond to an email until the next business day or to not complete a task that could ultimately damage our well-being. By giving ourselves the grace to recognize that a job done above and beyond is often functionally equivalent to a job done well enough, we can begin to disentangle ourselves from perceived or self-imposed expectations that are simply impossible to uphold. The model higher education professional should no longer be someone who self-sacrifices to a fault. It doesn’t allow us to honor ourselves as individuals, the students we serve or the future generations of higher education professionals whose actions will be partially formed through our examples.

We are living in a simultaneously uncomfortable and exciting time in higher education. The challenges we face today are signs of transition. We can yield some power in defining a new direction for higher education, informed by the lessons we’ve learned from the pandemic and reinforced by zeal for what the future can hold. An ardent passion for educating and serving students unites us, and we can mold our field to encourage rather than stifle that passion. The change begins with each of us.