Six months in a leaky boat: Surviving my first six months as an academic in a pandemic
It’s hard to believe it has already been just over six months since I started my first job as a Lecturer. My first six months on the job was not what I thought it would be and has been one of the biggest learning experiences of my life—and that’s after having almost completed three degrees. Throw in a global pandemic and let’s just say it’s been one hell of a ride.
For the purposes of providing some context, I have been enrolled full-time as a PhD Candidate since August 2017. In addition to being a full-time student, I have been taking on any and all teaching and research contract work I can get my eager little paws on for much of that time to make ends meet. While I was fortunate enough to land my first lecturing gig at the very start of my PhD journey, even the three years of teaching experience I gained working alongside seasoned academics could not prepare me for a full-time academic position. Not to mention, I—like many new appointments in the past year—have had to navigate all the intricacies of being an early-career academic whilst also dealing with the implications of conducting teaching and research while the world has been battling with COVID-19.
The academic interviewing process in itself was a whirlwind as recruitment opened up again after New Zealand had been in lockdown. Many universities put restrictions or outright freezes on hiring due to uncertain outcomes for student enrolments as a result of travel restrictions and border closures. Other tertiary institutions were in a rush to recruit to ensure staffing levels were adequate to deliver already promised courses for the second half of the year—which is how I landed a permanent full-time position in the middle of a pandemic.
Fast forward through the panel interviews, research presentation, campus visit and paperwork and I found myself alone in my new office with just under two weeks before the semester started. I didn’t even have a desk yet, or my own computer, or even an email address. With just a loaner laptop and a coffee table, I set about the daunting task of coordinating and preparing for delivering a course of 150 students solo for the first time.
One of the weird things about working to almost unmeetable deadlines is that you don’t have time to think about how stressed you are. I spent the first eight weeks of my new job feeling like I was barely treading water. I did what I could to stay afloat—which often meant consistently working until the late evenings and over the weekends—so that I could be prepared just in time to deliver my next lecture. As someone who likes to plan every aspect of my life in advance, working to a just-in-time deadline was incredibly demoralising. I never felt like I was making progress or that I was able to catch my breath until the mid-semester break, and even then this only realistically enabled me the time needed to get through marking. In the end, somehow I managed to make it through alive.
Academia is a stressful environment in the best of times, but I don’t think there is an academic among us who hasn’t found the last year more challenging than most. Even though my new colleagues were incredibly welcoming and supportive, we are all working in an environment with staff who were more overworked, and students who were more anxious, than usual. All of which is exacerbated with staffing cuts and redundancies around the country of which my own employer is no exception. I found myself saying goodbye to colleagues I had only just gotten to know as those of us left behind faced the reality of doing our jobs with higher workloads and fewer hands to help. It has felt like being at sea on a leaky boat more often than not.
It is important to acknowledge here that I am in a privileged position to be living and working in New Zealand. I have been able to go to a physical campus, work in an office outside of my house, and engage with students and colleagues face-to-face without a severe threat to my health or that of my loved ones. I have friends and co-authors spread across the globe who are experiencing far more challenging circumstances than those of us on our tiny little island. Every day I remind myself to be grateful for just being able to leave the house and go to work, and that I even have a job to go to—which is certainly not the case for many Kiwis.
If there is one good thing to have come out of this experience, it’s been that is has forced us all (including university administrators) to rethink our approach to academic life, especially in relation to teaching and flexible working arrangements. My first semester followed the more ‘traditional’ format of multiple face-to-face lectures each week, followed by tests and some token-gesture online quizzes—a format that is not conducive to moving to emergency remote teaching (ERT) at the drop of a hat. Now, I have moved all my courses to a flipped classroom and put more emphasis on flexible independent study, better utilisation of online and offline tools, tailored support, and learning how to engage students across multiple geographical regions and time zones.
My confidence as an educator has definitely come a long way since I got here at the end of last June, but I still have a long way to go. I am thankful to my colleagues here and abroad who have offered their advice and support and I am both excited and anxious to see what the next six months have in store.
