Kim Akass

I am at the end of my third month of sick leave after suffering an
acute, stress-induced, asthma attack at the beginning of February, which
resulted in an ambulance ride into A&E and an 8-day stay in hospital.  
This is not the kind of experience that I would usually share publicly
but the irony of sitting in a hospital bed, replete with drip and oxygen
mask, answering emails and working on this website was not lost on me,
particularly in the light of the series of blogs on overwork in Higher
Education that *CST* has published over the past few months
([here](https://cstonline.net/working-others-death), [here](https://cstonline.net/working-others-death), [here](https://cstonline.net/reasons-to-be-cheerful) and [here](https://cstonline.net/goodbye-to-all-that))
so, for that reason, I feel compelled to share my experience, not as an
example of 'indulgent and ineffective moaning' but as part of the
'collective language and action' articulated by [Cathy Johnson in her
first blog on this subject](cstonline.net:working-ourselves-to-death) at
the end of January this year.  My intention with this blog is to ask: If
we are to avoid making ourselves ill through overwork, how on earth are
we to manage our increasingly unmanageable workloads?

I have worked in Higher Education for over 20 years.  I started at a
large polytechnic and thought that the dysfunctional nature of that
institution was unrepresentative of the true nature of Universities.  I
was soon to be disabused of that particular notion.  Reading [Richard
Hewett's blog](https://cstonline.net/goodbye-to-all-that) of the
13^th^February, where he outlined his experience of being a
'non-salaried tutor' reminded me of how I started, the years that I
consider my apprenticeship during which I worked in a variety of
Universities on too many film and TV related subjects to list here,
often thrown in at the deep end, sometimes starting within a week of the
first phone call.  I once taught in 3 different institutions in one
semester, each in distant parts of the country at both under- and
post-graduate levels.  I have travelled 3 hours to lecture at 9am on
Monday morning and been scheduled to teach at 5pm on Friday evenings at
the same institution -- two graveyard shifts in a week.  And, all the
time, not being paid for travel, preparation, marking and never for the
semester breaks or long summer holidays, often reduced to office work to
bolster my income, marking scripts in my lunch hour and always worrying
about the next semester's work and how long I could possibly continue
without a regular income.

No wonder I consider myself lucky to now, at last, have a permanent
position.

And this idea of luck is reinforced by the idea that I am doing what I
love: teaching film and television.  Yet, as Cathy Johnson [outlines in
the blog](https://cstonline.net/working-ourselves-to-death) that kicked
off this whole discussion, this 'study what you love' rhetoric means
that the 'boundaries between work and leisure are deliberately blurred'
which often leads to problems of over-working.  For example, if I watch
television in the evening is that leisure or work?  Particularly when
television viewing is crucial for both my teaching and research?  Surely
evening viewing then counts as working, which means I often put in a
12-hour working day 4 or 5 days a week. How do film and TV scholars draw
the line between watching for pleasure and watching for work?  This is a
question already posed by Elke Weissmann [in her latest
blog](https://cstonline.net/finding-time-for-television) for *CSTonline* and
was taken up by Karen Boyle on her Facebook page in response to Elke's
blog.

In addition, the post that I currently hold is in a creative arts
department in a post-92 University with large student numbers and a
heavy teaching load (some 550 hours spread over the year).  Working in a
school of creative arts means that the emphasis is on production and
practical skills -- all well and good and a most enjoyable place to work
-- but it also means a mismatch in the way teaching loads are
calculated.  So, while it is considered reasonable for production staff
to prepare their lectures in an hour (a questionable decision in the
first place), academic lectures inevitably take considerably longer.   I
am certainly not able to research and write a lecture in an hour,
especially when teaching students that often don't even watch TV (as
discussed by
Cathy [here](https://cstonline.net/teaching-television-2-the-place-of-the-programme)),
meaning that the sourcing and use of extracts is a necessity not a
luxury.  Suffice it to say, along with most academics, much of my time
during the semester is taken up researching for, preparing and writing
lectures; seeing students; marking essays; responding to an
ever-increasing email load and doing admin.

And then there is the question of research -- I (along with many of my
colleagues in similar institutions) very rarely get time to research
during the teaching-heavy semester, a problem that is exacerbated by the
lack of sabbaticals awarded to academic staff in my institution.  In
this I am certainly not alone.  As the [*Times Higher* points
out](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/sabbaticals-no-longer-so-open-ended-or-available/2019616.article#.VT5Iw4hyZJU.twitter),
post-92 Universities rarely offer this luxury.  And yet, my colleagues
and I are still expected to turn out the same high quality research as
our colleagues in more research friendly (read pre-92) Universities. 
 Here I am not suggesting that the post-92 Universities churn out
research of a lower quality or that the pre-92 Universities have it
easy, but that, wherever we work, we are under increasingly constrained
and pressurised conditions.  Let's be honest, in today's climate,
whether at a pre- or post- 92 institution, it is a miracle that any of
us ever manage to publish at all.

Let me be clear, I am not claiming that my lot is worse than any other
public sector worker.  Having spent some time in hospital I witnessed
first hand how the Government's austerity measures are impacting on the
National Health Service.  And I know that there are other problems in
more research driven Universities: the [unbearable pressure of winning
funding grants at
Imperial](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/imperial-college-professor-stefan-grimm-was-given-grant-income-target/2017369.article) and [the
threat of job losses at Warwick Business
School](http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=6084) are just two
examples that spring to mind.  In fact, in the great scheme of things I
consider myself lucky to work in an institution that values its staff as
more than just research income fodder.

But, there is still a problem that afflicts all of us when the
expectations of management, research departments and students combine
into that perfect storm of overwork that impacts upon all of us
regardless of specific institutional demands.

In [March 2014 *The Guardian* published an
article](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/mar/06/mental-health-academics-growing-problem-pressure-university) about
the rise of mental health problems in Higher Education with, among other
things, ['the pressures of greater job insecurity, constant demand for
results and an increasingly marketised higher education
system'](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/mar/06/mental-health-academics-growing-problem-pressure-university) being
blamed for stress levels leading to 'nearly half of academics' showing
sign of psychological distress or 'burnout'.  Exacerbating the problems
of an increased workload and the uncaring nature of the academic
environment is the internalisation of the 'doing what you love' ethos. 
At that time Dr Nadine Muller suggested that the blurring of the lines
between the personal and the professional -- the idea of 'doing what you
love' -- was one of the hardest hurdles to overcome in combatting the
culture of overwork Higher Education.   Describing 'burnout' as one of
the biggest problems in academia, John Hamilton, head of safety, health
and wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University, describes how the
condition manifests itself ['as a "significant disengagement" with an
employer, in which a staff member no longer feels in charge of their
role.' ](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/mar/06/mental-health-academics-growing-problem-pressure-university) A
description that could be applied to a large number of my colleagues
across the sector, particularly those, like me, who '[simply do not like
the changes' in Higher Education 'that have taken place over the past 20
years.'](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/mar/06/mental-health-academics-growing-problem-pressure-university)

In [Karen Boyle's
response](https://cstonline.net/working-others-death) to Cathy's blogs
she outlines the part we play in our failure to move beyond the
workplace whinge to acknowledge how tough our working conditions really
are.  Higher Education's zero hours contract tradition is part of the
bigger picture and, in the light of [a recent development at Warwick
University](http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=7482&from=1676&filter=932),
promises to further erode the rights of visiting lecturers.  This deeply
unfair system feeds into that 'doing what we love' ethos and, once we do
get that much-desired job in University, there is a tendency to work
hard to 'prove' just how much we deserve it.  Lest we forget how
thankful we should be, apocryphal tales abound about how many
applications there are for each lecturing position.  In this climate it
is surprising that not more of us work to the point of near collapse.

As I lay in my hospital bed, barely able to breath, uploading content to
this website, I never questioned that this is something that I should
not be doing.  After all, *CSTonline* runs on love and favours, and my
failure to work means that I oppress my long-suffering co-worker Debra,
whose hours of work on the site are unpaid anyway. But is this not what
is at the core of the problem?  By continuing to work on my sickbed I
feed into that expectation that 'this is what academics do' and by doing
so I feed that culture of overwork that made me ill in the first place.
 I would even go so far as to say that my (over)work ethic has stoked a
dysfunctional system that depends upon grace and favour commitments from
its academic workforce who, however inadvertently, oppress each other by
adhering to a deeply flawed system that depends upon their unpaid, and
freely given, overtime in order to function.

Stress in Universities, for both students and staff, has reached such a
critical moment that, [as Cathy points
out](https://cstonline.net/working-ourselves-to-death), *The Guardian*,
recently[ ran a series on the
problem](http://www.theguardian.com/education/series/mental-health-a-university-crisis). 
Articles range from students and staff [being scared to seek help for
their
problems](http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/13/university-staff-scared-to-disclose-mental-health-problems) to
detailing how Human Resources departments largely fail to acknowledge
the problem of work induced stress because they would then '[have to
admit to a situation that is contrary to most of its
policies](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/feb/20/i-can-never-get-university-hr-teams-to-take-mental-health-seriously)'. 
In the light of increased competitiveness in the sector it is highly
unlikely that there will be a systemic review of institutional policies,
particularly if, according to a recent survey, the aggressive nature of
the REF rounds has led to [a rise in workplace
bullying](http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/dec/16/research-excellence-framework-bullying-university-staff). 
Let me be clear, I am not, [as Karen's blog warns
against](https://cstonline.net/working-others-death), letting my
institution 'off the hook', I may have been guilty of the
'self-exploitation' described by Cathy up until my illness but it is
hardly surprising when the culture of overwork in academia has become so
normalised that, according to [Rosalind
Gill](https://www.academia.edu/8308562/Academics_cultural_workers_and_critical_labour_studies) (and
quoted in [Cathy's
blog](https://cstonline.net/working-ourselves-to-death)) 'the
contemporary Academy operates in and through technologies of selfhood
that are producing new kinds of labouring subject: individualised,
responsibilised, self-managing and monitoring' in other words we have
learnt to police ourselves, internalising the expectations of management
and students, often to the detriment of our own wellbeing.

In this case I see my recent hospitalisation as a dire warning to not
only heed Audre Lorde's words (quoted by both Cathy and Karen) but to
truly take them to heart and to act upon them.  In the end, I no longer
have a choice but to take care of myself.   In the past few years I have
overworked to the point of collapse, using annual leave to research and
write (instead of taking holidays), drafting unsuccessful funding bids,
fulfilling the requisite REF submission, supervising an inordinately
large amount of dissertations, trying to provide pastoral care for an
ever-growing student body as well as continuing to run this website,
attend conferences, review and edit articles and work on the editorial
board of *Critical Studies in Television*.  I am not alone in working
this hard and I can't quite see how I can fulfil my contracted duties
without putting in extra hours -- often having to work evenings and
weekends.  Even though I am used to hard work, I am increasingly finding
it difficult to sustain this level of commitment, I no longer have as
much energy as my younger colleagues and, in my struggle to keep up with
the workload, I suffered that acute asthma attack and ended up in
hospital, quite literally nearly working myself to death.

Regardless of whether we can keep up the pressure, regardless of where
we are in our careers and how much we love our jobs, it is now time for
us to collectively begin to care for ourselves and by doing so take care
of each other.  Only if we implement ['a collective language and
action'](https://cstonline.net/working-ourselves-to-death) will we stop
the culture of overwork that is endemic in academia.  I am not sure how
we will get through the amount of work expected of us in a 37.5 hour
working week but, for me, there will never be a better time to engage
with Audre Lorde's call for self-preservation as an act of political
warfare, particularly if I want to avoid another lengthy hospital stay.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=300&height=300&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_94/self-care-audre-lorde.jpg){.addCaption
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**Kim Akass** is the managing editor of *CSTonline*, one of the
co-founding editors of *Critical Studies in Television*, co-editor of
the 'Reading Contemporary TV Series' at I.B. Tauris.  She is also a
wife, mother, friend and colleague and hopes to restore her work-life
balance to some kind of normality in the near future.

I would like to thank Debra Ramsay for her amazing support on this
website. Without her commitment to *CSTonline* we could not have
continued in the last few years and more particularly in the past 3
months when she has kept the site live.  Thank you Debra.

For an account of what is happening in a particular area of US Higher
Education read Amanda Ann Klein's latest blog -- [Starving the
Beast](http://judgmentalobserver.com/2015/05/06/starving-the-beast-the-unc-system-in-2015/).

Here are a series of links to other articles written about this problem:

**[Entire USC First-Year MFA Class is Dropping
Out](http://www.artandeducation.net/school_watch/entire-usc-mfa-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/)**

**[King's GTAs call for an end to exploitative working
conditions](https://kclgtas.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/hello-world/)**

**[Teacher's work more overtime than any other professionals analysis
finds](https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/teachers-work-more-overtime-any-other-professionals-analysis-finds)**

**[Marina Warner Diary, London Review of Books Vol. 36. No. 17, 11
September 2014](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary)**

**[Attempts to 'gag and silence' academics are commonplace, TES, 11
Septmber
2014](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/attempts-to-gag-and-silence-academics-are-commonplace/2015692.article)**

**[Marina Warner, Learning My Lesson, *London Review of Books*, Vol. 37
No. 6, 19 March
2015](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n06/marina-warner/learning-my-lesson)**


I am at the end of my third month of sick leave after suffering an acute, stress-induced, asthma attack at the beginning of February, which resulted in an ambulance ride into A&amp;E and an 8-day stay in hospital.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

NEARLY WORKING MYSELF TO DEATH