Quick Tip

If you’re feeling depressed and anxious, it’s hard to do your job well in the college classroom.

Research has shown that teaching is the main source of faculty burnout. Good teaching is emotional work, requiring reserves of patience and ingenuity that are all-too-often depleted in overworked faculty members. The pandemic has certainly offered plenty of anecdotal evidence of that. Here are some suggestions for making it through this difficult semester:

• Take time off, if only for an evening. From grad school on, you’re trained to feel like you should always be working. The lack of a 9-to-5 workday only contributes to that mentality. But the negative effects of an always-on mind-set are real.
• Remember that your job is a job — even if you love it. Devotion to your work makes you a prime candidate for exploitation. Do your best to cultivate perspective — and outside interests.
• Choose sleep over extra class-prep time. What is going to be more valuable to your students — that you went over the readings one more time, or that you are rested enough to be fully present and responsive in the classroom?

Continue reading: “4 Ideas for Avoiding Faculty Burnout,” by David Gooblar

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