The "I'm not doing so well" thread

[2manyoranges]

Kind of preemptive post here:
I am a university lecturer. Have been for about 17 years after returning from a career in industry. I lecture in Manufacturing Engineering, and for most of the 17 years it has been a pretty "sweet" gig. Busy, but fun and manageable. The institution I work for has a "target Student:Staff Ratio" of 18 - 20:1. Across the courses I lecture, my personal effective SSR this year is 77:1*, almost all of them "overseas" students studying at post-graduate level. This means my teaching activity is worth about £850,000 in student fees to my employer. There is a policy in place that coursework will be marked and returned to students with meaningful, personalised feedback within 3 weeks of the submission deadline.

One of the lecture series I teach is assessed by a piece of design coursework and a written exam. Each of these take about 30 minutes per student to mark. The lecture series has 370 students registered on it. So, I will have 185 hours of marking to do in 105 working hours (the University is quite clear that I only work 7 hours per day, as part of its annual leave policy) for each of the assessments whilst also lecturing, tutoring, researching, etc. This clearly doesn't fit, and causes me massive stress. Last year, my classes were slightly smaller and the deadlines for marking drove me to despair. I have told the Vice Chancellor of my concerns, but felt I was "batted away". The institution won't recruit staff on post-graduate student numbers because "they are only here for one year."

I expect to post again in November when the first peak of marking hits, and again in January when I will have two exams to mark, meaning about 250 hour of marking to do and a "hard deadline" to submit the marks within 3 weeks to keep the administration system "happy". January may see me contemplating "serious and possibly irreversible action" as my brain tells me that is the only way out of the situation.
Thanks for "listening". If/when I post in November/December January in despair, please do try to "talk me down".


*Student Staff Ratio calculation: full time students study 120 credits in a year (usually 8 x 15 credit courses). So 1 student on a 15 credit course is 1/8 of a full time equivalent student. This year I am lecturing 5 courses with a total of 622 students, so 622/8 is just over 77 full time equivalent students.

I am a researcher in education, looking at systems around the world, and helping schools and colleges get on top of policy for manageable and well-grounded practice in didactics, pedagogy and assessment. It’s clear that HE needs income, but it’s not right to increase intake without changing processes. Union membership important. But revised assessment of coursework sounds essential - your load is not rational or sensible or fair. Take a look at ‘rank ordering‘ and ‘comparative judgement’ approaches, (which cut down assessment time hugely) which can be combined with ‘team assessment in a department’. Feedback can become a group process and part of the teaching. Involving post docs in assessment can help both students and the post docs. It sounds like the assessment load is the big one here (I recognise that there are other elements, and the management reaction irrational and not protective of vital staff like yourself).

 

[pigman]

I used to ride with a lecturer in engineering at one of the unis in Sheffield. He used to dispair at the number of students who feel they don't need to work as they've paid and are therefore entitled to walk away with a degree. The dilemma he had was lots won't do the coursework, so in order for them to pass, he was severely handholding and almost doing the coursework for them. "Sod em and let them fail" says I. Ah, he said, not that easy. If I get a high failure rate, I get management on my back. Plus, its all over social media and the uni's trustpilot equivalent and so people don't enrol and no bums on seats means no revenue.
Sad really

 

[The History Man]

I’m reading this as a task avoidance activity when I should be marking assessments.

Ironic given above.

 

[KermitGKona88]

I used to ride with a lecturer in engineering at one of the unis in Sheffield. He used to dispair at the number of students who feel they don't need to work as they've paid and are therefore entitled to walk away with a degree. The dilemma he had was lots won't do the coursework, so in order for them to pass, he was severely handholding and almost doing the coursework for them. "Sod em and let them fail" says I. Ah, he said, not that easy. If I get a high failure rate, I get management on my back. Plus, its all over social media and the uni's trustpilot equivalent and so people don't enrol and no bums on seats means no revenue.
Sad really

Just to clarify, my angry is at the system and not your friend...

 

[Erin0110]

I can't cope with my children, I am tired.

 

[2manyoranges]

I can't cope with my children, I am tired.

My 19 year old finally made a successful solo rail journey to Hull to participate as an extra in some filming - I felt for years that neither I nor she was really coping, but finally we make some progress….

Hang on in there…..

 

[KermitGKona88]

I can't cope with my children, I am tired.

I don't have children so not fully equipped to answer this one, my friend however does have children 2 boys now 4 & 7, last year his wife had a serious illness and had to be away from the family home, and he was seriously struggling, job, very ill wife, 2 children who are both combative, I used to help him out as much as I could, buying shopping for him so he didn't have to rush to the shops, that meant I would go round and be there to help support, I would talk to the boys and even tell them off (just so that he didn't always look like the bad guy), I even tried changing some nappies which caused a great laugh and took some tension out...

What I am trying to say in a very round about way, is you have made the first step in admitting there is a problem, I hope you have a good friend that can maybe just help take the strain off a bit, I have seen the struggles that bringing up children raises and although I love his children to bits I am always eternally grateful that I can hand them back to their parents.

Please reach out to someone and don't struggle on your own.

 

[tenbikes]

My head was doing ok until recently. My body is kind of clapped out from overuse, but I can live with that.

However, I broke my leg in July. A very simple break which I self-splinted so that I could move to a better spot to be rescued from, but I still needed an air lift out [biking is not my only outdoor sport; this was climbing]. All good so far. But the surgeon has made a total F up of setting the leg. My foot is now sticking out at 45deg which means I can only cycle if I use a pedal extender on the drive side, and there is no way on earth that I can ski. If I tell you I have 18 pairs of skis, covering many disciplines you will understand what this means to me.

I am now awaiting remedial surgery to re-break and re-set the leg. At this stage I have no idea how long this will take, but the coming winter is certainly to be trashed. And the thought of another operation isn't good either. I had a rod inserted under my kneecap, down through the tibia, and 4 pins. It hurts like hell most days and is still swelling up, after nearly three weeks.

My work is affected, but so far not my take home pay, which is a blessing.

But it is doing my head in......even allowing for the fact that I can, sort of, ride. Gentle stuff, nothing technical or pushy. I wouldn't mind so much if I'd been in a bad smash and my leg had been mangled, compound fractured etc, but it was a very simple break. I would have been better off going DIY with a bottle of whiskey and a SAM splint!


I don't think I'm depressed yet, but certainly I'm not anything like 100% . Maybe if I can get the pain under control and get a date for the next op. that might help. Meantime, I ride when I can and try to be thankful that, in the scheme of things, I ain't so badly off.....but at 61 this isn't helping slow down that slippery slope..............

 

[dyna-ti]

"Sod em and let them fail" says I. Ah, he said, not that easy. If I get a high failure rate, I get management on my back. Plus, its all over social media and the uni's trustpilot equivalent and so people don't enrol and no bums on seats means no revenue.

Thats strange.
In my diploma course, which was furniture design and cabinetmaking, previous years had caused the furniture industry manufacturers to approach the college complaining that the level of craftsmanship on graduates was pretty poor, and as a result the college implemented policy of you dont do the work to a very high standard then you dont pass.
We had a 4 out of 5 failure rate from our year/s*

*I wasn't one of those, I passed with distinction and merit

 

[KermitGKona88]

My head was doing ok until recently. My body is kind of clapped out from overuse, but I can live with that.

However, I broke my leg in July. A very simple break which I self-splinted so that I could move to a better spot to be rescued from, but I still needed an air lift out [biking is not my only outdoor sport; this was climbing]. All good so far. But the surgeon has made a total F up of setting the leg. My foot is now sticking out at 45deg which means I can only cycle if I use a pedal extender on the drive side, and there is no way on earth that I can ski. If I tell you I have 18 pairs of skis, covering many disciplines you will understand what this means to me.

I am now awaiting remedial surgery to re-break and re-set the leg. At this stage I have no idea how long this will take, but the coming winter is certainly to be trashed. And the thought of another operation isn't good either. I had a rod inserted under my kneecap, down through the tibia, and 4 pins. It hurts like hell most days and is still swelling up, after nearly three weeks.

My work is affected, but so far not my take home pay, which is a blessing.

But it is doing my head in......even allowing for the fact that I can, sort of, ride. Gentle stuff, nothing technical or pushy. I wouldn't mind so much if I'd been in a bad smash and my leg had been mangled, compound fractured etc, but it was a very simple break. I would have been better off going DIY with a bottle of whiskey and a SAM splint!


I don't think I'm depressed yet, but certainly I'm not anything like 100% . Maybe if I can get the pain under control and get a date for the next op. that might help. Meantime, I ride when I can and try to be thankful that, in the scheme of things, I ain't so badly off.....but at 61 this isn't helping slow down that slippery slope..............

I am sorry to hear about your accident and the subsequent lash up.

Sounds to me that at 61 you could run rings around a lot of todays youth, so must be really hard on your mental state to be so incapacitated, the pain management is most important as you rightly say, if you are in pain everything is a struggle. I cannot imagine the agony you must have been in and then to find out the surgeon had made a monumental cockup on top of that... Devastating!

I hope things get sorted soon, and that you get back out again, in the mean time if you do feel down this is a great place to post and vent... Also you could pop in here... https://www.retrobike.co.uk/posts/3311668/

The thread is blocked from visitors to the site so you can vent even more on there...

Take care, and best wishes.

Mark AKA Kermit