5 ideas for moving on in pandemic times

Your peace is more important than driving yourself crazy trying to understand why something happened the way it did. Let it go.~ Mandy Hale, Blogger turned New York Times best-selling author.

Moving on is easier said than done in pandemic times. We don’t actually know what the next best step is in terms of the coronavirus, and many of us, including me, are struggling to make sense of where we fit in the new, not necessarily better, economic order.* We may need to consider moving on as “building the path while walking on it,” or “stepping into the air and expecting the ground to rise up to meet us.”

It will likely be many years before we fully understand the effects of this virus on long-term mental and physical health and the economy, even as we reopen without a vaccine. At the present time, most schools seem to be trying to create a combination of online and in-person classes, some with staggered classes and social distancing. As of this writing, 70% of higher education institutions expect to hold in-person classes with some modifications to accommodate physical distancing in Fall 2020; only 6% have committed to going fully online, and the rest are “waiting to see” or considering a combination of in-person/online classes.

If you are an academic or seeking to become a member of the higher education academy, keeping or getting a position seems harder than ever. It’s becoming a cliché to say, “Higher education is experiencing a profound seismic shift in educational delivery as a result of the coronavirus.” Actually, that was true before the pandemic. Institutions with weak finances were closing at a rapid pace, more courses were being provided online, and community colleges were seeing stronger enrollment in response to rising tuition. Responses to the virus have only exacerbated those changes, perhaps just making them happen faster.

Many universities instituted hiring freezes when things started looking bad. As the outlook worsened, institutions cut retirement payments, let contract (adjunct) workers go, furloughed staff, cut or ended athletic programs. A few even cut salaries across the board, even for high-level administrators.

So, what’s an academic to do? Start planning for the future, even if you don’t know exactly what it looks like. Revisiting these old issues is discouraging. Planning for the stresses of the immediate present head-on is the only way to deal with all of the unknowns.

Most likely your own plans have already changed from how you will handle teaching to managing your personal life. For myself, I have changed some of the ways I offer my services. I have added one-time-only appointments for a fixed price as a way to help during this unanticipated financial catastrophe. People are taking advantage of my 15-minute focus coaching sessions to address one specific issue quickly. To help you immediately, I’ve provided 5 ideas for coping in these perilous times.

5 ideas to help employed academics in perilous times

1. Prioritize your own mental health. The old maxim “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” applies to your work in academia, too. You are not going to do a good job if you spend all your time worrying and preparing for classes that may or may not happen the way you expect. Find something that makes you joyful. Indulge yourself in that at the very least one time per week.
2. Stay in touch with your school and department. Make sure the lines of communication are open. Make sure you understand whatever guidelines are being offered. Communicate changes in your own situation that impact your work. If you or someone in your family gets sick, what’s the contingency plan? Communicating a clear path forward and you will be remembered and endeared you to colleagues and supervisors.
3. Limit your office hours and when you answer email. Students are in a panic, but their communication with you probably does not involve a life-threatening situation. Boundaries are important. Students should not expect you to be answering email or text messages at 3:00 AM. Do whatever you can to automate message responses in the time you are claiming for yourself.  If you think students are suffering from suicidal tendencies, you might include a suicide hotline in your signature line.
4. Find some easy strategies to dress up online courses. Take one class at most on how to do an online course, whether from your own institution or somewhere else. Give up trying to create entirely new content, especially if you are only doing asynchronous classes. Instead, video only some lectures and keep them to 4-10 minutes at most. Or have the class do outside work that can actually be discussed on a video platform like Zoom.
5. Find time to write. You may feel you are too distracted to be productive but taking action on whatever is worrying you is one way to reduce the worry. For academics, writing is the way we figure out what we really think. I cannot tell you the number of times I have set out to write something, tried to pull in whatever I’d already researched and discovered I had something different to say than what I thought I was going to say. Actually, this pretty much happens every time I write a blog post. It did this time, too.

Engage with your ideas, even if it doesn’t immediately turn into a publishable piece. Practice self-compassion when you get overwhelmed by non-writing projects. Take time to breathe before tackling your obligations. An added bonus discovered by countless journal writers is how writing enhances the ability to “heal thyself.”

To sum up, there are a wide variety of actions you can take now.  If you need to grieve your losses as we move into a new reality, please read my last post with 9 tips to grieve your coronavirus losses before moving on.

*This piece was written before the violent protests resulting from the death of George Floyd.

Tags: be prepared, career, Getting Organized, goal setting, goals, letting go, planning