11 months of lockdown (49/365)

[white_hart]

I realised today that I've now been working almost exclusively from home (bar a few weeks in late September and October when I was going into the office twice a week, before restrictions tightened up again) for eleven months now. No wonder I'm feeling a bit fed up with it, even if I actually do quite like working from home (Zoom fatigue is definitely a thing, but I think it may actually be less bad than actual-interacting-with-people-in-the-same-room fatigue, apart from not getting the bits of space to walk between meetings) and don't think I'd ever want to go back to working in the office full-time.

I'm also more than a bit fed up about the Government's proposals to strengthen free speech at universities, by which, clearly, they mean "protect the rights of reactionary forces to refuse to co-operate with attempts to address institutional bias and inequality". The proposals themselves seem to be based on a small number of very small studies (one example references "4 out of 10" students who voted to leave the EU feeling uncomfortable expressing that in class, which (a) means more than half didn't; (b) turns out to have been based on a sample size of 64, so in actual fact 25 or 26 students had a problem; and (c) if it was 4 out of 10 Remain-voting students, or gay students feeling uncomfortable talking about their sexuality, I'm pretty sure they'd just be called snowflakes and told to get over it) and specifically reference decolonisation of curricula as "contested political ideologies that are not associated with a particular party or view" and which heads of department should not be allowed to impose on academics in their departments.

(Also, I see that Selina Todd, who I knew at university and used to think was quite sensible, is all over the media again explaining how she's been silenced for her transphobic views.)

Comments

[serriadh]

The huge advantage of Teams meetings is that if I'm not required to contribute I can either sort out a few simpler emails, run boring and time-consuming queries on the student records system, or crochet. This has enormously reduced my frustration at having to go to collegial forum-type meetings which take 2 hours and are supposed about building networks across the Faculty but actually involve one of the higher-ups telling us about agile learning for forty-five minutes before we even get to breakout groups-and-report-back.

As always, people unable to grasp the subtleties between 'right to free speech' and 'saying whatever crap I like'. If asked in a survey, I would have to say that yes, I 'censor myself' on social media (for example) because of worries about losing my job. By which I mean I don't post things like 'some students could have done with an A level in Reading The Exam Rubric' or, as someone remarked to me (privately) after a particularly tedious meeting this week 'having your head so far up your arse you can see daylight is not a protected EDI characteristic'. I don't think any of that is a FREE SPEECH!!!! I'M BEING OPPRESSED!!! issue. It's basic professionalism.

[white_hart]

Being able to multitask in Teams meetings is a bonus (I usually knit, because if I try to work I just end up completely tuning out the meeting, and if I really didn't think there was any point me being there I'd have sent apologies. (Happily, I do not have compulsory collegial network building meetings. Or if I do, I'm running them.)

I also censor myself on social media, for similar reasons, and I similarly don't feel that I'm being oppressed. I often have to sit on my hands quite hard to refrain from chiming in on certain topics (there is one rumbling on at present which concerns my actual department and has attracted a lot of comment from friends and people I follow, which it would really not be good for my continued employment prospects to comment on publicly, even if I really, really want to), but as you say, basic professionalism.

[cmcmck]

Going to make it compulsory to turn up and listen to the hatemongers, are they?

When they stop wishing me dead, I might just be willing to listen..............

[white_hart]

Well, quite.

[crinolinerobot]

I've decided I'm not going back to working in the office. I'm saving around £150 a month on commuting costs, which is a huge incentive. As is not having to get up early to cram myself into one of Great Western's filthy disease tubes... but you have a nice walk to your work, don't you?

I despair of the government, I really do. And they're trying to hold back the tide on this one.

[white_hart]

I have a nice walk some of the way, but it's too far to walk all the way (five and a half miles), so I have to either bus or walk some of it. I used to like the bus journey, because I could read, but am currently quite wary about public transport, and driving is no fun at all.