In February, before I finally made time to see my primary care provider, I was working very intensely, being totally overwhelmed. I'd been in this state of overwhelm since late 2021 when we were out of the height of the pandemic and our temporary grace and acknowledgment that things are tough and that we are all overworked went away. So we went to business as usual, never mind we were all traumatized (I don't use this word lightly) by the pandemic. Outputs must be outputted, after all.
I was trying to make all the outputs for an external grant in time (this didn't work), trying to catch up on a million things. And every day new requests came in.
These include (but aren't limited to) the following. You may skip the following paragraph, there's nothing extraordinary there, it's just the cumulative weight:
Tenure file reviews, refereeing requests outside of Res Philosophica and other things I'm in the board of or editing, speaking and writing invites, endorsement requests, requests to evaluate full manuscript proposals or book proposals, to sit on external committees for PhDs and MAs, to help advocate or create visibility for some worthwhile goal (e.g., tthe wonderful first-gen philosophers website), to comment on someone else's paper or book, and podcasts and things of that nature. Then there were things I've already committed to, Res Phil editorship and Ergo associate editorship, SEP reviewing of articles in philosophy of religion, various projects of editing stuff etc with others. I had taken on chairing the C-APA next year, feeling obliged because I advocated for low-CO2 virtual conferencing. But it was too much. There were also various committees for the department and the college I was in. I was still mentoring grad students and doing work as placement director.
Though I had teaching relief for the grant that spring semester, all this extra service work made it feel like a terrible squeeze.
I turn down the vast majority of external requests, but it's hard to say no to practically everything. For most things, I say no, I suggest other people. But then you think: Oh, I've already read this book, so I can easily write a 3000-word commentary on it. The allure of "this will be easy, I'll say yes to it" is so big. But do it, and you end up spending much more time than anticipated. It's like the great summer illusion, as Eric Schwitzgebel calls it, but then for little tasks that all add up and become a huge swamp you're constantly sinking in.
So, in the end, I was getting to this state I've seen other senior folk fall into. They say yes to too many things, and then they drop the ball and they keep on disappointing people. It's very sad, but understandable that this happens.
Part of the problem is the huge inequality in our profession. If you say no to nine requests, and yes to one, it is still too much if you get dozens of requests weekly. Our perpetual overwork is a labor issue. Fewer and fewer faculty members are holding up the tremendous edifice of service work that keeps academia up. Adjuncts, VAPs etc. cannot do some of the lifting (e.g., tenure files) and understandably can't or won't take on much or any of the other lifting (e.g., refereeing). They can't sit in our committees. We wonder why we're so overworked, but if your department shrinks from e.g., ten full time tenure-line professors to five, while expected to do the same service load, plus the service to the profession, is it a wonder we cannot get it all done?
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