Hi Professors!
I thought I would do things a little differently for this podcast episode and share with you some end-of-the-year personal reflections that I’ve been having. A disclosure upfront is that later on in this episode I will be talking about a health scare that I experienced.
I’m doing this episode because it’s somewhat of a natural continuation from the last one I released on toxic workplaces in higher education, which you can listen to at RisewithClarity.com/8.
And I’m also doing this episode because it connects to the weariness and sheer exhaustion that I’ve been observing among my clients and many WOC faculty currently.
Although I’m no longer a professor, I can feel that this fall semester has been grueling for so many faculty, and not for the usual reasons. In the United States, many campuses are now incredibly polarized spaces, with tensions running high due to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza.
No matter where you stand, speaking out about your beliefs can now incur real repercussions in the form of harassment, hostility, doxxing, cancellation, and even fears for your personal safety. And choosing silence, too, can also incur judgment from your colleagues and your students as well. The situation seems pretty intractable right now.
This is a lot to cope with on top of a regular semester. And I haven’t even mentioned the shifting terrain of today’s higher ed landscape—with more programs and institutions closing down and the new assessment challenges that AI and ChatGPT pose in the classroom.
I don’t think that in graduate school, any of you could have imagined all of these additional challenges that you would have to face now as faculty.
Is this what you thought you signed up for?
I hope that you are all able to take some real time off at the end of this month. Because you deserve it.
Teaching in the Early Part of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Recently, I’ve been thinking back to two years ago, which would be about mid-December of 2021. Back then—and it seems so long ago, doesn’t it—our biggest challenge was learning how to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic as educators. In Fall 2021, I was back in the classroom after a year of remote instruction.
To be honest, I had missed teaching in-person and I was happy to interact with students in 3-D again. There were definitely more things to contend with, like:
• mandatory weekly COVID tests
• the wearing of masks in the classroom
• recording all lectures
• making accommodations for students who tested positive for COVID-19.
This was all the while we were teaching in masks, trying not to get COVID ourselves!
But despite all of the extra work, it was gratifying for me to engage with students in person. My undergraduate course and newly developed graduate seminar on Ethnomusicology and Social Engagement went well. What was the most challenging for me that term, however, was being back on site in the midst of a toxic work environment.
During the early part of the pandemic, it was a major scramble for most faculty to learn how to teach on Zoom and convert their courses to online offerings. Acquiring this new skill set was of utmost importance at that time. And as a result, typically contentious issues were shelved.
When in-person teaching resumed, some of those issues and the toxic politics that surrounded them resurfaced. It was a reminder to me that the departmental fault lines were still deeply entrenched.
Can Toxic Higher Ed Workplaces Actually Make You Sick?
I’ve spoken a little bit about what I experienced at my former institution in the first podcast episode, so I won’t rehash that here. But I’ll just say that I started to see the writing on the wall in terms of the repercussions related to my decision to not comply with the wishes of certain faculty members.
And I was very concerned for those who were the most vulnerable—graduate students—who often found themselves caught in the crosshairs of interpersonal faculty conflicts.
That fall was emotionally taxing on me. I somehow powered through and made it back home to Michigan for the holiday break in mid-December. I was so relieved to be back home after that term.
Everything was fine until the evening of Christmas. In the early hours of the morning I awoke to sharp, wrenching pains in my stomach. I thought it was just a passing thing, but it continued on for several minutes.
Then, I felt like my hands and feet were locking in, as if I was undergoing some kind of paralysis of my extremities. I knew then that something was gravely wrong with me.
I was able to summon my parents, who then decided to call 911. When the paramedics came, I was in pretty bad shape and I was taken to the ICU of a nearby hospital. My potassium levels were dangerously low, in addition to my blood pressure. At that point, a diagnosis had not been rendered.
I don’t really recall much during that first night of being in the ICU. But the second day, I was a bit more alert in between doses of heavy pain medication.
Perhaps because I was so hard wired to work, I actually remember sending work e-mails on my iPhone and also taking detailed notes on a napkin of the different time intervals when I was experiencing acute stomach cramps. I handed this to one of the nurses on duty, who said to me, “You know, honey, you don’t need to take notes on this. I believe you.”
I spent a total of four days in the hospital due to an inflammation of the small intestine. This was a first for me since I’ve always been a relatively healthy person. Needless to say, this was a huge wake-up call for me.
In the Korean language, there’s an expression that translates to something like: “After all is said and done, your health is the most important” (뭐니 뭐니 해도 건강이 최고다.)
That really rang true for me in that moment. I knew, deep down, that what I was experiencing health-wise was connected to the long-term stress of being in a toxic and dysfunctional work environment. I could no longer ignore it from that point on.
A few days later, we were slated to teach in person for the winter term. But the Omicron surge forced classes back online for the month of January. That was actually fortunate for me, as I wasn’t well enough to teach in person immediately after my hospital stay.
Once I returned to campus, I scheduled appointments with several specialists and had various medical tests done. I knew that I had to prioritize my health and well-being that year, as well as begin to ponder possible exit strategies from a work environment that showed little signs of improvement.
And in a future episode, I’ll talk more about the explorations that I had that led to my career pivot.
Now, two years out – December 2023, so much has changed in my life. I resigned from my tenured faculty position in August, and a few weeks later, I launched Rise with Clarity—my coaching and consulting business for WOC faculty in higher education. And, I’ve also become a full-time caregiver for my father, who suffered an acute thalamic stroke at the end of January of this year.
Being a caregiver is probably one of the toughest jobs I’ve ever had. It is not without stress, fatigue, and overwhelm. But even though it’s challenging on a day-to-day basis, I find it incredibly meaningful and gratifying to spend this time with my father—who has improved significantly since his hospitalization.
If I had to choose between the stress that comes from being in a toxic and dysfunctional workplace and the stress that is related to caring for another human being that you love, I’ll always take the latter.
On other fronts, I haven’t had any of the health issues that I experienced two years ago. I have a clean bill of health. And I feel a lot lighter and excited to have made this career pivot to coaching, where I’m able to be of service to WOC faculty, and where I know my skills and expertise are valued.
I thought that I would share some of my personal experiences with you because I wanted to emphasize how important your health is.
At the end of this calendar year, how is your health right now?
If you started to experience some warning signs this year, then do make sure to take the time to schedule appointments to see your doctor and get things checked out.
Pay attention to what your body is telling you, even if you’re too busy with deadlines and you’d just rather ignore it.
Because in the long run, isn’t your good health the only thing that should matter?