No meetings, nothing much coming in on email. We were supposed to end teaching this week anyway.
Starting to think that this is now a paid jolly, something I have never been able to take advantage of after many years of freelance wok.
I would be so, so happy to be in that position...we're still teaching through to the end of next week. Fuck knows when assignments are actually supposed to come in now, as the deadlines have been changed what feels like 20 times so far, and students are being allowed extensions with no supporting evidence for need. We've been warned we might be marking stuff for this semester clear into August if not next semester, if you consider resubs and extensions.
My inbox remains absolutely nuts with stuff from colleagues, admins, senior management, and students. A lot of it is people hitting 'reply all' though, and people sending emails to their seminar groups on Canvas but actually sending them to everyone on that Canvas module because they don't know how to focus or limit their emails (I cannot imagine what my inbox would look like if I hadn't turned off 99% of Canvas's settings).
I'm half way through a creative taught MA and the pressure on the academic staff to keep things turning over with distance learning is obviously intense. To the point where I'm more stressed by the panic soaked emails from the course leader than I am the risk of gasping to death as a result of the the virus.
I empathise. I feel more stressed out trying to hold my classes together than I do being worried about getting virus'd up or Mr Attila's contract going tit's up (he's independently contracted as an electronics engineer) in the next week or so.
I've been spending more time online in the past 10 days, and writing so much in terms of a constant stream of rah rah emails to students, and fielding the 9 billion emails from colleagues and managers, that it's like, 'If only I got the corovid, I could legitimately take a few days off.' Although knowing my university, they'd sack me for slacking.
Our management is worried as fuck about recruitment and how all of this is going to impact tuition income. Yet more talking about downsizing and redundancy. Yeah that makes me want to work even harder on their behalf.
