On one of the occasions when I called the gastroenterologists to complain that my heartburn wasn’t getting any better (there were a couple of rounds of such calls, before I went back to my regular doctor), the woman I spoke to asked “Are you experiencing stress at work?”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” I said, “and before you say anything else, there’s nothing I can do about that.” Which is absolutely true– if stress is the real cause, then I’m stuck with this until at least December (which is about the earliest my tenure decision could come through).<\/p>\n
College teaching is an extremely stressful job, as this Inside Higher Ed piece details<\/a>. That’s talking specifically about the lot of a faculty member in English, but it’s not that different in the sciences. We just replace the grading of papers with a mix of shorter work (problem sets, quizzes) and extended class prep (setting up demonstrations and labs). And, as previously noted<\/a>, research activity is more tied to work.<\/p>\n Would my stomach problem benefit from a decrease in the ambient stress level? Sure. I just don’t know where that will come from during the term (three more weeks– curse this stupid trimester calendar!).<\/p>\n (Suggestions for low-overhead ways to be more chill are welcome in comments.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On one of the occasions when I called the gastroenterologists to complain that my heartburn wasn’t getting any better (there were a couple of rounds of such calls, before I went back to my regular doctor), the woman I spoke to asked “Are you experiencing stress at work?” “Yes,” I said, “and before you say… Continue reading The Nature of the Job<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}