Reflections about Covid for a research study

 Reflections on the year 2020 and the impact of Covid on my teaching experience

 

Thank you for the survey entitled: Impact of teaching transitions on staff health. I tried my best to answer most of the questions, but I must say I battled a bit on the burnout section, especially with answers on “how I feel after leaving work”. The work environment has not been the same. I joined the department as a new academic in January 2020. There were interruptions from student and staff strike action. I was on probation and not being able to get to the office made me feel inadequate, like I should be doing something extra to make sure everyone knows I am working. The 19^th of March 2020 was the last time I was officially in the office. I only had physical contact with my husband and sons. Thankfully I live in a complex so I could at least greet my neighbours, at a distance. I must say I am privileged compared to colleagues living alone, or away from family. We lost family members and friends, family members got sick, and I worried about by my elderly parents. My sons built “box-forts” to hide from the world. I realized that my utterances of rage and frustration on how this situation was not handled properly globally, and that there was no end in sight, might have caused confusion in their little minds.

There were times when I enjoyed the less-rushed days. That I could cook, or sort out housework while I worked. This flexible schedule blurred out my days. I couldn’t separate my home versus my work time. I found myself marking assignment scripts long into the night. I even found myself rolling around the house in the same sweat-pants and because I could not visit the salon, the only option was to cut my own hair. I miss waking up, getting dressed (i.e., shoes with heels and putting on lipstick) and driving to work, the actual distinction between being at work and being home. I miss the quiet office that has a big desk and a white board where I can map out my week or write down notes. Being able to stand up to make a cup of coffee instead of worrying about what everyone in the house will eat. I miss the luxury of being able to print and scan, to walk across to someone's office for a quick chat. Yes, there are things I don’t miss like the interruptions from random people who are lost and don’t know which building they are looking for. Or worrying about afternoon traffic on the way home. I have however, learnt a lot in the past year. I attended a whole lot of training online in a couple of months. I am still struggling with the time-management but am working on it and hope that whatever this “new normal” means I will survive. 

Press Send

 What a journey! I was saying to a friend of mine, that the word that comes to mind for this phase of my life is, Catharsis. I've just googled it now. It is defined as the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. It's been a roller coaster ride, and I felt it more this year. I felt all that is meant to be felt when doing postgraduate studies. And as part of that, I still had to be a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a brethren, a neighbour, a colleague, an employee Yho! My head is about to explode... The good news is, I did it! I managed to press send, by forwarding my complete draft to my supervisor, my editor and my critical reader. I have about 2 months left to submit, but I am confident that my thesis can be seen by the world. I googled examples of what one can do to celebrate the PhD completion and got quite a few exciting things to do. The one entry even mentions that the the completion happens in stages, yes it does, I feel sending to the editor in August was the first bold step of letting go. And now this act of sending to these trusted people in my corner is another bold step. The next will be getting the link from the Research office and Graduate Studies and then the feedback from examiners. I can not wait, now those deserve proper celebrations!

It is a lonely journey and at times it feels like people do not understand or will not understand what you are going through, so you don't even bother telling them, but guess what it is a village journey, I would not have done it without the help of so many people in my corner. I am not good with asking for help, but amazingly when I would hint towards help, yho I would get overwhelming responses, it has been amazing. I hope to be more active on this blog and to ultimately publish it, maybe there's someone out there who needs to feel that they are not alone on this journey, and that they too, can make it through ;-)