Schrodinger's striking academic

Once again, academics find ourselves in dispute with our employers. And yet again, many of us feel very conflicted about this. I am currently making sense of the alternative "possible worlds" in which I live by thinking of myself as Schrodinger's striking academic.

As long as no-one looks too closely, I am striking and not-striking simultaneously.

It depends on when you look as to whether I am striking or not striking.

Unlike the cat, the transition can go both ways.

I am striking because universities need to manage workloads, promote equality, minimise precarity. We are not cogs in a machine to be worked ever harder: we’re at breaking point.

I am not striking because students aren’t items on a production line. I care about their progress.

I am striking because pay and pensions need to keep up to attract the next generation into a demanding career.

I am not striking because my day-to-day work is not visible to my managers. This may be “industrial action”, but academic inputs and outputs are not tightly coupled.

I am striking because it seems that this is the only way to encourage management to listen.

I am not striking because, based on my employer’s standard working week, I had worked my hours for 2019 by 5^th September. I’m not sure what it means for my employer to withhold pay when I’m working for free anyway.

I am striking because I am standing on picket lines, not crossing picket lines… even if I am then doing a full day’s work from a location off campus.

I am not striking because I have deadlines and there isn’t the slack in the system to catch up later. See note on workloads. No-one else will look after my mental health, so it’s up to me.

I know I am not alone, but that doesn't make the ambiguity any easier. Here's hoping for progress soon...

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Don't forget!

Our mother has advanced Alzheimer's disease. Our father had vascular dementia. For a long time, we found it difficult to locate resources that helped to understand the diseases, our parents' experiences, or what we (as their children) could do to support them. We found quite a lot of material that was patronising, overly general, or overly technical.

The following are some of the resources that I have found most helpful to date (in no particular order):

• Wendy Mitchell's personal narrative of her experience of early onset Alzheimer's gives an amazing insight into the challenges and strategies that one person established to overcome them.
• There are many variants of dementia, with different causes and patterns of progress. These are well summarised by Dementia Australia.
• Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. This article in Nature Education gives some insight into the specifics of AD.
• Five "pocket" (i.e., brief!)  films about aspects of Alzheimer's capture the science in neat little chunks.
• The Dementia UK site gives more insight into managing and living with AD. Follow links from there to find out about other kinds of dementia.
• A personal narrative by a child of someone living with dementia emphasises the value of good care homes and their specialist care.
• As someone loses abilities, it's useful to find products that are specifically designed to support (and bring pleasure to) people with dementia, such as Unforgettable.
• In the UK legal aspects of supporting someone with dementia include setting up legal power of attorney while they still have mental capacity to do so, and possibly applying for attendance allowance to help towards the cost of care when it becomes necessary.

Maybe one day I'll link these notes to theory of information seeking, but for now it's just a place to gather some links.