Shining a light on the difficulties of being a professor
Back in 2nd year, prior to second semester, I stumbled across an article written by none other than my genetics-professor-to-be, David Smith. His article, Trial and Error (and cursing): How to teach large classes, centers on his experience of lecturing a class of ~800 students for the first time and all the anxiety and worry that comes with it.
As students, we are constantly anxious about maintaining grades and writing midterms and finals that we sometimes forget that we aren’t the only ones that have to cope with anxiety and stress — professors do too. While reading Professor Smith’s article, I found myself starting to empathize with not just him, but my past professors as well. Intrigued about his thoughts and motivations about writing this article, I went to him to ask him some questions.
Professor Smith’s motivations for writing this article were quite clear — “not everybody gets to describe the experience of teaching [such] a large class”. It’s a “unique experience” that he wanted to share with others in an honest fashion. Writing an article like this resonates with other professors and instructors, and even gives students a glimpse into the experience of lecturing for the first time, and all the anxiety that comes with it.
Did you know that burnout among faculty member around the world is becoming more common? I didn’t either! Just like many of you, I was quite ignorant to the pressures and demands that are put on faculty staff on a day-to day basis. They are constantly being pulled in opposite directions, which can become hard to juggle. On one side they have their students who want them to be amazing professors, and on the other hand they have the research administration that wants them to write better papers and get more grants. Unfortunately, it has become the norm that the better researchers they are, the less they teach — and thus, they get more time to become even better researchers, which results in them earning more. This type of hierarchy, in which faculty members that teach more, earn less, and those that teach less, earn more, breeds the sense that teaching is not as important. Essentially, the demands of their two-tiered job can become a vicious tug-of-war with them right in the centre.
With the faculty demanding better quality research, and the students demanding better quality teaching (on top of their own goals!) it becomes hard for staff and faculty members to manage it all, resulting in extreme stress and anxiety. The struggles with teaching are true and real, however, they are ever so rarely talked about or brought to light. Having professors like David Smith talk to us about these difficulties allows us to empathize with them.
It’s very easy to become upset with others when as a student you yourself are stressed, but it is important to remember that your professors face the same problems. Next time you find yourself about to write a mean course evaluation, try and remember that they are people too!
Here is a link to another article by David Smith about dealing with anxiety as a professor.
If you are a staff or faculty member at a University and ever find yourself in need of support in coping with stress, or just need someone to talk to, you’ll likely find that your institute has resources in place to help, so please reach out.
This article was written by Purva Mehta and originally appeared in Western Mind. Purva is an undergraduate medical sciences student at the University of Western Ontario.
