I am starting my 18th year, and am allowed to retire after 20, so I will. In 3 years – or six short semesters – all this is over. There is no better feeling than to not care about my “career”.

I was bullied by “colleagues” for the first 15 years. Coming from industry at the age of 40, I was completely blindsided by how much academia has a middle-school mindset. These overgrown children I worked with, who had advanced college degrees, took every opportunity to knock me off my game.

So I took the bait and overworked, trying to “prove” myself and “build my career”. This, of course, led to burnout, depression/suicidal ideation, and a 5-year stint as an alcoholic. So, 2 years ago, I finally left my department when I saw a chance.

I switched to another department where everyone is really nice, and totally disinterested. They don't give a shit about me or what I'm doing, which helped me realize that I was gaslit into burnout – I was never going to get fired, like my previous colleagues told me (despite having tenure, I believed them). They just scared me into doing all their work.

A few weeks ago, I saw an article online that said “how to build your career in 10 easy steps”. I was suddenly hit with the realization that I don't have to read articles like this anymore. Yay! My career is over!

Students have never been the problem. It has always been my colleagues. I look back at everything and wish it never happened, but it did and I am a stronger person because of it. But in 3 years I will say goodbye to academia and shop Door Dash if I have to, because this field doesn't deserve any more of my soul.

If you've read this far, thank you. I needed to tell this story to people who will understand. Peace out, homies!

So I went old school this semester, limiting reliance on the LMS.

A student filed a complaint already during first week of the semester because "they are required to bring assignments to class now." They can bring a flashdrive or even upload to the cloud which they get for free. They said the added stress of not being able to turn in assignments on canvas at their convenience would cause them undo stress and anxiety. Admin sided with me for now.

In the last 3 years, we have all gotten used to rampant AI use by students. Fine, it is what it is. However, recently I had a first (for me). I realized that a student in my lab had been running all of the analyses I asked for via chatGPT. For months. This worries me because we do highly bespoke work, not just running standard analyses like t-tests. In other words: I don’t trust any of the results, and neither should the student (who seems to accept them at face value). Now what? Have you encountered this in your own lab? What did you do? What do you think I should do? I think this has the potential to be highly awkward. We can’t publish like this (I discovered it because the students couldn’t tell me about any of the details of the analyses they ostensibly ran. They have no idea what the code actually does, and neither do I)

Got an email from a student athlete today informing me of their travel schedule this semester and they're going to be missing 41% (11 of 27) of my class meetings (it's an in-person course) and I have no idea what to do. Overall, they're going to be missing 32 days this semester and it just seems absurdly excessive.

On one hand, I like being flexible and supporting my students when I can. OTOH, this seems way beyond a reasonable request, especially when my class has loads of group work and a significant assignment due every 3-4 class sessions.

Suggestions on how you'd approach this?

I typically have very good attendance in my classes, but I've noticed that if I'm teaching in a classroom up a hill, up stairs, or in any way marginally difficult to get to, attendance is affected.

I'm considering copying a friend of mine who once broke down what each class session costs and told the students on the first day, as a reminder of what they are wasting when they choose to sleep in or arrive late.

Using full time yearly tuition as the basis and before fees, one of my class sessions costs approximately $330. (half of yearly tuition divided by the number of classes divided by the number of class days assuming 16 credit hours)

We'll see if this affects attendance in any way.

I’m a 29-year-old female college professor teaching exercise science/physiology. I have a student who’s polite on the surface but immediately goes into confrontation whenever he thinks I’ve made a mistake—whether it’s skipping a procedure or a minor error in evaluation criteria. He doesn’t yell or insult me, but he tries to prove he’s right in a very cold, calculated way. If I don’t “buy” his argument, he smirks and says something like, “Oh yeah? Let’s see then,” and goes silent.

He’s a pilot who started this degree after being laid off during the pandemic. Now he’s back at work and finishing the degree part-time. I’ve heard he behaves similarly with other professors, so I don’t think it’s a “young woman” respect issue.

The tricky part is he’s subtle but convincing. He can sometimes persuade the class—and even me—through logical fallacies and gaslighting. After thinking it over at home, I often realize he was actually wrong.

Recently, he went straight to the course director over an issue, and the director told me there’s a “grey area” in regulations and it’s best to just do what the student wants to avoid problems.

He seems like the type who studies every regulation detail to exploit tiny faults. I’m frustrated and not sure how to deal with someone like this without giving in or undermining my authority.

How do you handle students who are subtly confrontational, manipulative, and very good at exploiting grey areas?

It's Sunday night.
Students have until midnight to submit assignments.
Classes started on Monday.
I sent a welcome to class message to their email (also on the LMS) that explained things in general and directed them to the "start here" page.
There's a "start here" link on the home LMS page that brings them to a page that explains EVERYTHING - and it's really not tl/dr in length.
I have modules with "landing pages" that are gorgeously organized and expectations are crystal clear. Every link works. Every assignment is explained. Everything can't be more clear; I write each assignment page (and the landing page) for the lowest common denominator.

So I've been sitting here for an hour or two (okay two) fielding questions that keep popping up related to what's due - mostly all of them being students with some issue: "I put off buying the book and now I don't know how," "I tried to access an assignment using Safari, like you told us not to, and it crashed, like you said it would and now what do I do?", etc.

This is a 100-level online asynch course: 60 students.

In the past I would stay up until midnight to answer questions on week 1 just to be nice and supportive - there will be bumps because it's the first week and people are figuring things out.

Now I'm tired and just want to go to bed (it's 9pm).

How late do you stay up/online answering questions in online asynch courses the day assignments are due on week 1?

I teach A&P with an online lab which uses an extensive amount of images (I’m not exaggerating, but somewhere around 450 slides). I’ve been alerted that a student in my class requires a screen reader as an accommodation. Screen readers rely on alt text and alt text requires embedding descriptive, detailed images. I was notified about this student on Friday. Class starts tomorrow. I believe I am expected to accommodate this student with no consideration or compensation for my time. This feels like too much. Can someone provide me with some advice on how I should move forward? Thank you! 🙏

I created rubrics for a new class a few days ago and it was the usual setup, but I just went to add another, and now I'm met with a series of screens that are just... ugh. It seems like everything I want to do has just been completely obfuscated. Is this a thing that happened to everyone? I did only a cursory internet search, but didn't really see anyone talking about it.

Maybe they should do this at the beginning of summer rather than while so many are doing the last minute tweaks before class the next day.

Hiya, folks - hope the semester is off to a good start for you all.

A happy surprise: my husband and I just discovered that I’m pregnant (perhaps a bit sooner than we expected!)… and school starts next week! I’m only about five weeks along now, but am trying to prepare for the worst.

I’m a lecturer who teaches T/Th from 12-4:30 (three classes B2B) in rooms that have no windows. I miscarried earlier this year, so I’m wary of sharing this news with anyone colleagues just yet.

However, to that end, I’m super concerned that first trimester nausea+fatigue is going to kick my ass this semester. For those of you with hefty teaching loads who have also been pregnant, do you have any advice on managing these symptoms and/or whether I should share the news with my chair?🤰👩🏼‍🏫

PS: I scheduled a meeting with our campus ombudsman for this week to hammer out potential illness, scheduling, etc.

I teach a few introductory multicultural literature classes and, for 6+ years, I've had real success with the film Spirited Away. It's a two hour animated film with a lot of rich material to analyze. For years now, my students have responded positively to this film and often cite it as the highlight of our course.

The problem: over the last two years, IDK what is going on, but students are simply not watching the film anymore. I make it incredibly accessible to them through our university and warn them they will be quizzed on the film during class, but students will fail the simple quiz in droves and it seems to me that, at most, only a quarter of the class actually watches it now. I thought it was an issue with the film. Switched to a different one. Same problem, no returns re: student engagement.

I'm heavily considering showing the film during class time. For those of you who've also taught films/docs/etc, what are your thoughts? Yay or nay? Any advice or better practices would be appreciated!

Just as the new semester starts, I checked out the classroom that they have assigned to my primarily mathematical course and it's a long room with a small chalkboard and no slope. Half of the class will not be able to see anything if I write on the board.

So it looks like I will be consigned to using the doc cam instead. Any tips on transitioning from teaching using a board? Chalk/white boards are the default in my field, so my entire teaching experience is with them. I have found doc cams unwieldy - my handwriting is much better on a board, and I can keep a lot more material on it before erasing (especially if I have sliding ones).

My only chance of surviving the great chocolate tariffs of 2025 is if either nobody else buys chocolate so demand goes down or students are on their best behavior so I don’t need to self-medicate.

Tomorrow’s my first day in teaching in higher ed and I’m very excited. Any tips and tricks? Advice? I sure could use some!

I teach mostly first-year chemistry classes. I don’t use PowerPoint, but I do create a list of learning objectives/draft lecture outline formatted as a list of focus questions that I give the students in advance. About 40 a week. It is a draft lecture outline, so sometimes I skip one intentionally or unintentionally and have to go back and cover one a little out of order.

One of the pieces of feedback I receive is that students wish me to announce which question I’m covering with each part of the lecture. Part of me sees where that would be helpful, but the other part is thinking that it will disrupt the lecture, especially when ideas are heavily interlinked. Also, they should be able to follow along and connect what I’m lecturing on to the questions on their own. Neither my lecture nor my questions are subtle.

What do you all think?

I think I’m being gaslit by my DH and I’m so over it. The year before I came to my current institution, the department had some very significant upheavals (I won’t give details, it was in the national news). My first year I focused on developing my courses, doing the service I was specifically hired for, and getting a jump on my research (mainly because they outgoing DH didn’t understand a d*mn thing about pedagogy and it was my way of ensuring he couldn’t force me to give into student whining). I was assigned a student org but it had fallen apart in the year of upheaval. I didn’t know any students to get them involved and the current “exec board” didn’t return emails or schedule org meetings and I just de-prioritized it and worked on what I believed to be time sensitive needs.

ETA paragraph: my first week I had found a student that was supposed to help me get it going (ironically enough the new “president”) and emails with the then president. At the end of the year after multiple emails to schedule kick off meetings I was ghosted. I finally got another student to step up and agree to be president this fall but then 3 days before the semester he backed out because he moved up his grad date and couldn’t do it. 4 days after that is when I was asked about it by DH. So back to original content….

Cue this year, new DH new priorities. He emphasized the importance of the service role I was hired for and said he wanted to take it one step further. I told him what I needed, resources and timeline, to make that happen. Crickets since the. So I’ve just been plodding ahead on that project. Sticking a pin in things I needed his input or approval and doing things I could in the meantime.

The first week of classes I get asked about my student org. I say “it doesn’t really exist and I’ve been focusing on other things”. He says he wants to move forward. Cool I can do that, so I specifically go to his office and ask what he would consider an acceptable level of completion by the end of the week (student welcome where we cover the student orgs). He tells me just some information about it. Great, so I don’t need to choose a president by the ? No. Can I go ahead and schedule a call out meeting? Yes.

I put together the information and schedule a call out meeting. Get to the welcome and a student announces in front of everyone, he is the president. I ask about it and he got a call from the admin assistant 11:30 the night before asking him to take over. I ask the DH about it. He says he has a timeline he’s working on and if I’m not going to meet that then decisions get made or something to that effect. I asked, ok but that’s why I specifically came and talked to you. At that point he kinda brushes that off and eventually says “it’s lunch time, I’m not discussing this”. I said ok and walked away. Madder than, well pretty much anything.

I emailed all passive aggressively (but not the immediately shit listed/fired level) apologizing for the complete misunderstanding and I can’t figure how I completely misunderstood everything he told me and asking for very clear deadlines on the other things I had been working on so I could better prioritize.

His email back to me was crap, didn’t address the issue and most definitely did not admit he f*cked up and either A. Forgot our conversation or B. Doesn’t respect me at all and thinks I can’t do my job.

So, in my experience admin never take responsibility, but this is this guys first year here, my second. If this is how it’s going to be, I know it will be hell. A friend is a DH in another department (their first year as DH) and was trying to justify his behavior but I just can’t buy it. This isn’t typical “he’s first week, overwhelmed and had to make a decision”. He straight did the opposite of what he told me needed done.

Sorry long. TLDR admin gaslighting me and I’m a hair’s breadth from burning and salting the fields.

It’s the one I’ve heard most about, but honestly I’m not that impressed. Curious if you know of a better one?

I can be salty about my salary. Many of my colleagues are; many here are. Reading the “creeping pauperization” thread, I thought I should check if the numbers match my intuition. So, I dug up my merit letters from 2017, close to when I started, and 2024, and I used the BLS CPI inflation calculator to compare the two numbers. I’m making about 3% more than when I started 9 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. I was shocked! That’s not much, especially considering that I’m associate level now, but it is a positive number. Granted, my promotion that came with tenure is still somewhat recent, so that might be a distortion. But my next promotion to full professor isn’t too far off either.

Is it the case that my school—private, non-selective, no union, in a high COL area, overseen by finance bros—somehow treats faculty better than other places? Is it that the situation turns very negative toward the of the career when you don’t have another level to move up to? Or are so many of us carrying negative assessments of the salary situation that are inaccurate?

If any one else cares to run their numbers, I’m curious if it’s as bleak as everyone seems to think.

Hi everyone!

I logged into my Canvas courses to check my rosters and saw a parent had added themselves as an observer of their adult child.

I revoked her permission.

Has anyone else seen this happen? This is a first for me.

I also have no clue how they have access. I know they can do this for Canvas highschool apps, but didn't realize that would transfer over.

In my Calculus 2 class, I just got a request from a student who was asking if my no calculator policy could be relaxed. I said that I write my exam/quiz questions so that a calculator is not needed. For example 1–π/4 would be an expected answer and not 0.2146. She replied, "No, that's not what I need it for. I don't know my times tables, and a calculator would come in handy."

Ever since I started (a long time ago), our annual “merit” raises were always in the 2-2.5% range (if we were lucky and there wasn’t a period of emergency salary freezes). Colleagues at other schools tell me the same. But unless I’m mistaken, average inflation in the last 75 years was 3.5% (in fairness, most years it is under 2.5%, but there are some big “outliers” upwards in some years, dragging the average up). Can you explain it to me like I’m 5 why this - over time - doesn’t amount to gradual erosion of faculty salaries? And if it does, what do you do about it - change institutions a lot?

Has anyone managed to create a policy to discourage students from sending email describing the symptoms of their illness, attaching photos of themselves in the hospital, or laying out all their family issues and such? Humorous approaches welcome.

Hey everyone,

I hope this finds you well ;-)

I'm revamping my syllabus for a large intro physics course and I'm kicking around a new policy to handle missed assessments and "bad day" scenarios. My goal is to create a system that is both compassionate and fair, while also cutting down on the administrative burden of make-ups. I'd love to get your feedback on whether this seems reasonable or like a potential logistical nightmare (SLAC, enrollment of 40 students, no TAs)

Course Context: It's a standard introductory physics class with a fairly high assessment frequency: about 8 quizzes throughout the semester, plus 2 midterms and a final exam.

The Problem I'm Trying to Solve: I want a standardized way to handle the flood of emails for unexcused absences (e.g., "my alarm didn't go off," "I wrote the date down wrong"). I also want to provide some kind of recourse for the capable student who just has a terrible day, panics, or freezes during a test and underperforms dramatically, without them getting a flat zero.

The Proposed Policy:

• Excused absence: (medical reasons, doctors note required per institution policy): points of missed exams will be allocated to the Final. The end.

I'm thinking of giving each student two "Emergency Take-Home" tokens they can use during the semester.

• A token can be used on any quiz or midterm (but not the final exam).
• How it works:
  • Scenario 1 (Missed Exam): If a student misses a quiz or midterm for an unexcused reason, they can use one of their tokens. They would be responsible for completing the assessment on their own and submitting it electronically by midnight on the day of the original exam.
  • Scenario 2 (In-Progress Exam): If a student starts an assessment and realizes they are completely unprepared and going to fail badly, they can choose to stop, turn in their exam sheet, and declare they are using a token. They would then complete the assessment at home under the same same-day deadline.
• The Catch: The score for any submission using this policy is automatically cut in half. For example, if a student completes the work at home and earns a raw score of 90%, their recorded grade for that assessment would be a 45%.

My Rationale:

• It's a safety net, not a free pass. A score of 51% earned in class is better than a perfect score earned at home (which becomes a 50%). This should strongly incentivize students to prepare for and attend the scheduled exams.
• It still requires students to engage with the material and demonstrate knowledge, which is pedagogically better than them just taking a zero or having the weight shifted to the final.
• It creates a clear, uniform procedure that reduces my need to adjudicate excuses or create multiple versions of make-up exams.

My Questions & Concerns:

1. Is the 50% cap the right number? Is it too punitive? Too generous for a take-home attempt?
2. Unintended Consequences: Am I inadvertently encouraging students to give up too easily during an exam if they think they can just take it home for a "guaranteed" ~45%?
3. Academic Integrity: It's a take-home, so they will obviously have access to resources. My assumption is the 50% score penalty is a sufficient trade-off for this advantage, as they can't excel in the course this way, but they can avoid total disaster. Is this a naive take?
4. Logistics: Have you tried something similar? Are there any unforeseen headaches or student arguments I should anticipate?

Thanks for any insights or experiences you can share!

Hello everyone. I’m in my 23rd year as a professor and I’ve noticed a frustrating trend over the last three years. I recently changed institutions and I find the exact same circumstances here as where I just left so in a “small n” analysis this seems like a pattern.

Simply put no one respond to emails anymore and no one is ever at their desk when you call them on the phone. This seems to be the case for people in HR, support staff positions, deans and department heads, even my colleagues or faculty in other departments. Moreover, if you get a response, it’s several days later if at all. I’m just constantly frustrated at the lack of responsiveness and I wondered if I’m just being narcissistic or if this is a general pattern that you’ve observed too. During the work week, I always respond to everyone within a day if not sooner so maybe I just have unreasonable expectations. What are your thoughts and experiences?

On the first day of my humanities classes, I give my students a short survey of references they might be familiar with, so I know what I can use to illustrate points in class with the fewest blank stares possible. Like Star Wars, Family Guy, The Last of Us- each of them help me explain a concept. Students can mark "never heard" "a little familiar" or "very familiar" for each.

I know each year I get more and more out of touch, and I need to update my list. What major media touchstones are you finding the students still engaging with?