This is the fourth part in our series on how academic staff spend their time. Throughout the strike, we'll report from the frontline of unsustainable workloads. Have you ever wondered what a lecturer, a postdoc, a teaching fellow does outside of the classroom? Read on to find out...
...it’s frustrating that it takes so much time and effort to ensure access for deaf staff all the time...
It’s a Wednesday. I get up, shower and check emails while eating breakfast. SO MANY. And I still have a backlog of unanswered emails – will I ever catch up?
I beat rush hour by going in to work early. I sit down to my desk to begin the process of email triage – what are the most important emails I need to get to today? I start making my way through those. At 10am a researcher on my team appears in my doorway. She signs to me in British Sign Language to ask my advice: the BSL/English interpreters who are booked to interpret for that important course that she was booked on for next week (which will be so crucial for her career advancement), haven’t received preparation materials – i.e. notes, draft slides etc the interpreters need in advance to prepare. This is despite her having asked the course organiser for the prep multiple times. Maybe it would help if the request comes from me? I spend time chasing down the organiser of the course – by phone, no luck. I carefully craft an email to the course organiser explaining why the preparation is needed urgently, otherwise this deaf member of staff will not be able to attend this valuable and highly relevant course. As I send that off, a Skype call comes in – it’s time for a research project meeting that I’m chairing. I muddle through the meeting the best I can - unprepared, because I had planned to spend the hour before the meeting preparing for the meeting, but I spent it instead redoing work that my deaf researcher had already done without success. So it’s not a very productive meeting. I jot down notes and remind myself to write those up later.
After the Skype meeting, I check my emails to see what has come in. No response yet from that course organiser. Instead, I have an urgent email from one of my other deaf colleagues. It turns out that a committee meeting in a different department was arranged for today but the notice about it didn’t go out til yesterday and he only just found out about it this morning. Of course it’s impossible to get interpreters for a same day booking – what should he do? I consider options. This is a really important meeting and someone from our unit should be there. Why was it organised so last minute?? I check my diary – I have a meeting with an undergraduate student at that time so I can’t make it. I phone a few of my hearing colleagues – can you please go to this committee meeting? No? I decide the committee meeting is more important than the meeting with student that I already have in my diary. I respond to my deaf colleague – I will go to the meeting in your place. Then I email the student I had planned to meet to apologise and postpone to another day. I hope the student is ok. I check the clock – it’s time to go to the next meeting – this one in a different building.
After the meeting, I stop off for a quick lunch, then back to my office. I attend to the most urgent of the emails from this morning, and a few others that had come in since. That student whose meeting I needed to postpone earlier replied to ask if a later time today is ok instead, and I agree to meet him at 5pm. At 3pm I rush off to that committee meeting that I agreed this morning to cover in place of my deaf colleague. I try my best to address issues raised at the meeting but my deaf colleague would have been able to do this so much better! As he knows the full background. At 4pm I rush back to my office to meet with a postgraduate student about her project. It’s a great project and one that I really enjoy supervising. Time flies and then it’s 5pm, time to meet with that undergraduate that had been postponed. After that I check emails again – finally, a response from the organiser from that course. The lecturer of the course has provided preparation to the interpreters at last. This means my researcher will be able to attend and have access to this all important course. Whew! It is a relief, though it’s frustrating that it takes so much time and effort to ensure access for deaf staff all the time, and even worse that most of the workload falls on them. I am glad that I was able to do my part to help this time.
I spend the next few hours doing some of the work I had actually planned to do today - reading and commenting on a draft of an essay from a student, doing some reading for that paper I’m working on with a colleague, and making a bit of progress on that next grant application in preparation. It’s hard work and I’m exhausted but it’s important (and it’s what I really enjoy!) so I make the time for it. At 8pm I finally pack up and meet up with husband for dinner nearby. We head home, an hour of telly, then fall into bed. Ready to do it all again tomorrow.
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