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“Simple liars, damned liars and experts”

We can debate motive. But it feels like it's possible that we've allowed residential students to move to uni towns and cities not so much for the teaching or in-person experience, but for the fact they'll pay their rent.

— Jim Dickinson (@jim_dickinson) November 30, 2020

We cannot ‘fix’ everything and that should be ok, but it increasingly is not. As a colleague said to me earlier this term: there is a violence to bringing students back to campus. Universities need money so we brought students back to campuses. Yes, there is lots of hand wash, one-way systems etc., but we continue to be unable to deal with the complex & significant mental health issues made worse by COVID. Lots of individual students told me me they wanted/needed the contact but I still got very variable attendance. We have bullish communications from above, almost all about reputation cloaked in soft soap about welfare. There are appeals to ‘evidence’, or ‘evidence-based’ decisions, drawing on differing data sources (PHE, ONS, local track & trace, 1st hand) and different emphases (e.g. COVID risk vs. student satisfaction). As we limp to the end of the final week of term and are invited to fill in yet another form by our employers to confirm for themselves that, in fact, there is ‘no problem’ with staff wellbeing we might very well reflect upon bullshit.

Like many other employees across a number of sectors, throughout this term, many academics have been on the receiving end of emails from senior managers telling us that: we are doing ever so well (“hooray for us”); the COVID case statistics are nowhere near the levels feared; our students are all happy (but you MUST do more); we have a ‘moral imperative’ to conduct face to face teaching for the sake of the wellbeing of students.

The problem with many of these emails is that they appear to be prime examples of what Frankfurt identifies as bullshit. The assertions, pleas and statements from university senior managers are deliberate deceptive misrepresentations that stop slightly short of outright lying. They are sort of like bluffs. Sprinkled with allusions to ‘government advice’, selectively citing cherry-picked statistics and drawing upon (frankly laughable and shoddily designed) student surveys, the bullshit serves to both attempt to reassure and put us firmly in our place.

UK Higher Education Institutions wilfully, knowingly, deliberately invited students to take up residence in Autumn in environments which were, quite predictably, from a health perspective, not safe. In part this is because of funding. Universities UK asked for a ‘bailout’, the government said ‘no’. Universities draw most of their revenue from fees and rent, so it became imperative for students to return. Staff know this. An increasing number of students know this. Yet, instead of face up to this, senior university managers and the systems in which they operate ignore this, ignore that we know and continue to treat staff and students with mistrust and distain. We are all being treated as fools; some might argue by fools. Give stupidity a chance seems to be the connotation. I’d prefer not to…

With the patronising and self-congratulatory missives resounding like Dickensian church bells as we collectively stagger into our ‘break’, there is a degree of good will between staff and students. Nevertheless, the corrosive ‘us and them’ produced by the state of affairs described above is eating away at that bonhomie. This is emotionally challenging for everyone.

What is to be done? The unlikely but nonetheless brave and honest course of action would be to cast aside the bullshit. There would be a lot of hard work to do in order to repair trust between staff and managers in UK higher education but, as my colleague Clive argues, a good start would be for those senior managers to say sorry.

Pet Shop Boys – Give Stupidity a Chance

Hold on, hold on, Everybody hurts, No, no… you’re not alone.

Everybody Hurts – R.E.M

In the previous “work note”, 11th of May, I said: “I focus on one aim: help others and myself to avoid climbing the walls.” Easier said than done, sadly. I have seen in others and in myself through our various means of communication a marked increase in frustration and, I think, I detect an upsurge in what is almost euphemistically called “low mood”. Frustration spills out in mediated form: text, emojis, GIFs. Isolation tells, perhaps, in the shape of the tweets seeking affirmation: I have published, I have grant success… I exist.

Identifying an assertion of our presence, of our value, is of course not a novel observation but it does seem particularly accute in the context of the ‘new normal’ during a pandemic. We all scramble at our own private ‘walls’, or attempt to remain on level ground. As Michael Stipe laments – the days and nights can be long, but I hope that when we variously “feel we have had too much of this life” – that we choose to “hold on”.

I recently posted to Twitter that I admire the abilities of those who have been productive at work in the last three months but that I really haven’t. Since the beginning of lockdown I havent written, I havent submitted anything for peer review. I’ve been included in a grant app – but I didn’t do much for it and, to be honest, carry feelings of guilt for that. I went on to observe that, of course, we cannot all be model academics – again, not a novel observation but this was as much to remind myself as anything.

It has become fashionable to confess to a ‘mental health’ issue. I am reticent about this – opening up sometimes feels like it makes others feel better rather than actually helping. It’s good that people try to help and say things like ‘people should feel able to talk about these things’. But there is a sense that, in some respects, we are encouraged to perform our vulnerability, almost as if for consumption. As others have pointed out, we are increasingly enticed to surrender every personal detail to the attention economy. So, perhaps, we should also be permitted to invoke Melville’s Bartleby: “I would prefer not to”. For, even with government and media campaigns, I cannot help feeling that the stigma around mental health remains. And who wants to suffer more than we have to? I am not in any way setting myself up as some sort of expert, I claim no special insight and I am not a fan of public self-pity, so the words that follow are just an attempt to reflect…

I suffer from anxiety and depression. I recognise I am by no means alone – others have written things that have definitely helped me. Since March, like many, I have really struggled at work and at home. The UCU strikes were challenging but at least felt like action, but the COVID pandemic has been disabling for many and I include myself in that group. I have looked after my children and tried not to let my depression swallow me. I have been so lucky to receive the support of lovely colleagues, my family and my local GP practice. I recognise my good fortune, even when the walls loom over and I can feel the depression pulling.

Staying off those ‘walls’ and keeping the depression in abeyance takes effort. I chose to take antidepressants. I recognise they are contentious and not for everyone but they have helped me. I say this only in a sort of attempt to de-stigmatise. Even-so, I also need other strategies too. Perhaps one the best, if improbable, resource I have found for bringing momentary light relief has been TikTok. Prof. David Beer noted in the latest email from his always excellent newsletter that Ofcom figures show a significant increase in adult users of TikTok since the beginning of the pandemic. I can appreciate why.

The snippets of visual communication, of comedy, of ‘memes’, of dance, are, perhaps, a ‘spectacle’ in Debord’s terms – we are in some ways capitalising on our own capabilities – but they are also whimsical and joyous. TikTok trends, for doing silly dances (much harder than they look), physical challenges, tricks on others or simple jokes in visual form can make connections, however fleeting or ephemeral, that bring meaning. When many other platforms, such as Twitter, seem to be almost consumed in rage and ill will; it is a relief to share in the whimsical joy of others.

For me, looking for the positives takes conscious effort when my ‘natural’ inclination is to drift towards seeing things negatively. Mindfulness techniques help me make the effort. As does my family. I think the thing it took me a while to realise is that I cannot always trust what ‘feels normal’. As others have highlighted – Carrie Fisher, who suffered the far more serious illness of bipolar, offered this great insight:

“Imagine having a mood system that functions essentially like weather—independently of whatever’s going on in your life. So the facts of your life remain the same, just the emotion that you’re responding to differs.”

Carrie Fisher in her book Wishful Drinking.

So what? Well, I cannot claim any great insight here. If you are down the closest thing to advice I can give is: find a way to ask for help. If you’re anything like me then that may be pretty hard. But I honestly think it is worth it. Beyond that, I would simply like to suggest that in especially hard, or weird, times like these maybe it is worth trying to act with more empathy. I have been trying to bear in mind the insight Fisher offers when dealing with others – colleagues, fellow parents at the school gate, friends.

Care can be a collective act. But it does not need to be grandiose. It might simply be acknowledging others – showing them that someone is listening, or someone can see them and that they matter. Maybe that is what is so compelling about the whimsical snippets of video on TikTok. Simply watching and laughing and sharing seems to me to be an ‘ordinary’ sort of affirmation. Perhaps we could all benefit from a bit more of that kind of affirmation.

Literally millions of words have been exhausted in the ether about the current circumstances of life in the (Global North) world altered by Coronavirus Disease 2019. I hesitate to add any. What can be said? We express our collective and individual despair, hopes, rage and a myriad other responses, more-often-than-not, quickly. We look for ready answers. We look for analogies, metaphors and similies. We attempt to find certainty. Unfortunately, none is forthcoming.

“The search for the means to put an end to things, … is what enables the discourse to continue.”

The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett

Closeted, imperfectly, in a bedroom at a small desk, all of the attempts to concretise, to render things certain, as normatively positive or negative, wash past me on-screen. Mostly it is in the column of the phone screen as I frustratedly monitor a bigger screen and wait for student work to download, or feedback and marks to update. Not-so-quietly I may swear as systems stall, efforts are lost or in vain. The window is a constant distraction, as are the cries of laughter or tears from our children.

A vacilation between distraction and uncertainty seems to be the only rhythm to the time I spend working. I mark, I check the news. I mark, I check social media. I attend a ‘meeting’, my children shout. I reply to emails, the doorbell rings for yet another delivery. The negotiation of new norms of communication draws on pre-existing expectations but there are, as Nancy Baym has noted, moments of jarring difference when moving between contexts. We remain uncertain. For example: faces are (sometimes surprisingly) hidden or visible. I sometimes don’t know what is ‘polite’.

There are, of course, bigger uncertainties. Our governments appear not to agree on what is for the best. Universities do not know where the money will come from, if students will return, how that could happen safely, or when any of this might be possible. The rhetoric of the UK Prime Minister’s speech to the nation on Sunday 10th May was imbued with this conditional uncertainty. There was a striking repetition of the word “if“. It was perhaps an attempt to borrow the formal logic exemplified in the controlled uncertainty of the conditional statements we see in programming languages “if — then — (else —)”. Nevertheless, I confess, I remain uncertain even about that.

Holding several competing, perhaps mutually exclusive, possible eventualities at once in our minds appears to be what is asked of us. If the rate of transmission drops below the desired threshold and if we can track and trace infections then some things are said to be possible — more shops might open, children might return to schools. Some semblance of certainty to the risk is attempted through a ‘COVID Alert Level’ of 1-5. Lending the certainty of an integer value to a largely unseen risk. The visualisation of that level employs colour, attempting to convey threat through the perceptual cues of the colour spectrum – just as Brian Massumi diagnosed in relation to the even more abstract Terror Alert System of the Bush Administration.

It is all too easy to slip into another form of certainty, though – the certainty of critique. The temptation is to point the finger, to judge. To highlight the failings or mis-steps of a government, institution, or official is relatively easy. To say what is ‘wrong’ is relatively easy. The challenge for us all, whether we remain in work at a care home, hospital or supermarket, whether we are in our makeshift home offices, or whether we are in government, is to collectively find what is ‘right’. I do not flatter myself to think that I can help guide national policy, that is for others far more capable. Nevertheless, we all need both in conversations ‘at work’, in our homes and with those we rely upon or who rely upon us to negotiate what is ‘right’ in how we behave now. How much should parents and teachers expect of our children, or ourselves, when ‘home schooling’? How much should employers and colleagues expect of us as we navigate different WFH contexts? These negotiations appear to be really demanding, exhausting even.

A further conditional uncertainty: If we can negotiate our differing expectations, if we can find a way through the ongoing difficulties of ‘social distancing’, if the measures work to restrain ‘the virus’, then… what? Like many people I find it hard to imagine ‘what next’. Can we ‘return to normal’? What does that mean? Is life on campus now irrevocably changed? Should we expect the ‘online pivot’ to be a part of the ‘new normal’? I suspect that, for all the speculation and argument offered out there, what eventually comes about will be more ramshackle and less catastrophic than some might expect. This ongoing uncertainty, even as we (hopefully) pass the milestones to leave ‘lockdown’, seems like a challenge that will remain a part of working life for some time to come.

Like it or loathe it, this is perhaps the condition of life represented by ‘the anthropocene‘ – the abstract, multifaceted threat of profound if partially unknowable but wholly undesirable change. The experience of the, perhaps naïve – often privileged, pontificators like myself may simply bring us to realisation that nobody is immune from complex and uncertain changes. This is what is meant by that near-catchphrase of ‘an interconnected world’, this is what that can feel like.

There are no easy answers. That is my only realisation from this. Not profound but fairly solid, in the face of stultifying uncertainty. We can vomit words onto our digital platforms, as I am doing here, but they are unlikely to provide more than momentary solace. As a sufferer from anxiety for all of my adult life the feelings brought about are familiar if unwelcome. So I focus on one aim: help others and myself to avoid climbing the walls.

Climbing up the walls – Radiohead