I am on strike today for the first time ever. There are many brilliant things that draw people to academic careers, but there are many things that can drive people away. In a nutshell, we are constantly taken for granted and taken advantage of. (1/7) @UCU #UCUstrike #ucuRISING

Our desire to do the best for our students and to do the best research we can is used against us. It’s used to allow pitifully small amount of time to prep for teaching (I should apparently be able to prepare a 1-hour lecture, from scratch, in 1.5hrs). (2/7)

It is used to fuel an implicit – sometimes explicit – expectation that we regularly attend and present at international conferences and pay for all or some of the costs ourselves. (3/7)

We work weekends and evening without time off in lieu and without any thanks. Honestly, nobody has ever said “thanks for running the interview day at the weekend” or “thanks for the extra work on that new module”. (4/7)

As a music lecturer, if I want a piano in a generic teaching space or audio equipment that is appropriate for playing music, it’s on me to source it, move it and set it up. Then take it back. (And that’s my prep time for the session halved.) (5/7)

And we are consistently workloaded to 100% or above. This means each individual hour of work is accounted for in advance, and all the possible hours used up. Yet there is still an expectation that the inevitable extra things are covered as well. (6/7)

On workload: given tasks, eg teaching prep, take far longer than is allocated, we all work too much and suffer. None of this is unique to my institution, and there are many, many more problems. That’s why staff from 150 universities are on strike today. (7/7) @UCU #UCUstrike