Get Your Students Hired
Marriage, school and work. Marriage would include private matters, schoold would include the thesis and work would include various daily routines
What I see as stressors are managing 100 students for 8 weeks and the instructors that help support me. I also find it hard to mange in keeping the course relevant for the students because it is always changing. The last thing is the logistics that goes with managing the course for entire year at a time.
At this very point in time I don't have that many stressors, I am a full time DEntal Assisting instructor-in this position I at times have some administrative type stress. The common stress of too much to do and not enough time to do it. One thing that is a stressor for me is IT issues. When a computer doesn't work correctly it is a waste of time and also a major stressor.
Hong, That sounds incredibly stressful. Yes, loud sounds and lot of people can be quite stressful. This is particularly true if you are an introvert and next time away from it all to recharge. While it's hard to control our environment in the office and on our commute, you might consider making your home as peaceful as possible.
Dr. Melissa Read
the main cause of my stresses are not enough time outside of full-time work to be with my family, and within my job to grow the department I am in charge of. That is, to have more students enroll in the program I teach. This is stressful because I feel it is mostly out of my control who signs up and who doesn't. It is the job of Admissions to enroll students, yet I am held very accountable for it as well. Students also don't take my program because of the high cost of tuition, yet I can't control that either. So what do you do with stresses that you cannot control?
The major cause of stress in my personal life and to some degree also to my professional life is noise. Living in a major city, it's becoming almost impossible to escape it. There are many factors that contribute to this stress.,,traffic, loud music, loud people, noise from electronic devices--TV, Phones, printers, etc.
Anne, That's a tough challenge. As instructors, we often are faced with a mismatch between expectations and reality. Sometimes it pays to clearly articulate what we can do and to reset expectations with our fellow faculty, students and administrators.
Dr. Melissa Read
Most stressors at work come from standards required as oppossed to reality that can be delivered. Most of the students remedial need can't be met in this environment.
General areas of stress in my life/career are mainly related to logistical factors. The program director is pretty disorganized when it comes to time management and prioritizing tasks. This person often will drop tasks on the faculty at the last minute, or with very little time to complete the tasks, without really realizing how much time it takes to complete the job, the right way, the first time around.
For my personal life, I am not only a full-time instructor, but a full-time single mother, and a full-time student in the final semester of obtaining by BS in Business Administration. I also have a boyfriend, and a very limited social life. I find myself oftentimes stressed out - not so much by work issues, those issues are pretty easy to leave at work. However, my home life responsibilities (school, daughter, boyfriend, friends) keep my time very tightly managed - so much so, that when something comes up that 'derails' my schedule, it really mucks things up! I graduate in 6 1/2 weeks, so I am aware that my time will become less stressful, but getting there is a daily struggle. I study to teach, then come home to study for my own school, and cook dinner, and help my daughter with her homework, and try to also make time to actually have quality time with her outside of the 'to-do' list.
I am SO looking forward to getting done with school and getting a bit of my time back! :)
Some general areas that I can identify as major stressors in my life. Some are based upon logistical factors, student needs,work requirements and home life. If left unchecked these thing can and will stress you out.
One of my major concerns is relating to the students, how important it is to be on time.
My teaching assignments sometimes occur at irregular intervals; they typically are events of one to two weeks. I feel I don't have time to adequately prepare for an upcoming assignment because of other ongoing work. Often I don't focus on the upcoming assignment until I can complete my other work tasks. This causes last minute prep time (making/revising slides,in airports, night before the class, etc) when I would be better served carefully reading and thinking about the concepts. This pattern causes me to lose sleep in pre-course nervousness and staying in catch-up mode. I can probably remedy a good bit of this stress by being better organized overall and periodically reviewing course materials and doing regular professional reading.
i was always thinking it was the stresses of the job at hand and now i know it was how i approached the task. letting thing stress you out and have control of your life. will take it tollon your health. stop, breathe, and take your time with life and work decisions.
Donna, I understand your frustration. As instructors, our technologies, books and teaching materials are often a moving target. Some of us have to spend a good bit of our time just keeping up.
Dr. Melissa Read
The major cause of stress for me at work involves constantly changing standards, including the use of technology. The books change every couple of quarters, which requires changing and modifying lesson plans on a regular basis. In addition, we are encouraged/required to use technology in our classes, but the technology is frequently missing or not working. However, I am happy to say that there has been improvement in this area.
The only stress I have is the one from the students. For example:
1. I have one student who has been in the military over 20 years. He also sees a physiatrist. He is bothered by the class environment and the way I teach. He is always bad mouthing about the text books and my teaching style. So, I took him to my office and explain to him that I follow school standard. Well, he still went to authority and complains about me. School administration told him to abide by the class rules.
2. I have another one who thinks he is right I am wrong, although I prove him wrong all the time.
3. I have another one who thinks other students smell and they need to take a shower.
4. I also have another one who is late an hour and half almost every day.
5. Fortunately, most of the students in my class are wonderful.
One of my biggest stressors in the college setting is student absenteeism. Catching up and making sure the work is completed usually comes back to rest on me. I am going to try to organize my assignments on a central internet location to allow access to all students when absent.
Lots of things cause stress but for me in MY workplaces the biggests stress would have to be management because of their inablilty to LEAD and communicate and take their jobs seriously .
I agree that standards are at times sources of stress. Teaching styles vary so standards may at times not correlate with the learning styles of a particular class of students.