The school where I teach does not allow for sick time. If you hve to cancel a class you must make it up on Saturday even if you are a fulltime employee. I taught a class the day after I was in the emergency room with bronchitis. I have been sick now for two months, but I am afraid of losing my job if I use my sick time.
The school where I teach does not allow for sick time. If you hve to cancel a class you must make it up on Saturday even if you are a fulltime employee. I taught a class the day after I was in the emergency room with bronchitis. I have been sick now for two months.
The main cause of stressors in my life/career is time management. Students demand a lot of my time as far as one-to-one tutoring. I work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week along with a 40 minute freeway commute, which does not give me much time to relax and then run daily errands.
Work stress is productive at times depending on its gravity. Demands for prep time prior to lecture and meetings in between can be tasking. However, when one balances time and workload properly, everything falls in the right place.
In my career my stressors would be ensuring that all my students are learning and applying what I am teaching them. I have alot of personnel stressors in my life right now. It is difficult for me to be resiliant.
Who doesn’t have stress in their life? I firmly believe everyone has a stress of some kind. It is the simple statement heard often, “I don’t have enough time to do it allâ€. For me, it is juggling responsibilities to my students, my family and myself.
Yes, you are right Sandra. Everyone has some cause of stress in their life. It doesn't matter how much money or time we have. Stress will happen. It's how we deal with it that defines us.
I have both work and home stressors. The main stressors at work is trying to keep up with all of the requirements of the administration in regards to paperwork, meetings with students, creating student schedules etc. My home stressors center primarily around my disabled daughter. I worry constantly that she is receiving the care she needs while I am at work. She has just spent almost the most part of 6 weeks in and out of the hospital. This added the extra stress because I had to travel work, go from their to the hospital, get up and do it all over again. I also had to be sure that my son was being taken care of, getting to school, doing his homework, and having proper supervision. I will be honest this is what led me to take this course!!!!
One stressor is the additional pressure that is placed on me to help with administrative work such as scheduling, and posting grades. I am sure this falls upon my shoulders due to my past experience and computer knowledge. Another is placed on me due to changes in class schedules at the last minute - such as part time faculty deciding not to teach a particular course, and since I am full time the additional work falls upong my shoulders. Another is friends that are not teachers let alone career college instructors do not understand the pressures and demands on what my job entails. I try to explain but essentially they do not really understand anyways.
Stress is a way of life for me; I am a full time instructor, a full time college student and have a wife and five teenage children.
I am the only person teaching the course I teach days and eventually nights and weekends as well. I also am on 3 committee and faculty sponsor of a student club. In my personal life I am a full time grad student and learning to live on my own again.
Wow, sounds like your plate is full Jamie. That's a tremendous amount of responsibility and very little time. It sounds like things could get better and some of your stress is temporary. For example, grad school will eventually end. I imagine it's hard now though.
I try to discuss and work through the things that cause me stress so that they do not build up and cause me professional and personal problems.
My career stressors are logistical. Frequent policy changes makes my work challenging and tiring, which causes stress. It does help to confide with fellow instructors and find out what they do to cope with the same stressors.
Teaching
Full-Time Career
Moving
Continuing Education
Personal Relationships
Family
this is a broad list of things that are major stressors in my life. I need to break them down and figure out which things I can deal with a figure out one at a time so I don't contribute to my physical & mental health!
I learned something in this session that I think will be a valuable tool to me. Never thought to create a stress list, but I am definately going to start one asap.
