Mental lapses and demand hardening [teaching]

[rebeccmeister]

I have been observing a troubling number of mental lapses I've been making this spring - the salinity miscalculation being just one such example. On another occasion, I made a mistake on the order of events during the heart cycle (atrial filling before atrial systole!). And then there was the muddling of the definitions for endothermy and homeothermy, and a recent lecture where I started out talking about caribou but then couldn't remember the extent to which "caribou" is synonymous with "reindeer." (Finally looking it up just now, that was fine. Whew. Still, troubling!!)

I have to hold myself to high standards on these matters because I'm holding my students to high standards. I expect them to be very sensitive to discrepancies between how material is presented and taught to them and the meticulousness expected of them on assessments. That would be true for you, too, right? Stupid teachers asking demanding and meticulous questions tend to come across as malicious.

I think the origin of these issues has to do with demand hardening. (I'm still so grateful to the book A Great Aridness (DeBuys) for introducing me to the concept.) The problem is that I am still too good at filling my schedule too full, leaving me with an inadequate amount of flexibility to rest and attend to the niggling details that are easy to put off. But the world NEEDS things like the bicycling class and rowing program. So.

A lot of the lecture slip-ups are also because I'm not immersed in the lecture material in the same way this year as last year or the year prior. I'll get better at those parts over time, but I'm not there yet. And in certain ways, recording the material as lecture videos last year messed things up, too: the delivery of course content through lecture videos is very different from the delivery via live lectures, so I'm reverting back to materials from 2019 as much as from 2020.

I haven't tried to go back and provide students with the lecture videos this semester. My sense is that they wouldn't help, because my general sense is that students aren't learning a ton from lecture videos (though they might think that they do in many cases). When I have more breathing room I'm hoping to learn more about whether I'm right in thinking that it can work for a student to have maybe 1 or 2 classes taught in a "flipped" format at most. This thinking is tied to what I've observed for the rise and fall of the MOOCs.

It is going to be really interesting to see whether this group of students winds up giving me the same longer-term feedback as the students from the first year of teaching. One of the 2019 students in particular has commented on just how much they remembered from my course, which must therefore stand in contrast to how much they feel they remembered from their other coursework. This probably isn't just a product of my teaching approaches, although it's nice to think they might contribute. I do think that it has to do with the quiz/exam course structure and format forcing them to study every week.

But they might not give me that feedback for other reasons. We are all still coping with extra mental overhead due to the pandemic, and that really showed clearly in student performance on the first midterm exam. They just aren't all fully able to drill in and be as meticulous and precise as I'd like, and in informal conversation it's clear they are really struggling to remember what they're learning. I think this is also a direct consequence of trying to function at a heightened level of stress. Stress impairs memory formation. For acute stress, this is protective, but for chronic stress it's a problem.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Indeed.

And an additional stress for you, I suspect, is that you miss your partner.

[cmcmck]

We all do it and there's a lot of mental pressure on atm!

[graydon]

Stress is annoyingly physical and it gets tougher with age.

I have found that, crunchy granola or no crunchy granola, B vitamins, all the minerals (Ca, Mg, K), and Vitamin D really do help. So does having any sort of complex grease -- fish oil, beef tallow, etc. -- and something fermented and unpasteurized in my diet. I wind up feeling wretchedly high maintenance but have been doing far better than the distant historical case with the "do not snarl at people who aren't getting it" part of my job since I decided high maintenance was better than being useless.

Demand hardening, well, various militaries schedule PERS MAINT, personal maintenance, on scales of an entire afternoon a week. If not having your time solidly scheduled is unsettling, maybe stick in some personal maintenance blocks?

[twoeleven]

I think the origin of these issues has to do with demand hardening.
I would have said something about "burning the candle at both ends", but as you wish. :)

[moodyduck]

It's kind of like how my workplace wellness program tells us "Manage your stress levels by saying no to things!" but just try saying no to things and see how that goes for you.

[rebeccmeister]

You say the darndest things sometimes. This is TOO TRUE!

After posting about burnout I read somewhere that actually, we should be talking in terms of worker exploitation instead. HMMMMMMMMMMM...

[twoeleven]

Yeah, plenty of employers will happily exploit reliable, dedicated employees like you. :) It's just a particular case of *everybody* trying to take advantage of responsible people.

US labor law about "professionals" makes it lucrative for employers to do, though, so they try harder. I think better laws would ameliorate if not solve the problem; examples available on request. ;)

[twoeleven]

Saying no has gone extremely well for me for many years now. It seems to go well for other people I know as well. As far as I can tell, anybody who's above average at their job and otherwise doesn't ask for anything unusual can turn down unreasonable demands on their time.

[ivy]

Hahaha, yeah. We get that kind of useless advice through some of the SAR and EMT wellness programs too, it's stuff that literally no one ever can do.

[ivy]

I had not previously heard of demand hardening, and dang, you're right. That is useful (and awful) and makes sense. Talk about your problems of success!