I don’t think I’ve felt entirely comfortable in my office at work since 2019. I don’t know what it is (or maybe I do and it’s a five-letter word, of which the last four are the name of the author of Metamorphoses), but work doesn’t feel like it used to; my office doesn’t feel like it used to. It’s as if I’ve been a few steps removed from the physicality of that space and, whenever I am there, it’s as if I am watching everything through a looking glass. Things are recognizable but ever so slightly off — the colors are off, the people are off. It’s as I don’t belong there anymore.
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Over the past few years, we have been fortunate enough to hire several people in my area. We prioritize assistant professors when it comes to teaching assignments: great care is taken to ensure they teach a range of courses and in a way that doesn’t deter them from developing their research programs, and they always get first dibs. Overall, this attention to assistant professors is one of the best things about my department, and people who were taken care of on the tenure track do tend to pay it forward. Personally, I am always happy to share my materials with new instructors.
However, there’s a bit of an issue that arose in the last few years. There’s a two-course graduate sequence that I often used to teach. I designed both courses as they are critical for my research group. The first of the courses is broader in scope and relevant for a number of groups. In the last few years, two new instructors have been teaching the first course in the series; in fact, it’s been years since I taught it last. The unfortunate thing is that students no longer come out of this course knowing what they need to know in order to follow the second course in the series, which I’m still the only one teaching. This puts significant strain on my teaching in the second course as I need to spend what seems to be 40-45% of my time teaching stuff that should’ve been covered in the first course but wasn’t. It’s frustrating for me and frustrating for students, and this semester I have had to make pretty significant changes on the fly since it turned out they literally covered only half of the material in the first course. Again, these two courses are critical for my research, and I used to be able to count on students getting a lot from them, but now they get very little out of the first one and, as a result, they don’t get nearly as much as they should from the second one.
These changes are negatively affecting my research group. I am not sure how to address them other than by doing informal teaching during group meetings or by confronting current instructors about material coverage, but I am loath to do the latter as the instructors are junior faculty.
I probably will just suck it up and do what I can, teaching this unholy amalgamation of two courses within one, and seeing if an ad hoc special topics offering can help me bridge the gap between what is and what my students need it to be.
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There is a longtime friend of the blog who is facing a serious health challenge, so please everyone send them good vibes and wishes for a swift recovery!
How’s everyone doing, blogosphere?
xykademiqz 
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