![\"A](\"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/53041462505_5c6127a61d_c.jpg\")
<\/a>The very fact of having a sabbatical is a mark of privilege. Most of the people doing the lion\u2019s share of educating in higher ed don\u2019t get them, whether because they\u2019re hired as less-than full time so they don\u2019t get a full range of benefits, are hired on a course-by-course basis as if that\u2019s not something from which people need time to recover, or work at an institution that has done away with sabbaticals from a financial standpoint, or perhaps because they\u2019re thought of as an unnecessary luxury. They\u2019re not. They\u2019re vital. Everyone should get them, and not just in academia \u2013 the opportunity to take a dedicated span of time away from the structures of regular work life and think<\/em> . . . everyone needs that.<\/p>\n I wrote on my sabbatical, and I revised essays, and I copy-edited my book, and I traveled to give workshops and keynotes. But most of all I had time to think \u2013 time to figure out which projects I want to do next, sure, but also time to figure out how to not go back to work in January and end up, before long, back in the situation I was in in the spring. And that\u2019s not just about my own decisions \u2013 that\u2019s about sizing up the structural problems we\u2019re all up against and figuring out how we chip away at the grasping, greedy, possessive parts of what we\u2019re asked to do, where our institutions will take and take and take if they can. I have only the broadest understanding of how I want to do things differently this time around, but even that would have been impossible to figure out while also teaching and shoehorning in some research and doing administrative work.<\/p>\n I keep returning to being kind \u2013 to being kind to myself as well as to others. Academia, as I\u2019ve said elsewhere, is not generally a kind place, and that costs us. Kindness is not institutionalized; it\u2019s not a piece of the structural architecture of where and how we we work, and it needs to be. We are told, instead, to work harder, more, faster; to produce more; to teach bigger classes; to teach for less money; to buck up and be a team player even when we\u2019re drowning (and we\u2019re not supposed to admit we\u2019re drowning). And that\u2019s bullshit. We are not automatons, and for all that there are segments of society that believe all we need is AI, they would be sorely disappointed by the limited futures they could conjure from glorified predictive text.<\/p>\n One of the ways we used to talk about a Knox College education was to say it was \u201chuman powered.\u201d And that\u2019s the key, isn\u2019t it? \u00a0Education is human powered.<\/em> And humans have limits, get sick, are disabled, face grief, get tired, and are ground down by endless repetition. Humans need shelter, food, medical care, and community.\u00a0 Humans deserve a life that is not <\/em>defined by their job because there is no time to cultivate definition in any other way.<\/p>\n We deserve rest. I got it, and it put me back together. The opportunity to engage in that process should not be the rarified thing that it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring 2023 was an unbelievably difficult trimester. I fell ill; I couldn\u2019t keep up with the day-to-day demands of teaching; I had the most pervasive brain fog I\u2019ve ever had and couldn\u2019t see a way through the difficulties I was facing because of it. Gracious colleagues made it possible for me to crawl to the end of the term, but it was not a good term for me or for my students. I have never been so relieved to finish…<\/p>\n