Academics at eaze

  It’s 2 pm on a Saturday. Kojo is in the kitchen whipping up my favourite cocktail – a super-milky pina colada. I can hear the violence as he shakes his flask mixing the ingredients from one of his made-up recipes. Recipes which he never seems to perfect. It’s a compulsory lazy weekend for me. I am in my comfy reclining sofa, curled up in my favourite duvet, surrounded by a mountain of throw pillows. The front windows are open, letting in a cool breeze and the sound of birds. The plan is simple: to drink Kojo’s almost perfect cocktail whilst binge-watching whatever Netflix series Twitter is buzzing about currently. My phone vibrates and a notification pops up on the screen. It is an email from an Elsevier journal editor. A request for major revisions on the Cryptolepine paper I submitted four months ago. I stare at my MacBook; it stares back. Somewhere deep within its MacOS, it wonders why it was sold to this West African slave driver. Kojo walks in with the cocktails and sets the...

  In our October 2020 blog , an analysis of the current situation of academics with respect to workload and the associated unease was unpacked. The blog post ended with a call to action for us academics to share our experiences and challenges as a starting point for working towards possible solutions. By reflecting on these experiences and challenges, we are hoping it will help pave the way for getting out of the cycle of stress and “abuse” as well as find ways to challenge the status quo and the “that’s how it has always worked” mentality. In continuation of the discussion, I will be sharing some of my experiences from 2019 up till date highlighting how the COVID-19 lockdown experience and having to work from home have played a role in my hitherto overburdened schedule.  In 2019, I had not only been honoured to be selected as an Africa Science Leadership Programme (ASLP) fellow, but I also signed up to professionally develop my career through a postgraduate diploma in higher ...

“ Academics generally work within a university, combining research, teaching and administrative duties. Academics are the life-blood of a university, without whom the institution would not exist”        “On a given day, you might have to write a reference for a student; develop teaching materials; read and comment on a PhD  dissertation ; review a journal article and organise a workshop , have an impromptu meeting ,  to name a few !  Yet, when academics talk about their 'real work', they often mean research. 'You have to carve out time and space to think about writing. You must focus on your own research,' says Dr Angelia Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Politics .” University of Manchester .          The role of an academic is  hence  multidimensional and  complex . And while one can argue that all professions have their own features and requirements, an academic  is required to  be a teacher, a researc...