Email PTSD
Make it stand out
Does this effect anyone else? And I’m not being facetious - I seriously have to do breathing exercises to simply open my work email. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but behind that Outlook icon lies a myriad of bad. Emails from my supervisor that doesn’t like me - for a whole host of silly reasons. Emails about things that I’m expected to do that I’m not going to be paid for. And, probably those who effect me the most, emails from students that are typically demanding or incomplete or downright rude.
Now, I know this isn’t every student. I have several students who are extremely polite and dedicated to their education. I also have several coworkers that only email when absolutely necessary or use Teams chat instead to get a quick answer - which I love. But it’s easy to forget those emails when the majority of incoming dings are the former.
When I was in administration, the emails started to effect me and I would simply turn the do not disturb on after 5pm or if I was on PTO or it was the weekend. Then I was reprimanded for that. Why hadn’t I answered a(n unimportant) email that had come in at 4:30 the day before I took PTO and I was called into my superior’s office at 9am the morning after I took PTO. Just to clarify - I only took one day of PTO.
I talked to other people on campus; even breaking down in their respective offices over the stress reactions I would get at the thought of checking my email. They shared that they had outright deleted the Outlook app from their phone and would only check it at work. This really got my thinking. When did it become required that teachers and profs be available at all times?
Oh, I know we’re not the only ones. Nearly every industry struggles with being on call 24/7 and, many times, for things that could easily wait until the next morning. But the requests that teachers and profs often get are coming from our students - often in the middle of the night - demanding something of us. We’ve had to work something into our syllabus that says, our typical email turn around is 24 business hours, just to cover our asses. And we’re lucky if the email is polite. I had an email from a student that, admittedly, asked a time sensitive question, but before I could even answer (within five minutes) I got another that just said “HELLO?!”
There’s also a layer of protection that I think students feel with email - perhaps the same level of protection that I feel right now posting anonymously - where they can let loose. I had a student who sent a string of emails after receiving a poor grade - all within 15 minutes - what you might call a tirade, actually. Trying to work through my issues, I had my email open between classes and read her emails while sitting in front of a room filling with students and they got to see the tears in my eyes as I was efficiently eviscerated via email. But it’s not my place to last out, we’re professionals, so all I did was the next day of classes, I recommended that if students are angry or frustrated about a situation, take ten or fifteen minutes before sending an email. And then I said that while I’m happy to help them, I don’t deserve to be bullied. That’s it - nothing specific about the student or the situation. I gave the same spiel to all of my classes. But, in my first class - the first time I asked this of my students - a student raised their hand and just asked “But, why?” Essentially, why don’t I deserve bullying? I was flabbergasted. In my brain, I just heard the words, I would NEVER have done that to one of my professors in private, let alone in front of an entire class of students.
Email is unfortunately a necessity in the 21st century, but I can’t help but wonder about the old days of memos rather than emails. Would I prefer to have a stack of memos to read every morning or would those be just as easy to ignore as just refusing to double-click on an icon? My therapist and I are working on ways to overcome this phobia, but it’s certainly one thing I won’t miss about Higher Ed.
