RE: Marking 500 Philosophy Exam Papers Will Crush Your Soul | A Philosopher's Diaries

Completely with you on the marking of exam papers, what an utterly soul destroying job. I felt nothing but sympathy for my lecturers who faced, as well, the challenge that the majority of their students spoke English as a second language. Trying to unravel meaning about complex themes from imperfect English must have increased the burden considerably.

We have challenges in academia in the UK, too. Many jobs are being cut and many more are very insecure. There are numerous challenges but one of them is that English universities have relied on income from foreign students (something like 98% of students on my master's course were not from England): it's highly competitive as a global market and the UK government keeps shooting itself in the foot by introducing immigration policies that undermine potential income.

Regarding working for The Man: yes, a life-long struggle but not insurmountable. You're trashed now, of course you are, and still with the pressures of securing money to live. Be kind to yourself (you have done and are doing your best), remind yourself that this is for now, and this is how you are feeling now, jettison anything you can where your time and attention is not immediately necessary (you can come back to it later), and focus on what must be done now.

Writing here I think is good - good for the soul to get it outside your head - and potentially to find support and ways forward. You mention the support of your family, which is critical, and you clearly have networks, because you mention other potential opportunities. Building your networks, strengthening the connections you have and making new, so called weaker, connections are also critical to finding your way out of this, both surviving economically and moving into a space where you feel you have more agency (I won't get into talking about revolution) 😂.

Some years ago, I co-ordinated a study about the value of networks for generating wealth (which can come in many forms, including income). Our own local study over two years demonstrated that the most frequent participants in a network secured between 2 and 4 times as much work as more casual participants. There are a lot of other studies that demonstrate similar results in many varied situations.

You might enjoy reading The strength of weak ties which talks about the work of Mark Granovetter, and Structural Holes by Ron Burt, I used ideas from both extensively in my work with some success, especially in my current role.

I hope this helps, and remember to take a walk in nature and generally to look after yourself 🤗.

Trying to unravel meaning about complex themes from imperfect English

This is such an interesting thing which not a lot of (or enough) people talk about. I see it play out in two ways in my life: (i) the papers I am marking are almost entirely from people who only speak English as a second or third language, and (ii) English is also my second language and I am still not 100% convinced that my English close to good enough to judge others' use of it. But what is worrying, and which I struggle with as well, is that complex ideas from one's own language cannot always be translated, so using English as a medium for us who only use it as a second language is so unfair in terms of knowledge and its transferring (from one mind to another). Already here is a problem. In my home language we would say "kennis oordra", and translating that to English can be knowledge transference, but the latter word is loaded with other meanings in English as well.

Many jobs are being cut

This is our main issue in South Africa as I see it. Or well, not enough new jobs are being created. When I started studying, we were about 400 first year students. Now, the first year group is about 800 students. How many new lecturers have the appointed in that period (about 10 years)? None, plus I think our department has shrunk a bit. So less teaching and marking staff, less budget, but two times the amount of students. I think some of the South African universities have the worst student to lecturer ratios. It is really bad, but other universities at least try to keep it lower.

remind yourself that this is for now

Thank you so much. For sure, in the moment everything feels so much worse. And as I said in the post, I am by far not unique, in fact, I think and I know about other postgraduate students who have it worse than I have. More marking, more work, and no where close to the compensation that I get. I guess I feel it worse because I lived under a rock, but that is all on me and not on the system.

Writing here I think is good - good for the soul

For sure! And that is what I really loved about this place, is just to get my thoughts out there. To "take a break" if you will through the process of writing. But recently with everyone talking about engagement and so on, I really feel bad for posting and not replying. My engagement really hit an ultimate low, and I feel strange about posting stuff and not responding. So I really try to post only when I have a small window of time in which I can also comment a bit.

I hope this helps

Thank you so much. And I can really confirm, that networks and having that "safety net" to fall back on is crucial and essential. And thank you so much for the sources! That is something I really work on as well, from African philosophical perspectives. There is a lot of work on Ubuntu and the social network it creates, and how this can be worked into especially dialogue and getting us to "talk" to others and thus building those networks.

Anyways, sorry this wall of text as a reply on your wall of text! I hope that you are also well, taking care of yourself, and walking in nature! Keep well, and thanks for the wonderful reply.