Stress Control: Identifying rational and irrational causes of angst

Lately, I’ve developed an attitude. I’ve come to loathe what remains of my job so much that if there were a reasonable way to cover my health insurance between now and the December 31 canning day, I would go out the door today. Such resentment feels irrational to me: shouldn’t I be grateful that the university is keeping us on through December instead of closing our office, as expected, on June 30? Shouldn’t I be delighted that we all come and go at will, unmolested, and that we’re all being paid for many more hours than we really put in? What, I keep wondering, is the cause of the stress I feel about the job? Have I slipped my trolley? Is there any real reason to hate this job so much I don’t even want to think about it, much less go and do it?

The stress spinning off this resentment keeps me awake at night, causes me to grind my teeth, and drives me to drink. (Okay, not much drink…but for me, two glasses of wine or beer every single day is about 1.5 glasses too many.)

Last night I sat down with a pad of paper and started listing every reason I could think of, sane or not, that might explain my loathing for GDU in general and for my job in specific. Didn’t expect much to come of it: at the outset, I figured my problem is simply unhappiness at being laid off and worry about how I’m going to get by in retirement that will start about six years sooner than planned.

The result surprised me. At the outset, the list consisted of petty, stupid things that really don’t matter much: being rusticated to a decrepit building that was called out of condemnation for no discernible reason; the enduring stench of chemicals used to remove asbestos nine months ago, fumes that have never fully dissipated; some SOB from FacMan turning the thermostat as high as it would go (!) and then bolting the cover to the wall. I mean, really: get over it!

But as I was scribbling these things on paper, more serious issues arose:

• It makes me uncomfortable and unhappy to accept a full-time salary for doing practically nothing. Profoundly uncomfortable and unhappy.

• I’m bored stupid on the campus. Reading academic copy is not one whit more fascinating than reading freshman comp papers; it’s just a variant on boredom.

• I dislike the fraudulence of many degree programs offered not just by GDU but by universities in general. We’ll refrain from naming these, for obvious reasons, but let us observe that too many undergraduate and graduate programs take students’ money and give them precious little in return. Some courses of study turn out graduates with neither the learning and critical thinking skills a traditional liberal arts degree should cultivate nor a salable vocational skill. We have professional programs that turn out not professionals but dunderheads. Although GDU, like most large public universities, does have many highly worthwhile programs, it no longer is easy for a student to distinguish between a worthy program and an academic scam. I don’t like working for an institution that generates much of its income from questionable products.

• And speaking of fraudulence, I’m unhappy with the discovery, made in the course of doing my job, that about 95 percent of academic “research” and publication is unmitigated bullshit, and I resent being made an accomplice to that variety of institutional fraud.

Finally, as the hour grew later and I was nodding off to sleep over the notebook, the real cause of my nausée about the job surfaced. Several years ago an incident occurred whose details I can’t describe here. Suffice it to say that as a result of my doing something my dean had approved, I pissed off an über-dean, who, in a highly actionable way, shafted a woman I had hired. So actionable, in fact, that I gave her the name of a barracuda lawyer and advised her to sue the university. Had she done so, she would be corresponding with us from the Riviera, where she would be enjoying the life of Riley.

What this guy did was so crushing and so demoralizing that at the time I made a considered decision never again do anything even remotely entrepreneurial for the university. Bear in mind: I was hired because of my proven entrepreneurial track record and led to believe my job was not only to establish an office unique in the Western hemisphere but to grow it into a significant enterprise. I decided that I would allow the office to perform the work it had claimed for itself—nothing more—and that I would keep as low a profile as possible. Indeed, I would do as little work as possible, given the kind of appreciation my work had elicited.

There it was: I’ve hated my job ever since that happened. And there’s nothing even faintly irrational about it.

Over the past three or four years, I’ve pushed the incident out of my consciousness. But it hasn’t gone away. The guy pulled a nasty stunt on me and on an innocent bystander, and he should have been canned. In fact, a year or so later he was evicted from that particular über-deanship and shoved laterally into a less influential (but still highly paid) position. A day late, we might say, and a dollar short.

What can I do about this?

Probably nothing. I can’t undo what happened four years ago, and I can’t change the disaffection the incident created. There’s not a thing anyone can do to repair the damage that was done to me and to our operation, and even if there were, it’s too late now.

Still, when I awoke this morning I felt a lot better. Identifying the causes of distress and recognizing that at least one of them is in no way unreasonable helps to create perspective. At least I know I’m not crazy: I really do have good cause to feel some anger and resentment.

Should you put things like this behind you? Well, obviously. If you don’t, sooner or later you’ll drive yourself nuts. But you can’t put an issue behind you until you know what it is. I knew what this one was a long time ago but deliberately neglected it. That probably was a mistake: given that there was no recourse within the institution, I should have left the job as soon as possible. “Putting it behind me” without taking action on it was like burying radioactive waste in a vegetable garden.

Putting a problem behind you probably needs to include doing something, no matter how minimal, to resolve the issue: physically getting away from it, confronting its cause, asking for redress, or finding a way to undo harm that has been done. It may be that you must do something about an issue before putting it to bed; otherwise, you risk chronic angst whose real cause grows more and more undefinable as the years pass.

What about you? Have you encountered an issue that came to affect your thinking, your attitude toward life, or your well-being? How have you dealt with it?