When you’re sick, you’re sick–take a sick day! [Adobe stock photo]

Dedicated Faculty Friday readers may note that this newsletter is reaching you one week late. When I began working on this intro last week, I was in an urgent care exam room, learning which unwelcome visitor had brought me a sore throat, sinus congestion, and raspy voice: Would it be COVID, RSV, the flu, or strep? The answer was none of the above; I caught some bug of less renown. Seven days later, I am feeling better, but the effects of the illness still linger in an asthmatic cough. The experience has reminded me of the need for rest, especially as we approach the end of a busy semester.

On the morning I lost my voice, the first thing I did was reach for my phone to see what was on my schedule for the day. Among my commitments was a 75-minute in-person workshop for new faculty—something I was reluctant to miss, given the planning that had gone into it. “Maybe I can still host the meeting,” I croaked in a hopeful, yet haunted whisper. With a look of disbelief, my husband sighed, “Please take a sick day and go to the doctor.”

I find myself wondering why it’s so hard to take a sick day, reschedule or cancel meetings, and do what’s needed to care for ourselves. Sometimes a deep commitment to our work comes at the expense of our health. For example, in 2012, I broke my tailbone when I fell down a flight of slippery steps. The next morning, there was a final exam in my history class—but, unable to reach my department chair or admin for help, I drove myself to campus, in tremendous pain, to administer the test. Similarly, in 2018, an emergency room visit revealed that my gallbladder had to be removed. When the surgeon met with me to discuss the procedure, my first question was, “Will I be able to teach my class tomorrow?” She paused, then patiently answered, “No, I don’t think you’ll be able to teach so soon.”

In each of those moments, my work felt high stakes: What about the students? I need to stick to the class schedule! But looking back, I wish had placed my wellbeing at the center of my decision-making. We are often so hard on ourselves, expecting the same standards of productivity whether we are in full health or not. Yet, whenever students and colleagues have learned I am unwell, they have offered nothing but grace, understanding, and well wishes.

As we wrap up Fall 2024, I hope you are getting rest and staying alert to signs of waning immunity. Our work will still be here tomorrow, but taking time to care for ourselves today is essential for persisting over the long term. Let’s model the self-compassion we encourage others to adopt. Wishing you all a healthy, restorative end to the semester—and see you back at our next Faculty Friday in January!

• Creating more purposeful interactions in your courses (in-person, online or hybrid)
• Redesigning your current activities/assignments
• Viewing successful sample interactive activities using a variety of tools such as: Poll Everywhere, Adobe Express, Panopto, Lucid and Hypothesis. 

• Team grading workflows with shared rubric
• Horizontal grading (one question at a time for all students)
• Powerful rubrics that support retroactive edits/adjustments, LaTex & Markdown, annotations, images, hyperlinks, and more
• Manual and AI-assisted answer grouping
• Anonymous grading
• Question- and rubric-level statistics and question tagging
• Regrade requests