ABSTRACT
This essay begins with a foundational given: we are anxious and depressed as a profession. Those who work in higher education tend to internalize the value administrators place on increasing rates of scholarly production, and, while not meeting these expectations often leads to feelings of despair and inadequacy, meeting them often comes at the cost of a satisfying work-life balance and mental well-being. Moreover, when our mental health is in a downswing, our teaching and research get worse, which in turn causes more anxiety and depression. This is true of individuals across disciplines, and applies whether one is at the outset of her or his academic career as a graduate student, a recent hire, or a “senior” scholar presumably acclimated to the stressors of the job for upwards of decades. As Elaine Showalter wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “the key stages of the professorial life” from the dissertation to the job search to tenure and promotion, “are fraught with anxiety.” 1 As such, we approach the spirit of Reversing the Cult of Speed from a mental health perspective. To wit: as the demands of teaching and research become more difficult to satisfy within our limited number of waking hours in proportion to the increasing corporatization of the academy—our second given—we as a profession experience an increase of depression and anxiety, with the attendant toll on our scholarship and our very lives.
