Twitter is dying, and I am winding this campaign down. Some thoughts as I leave, from both my view of the public situation and all the DMs I've been sent. 1/.

RT @WEDossett: This is an absolutely wonderful balanced thread. Read it all if you are an academic.

RT @DocInTheDocs: This is a good thread on working in HE at the moment.

RT @mikejbeggs: Fantastic thread and applies just as much to Australia.

RT @RWorkloads: Twitter is dying, and I am winding this campaign down. Some thoughts as I leave, from both my view of the public situation….

Bye, everyone! I wish you hope in a dark time. For some of you this means seeing the GP or leaving the University. For others it means changing the way you do things. But all of you are working too much; all of you deserve better. With all my heart I hope you find it. /end.

This job should be fun, for all its difficulties. So have fun til the music stops, or get going and start having fun in a new job. You're allowed to feel sad, too. But you can't sustain a professional life overwhelmed by sadness. 17/.

Many of you are having a miserable time, and you have real options in other sectors. I found Leaving Academia worth reading; it makes the positive case for entering the wider world. 16/

And at the same time, don't lose sight of how personal kindness cannot fix structural cruelty. Indeed, the kindness can perpetuate it: good people trying their best in a bad system make it harder to criticise the system. 15/.

FOUR: Take a *little* risk to help. For leaders and managers, this might be about improving working conditions a bit. For precarious academics, it might be about explaining how hard things are. Let these problems connect us a little, rather than isolate us. 14/.

THREE: Enjoy what you can while you can. Rejoice with your colleagues and your students in the everyday magic of education. I personally find this both the hardest idea and also the most important one. 13/.

TWO: don't believe that work will love you back. Your contribution will not keep the Department open. It is beyond your control. Don't break yourself; let the machine break instead. The breaking machine will let people down and this will hurt. You should still do it. 12/.

ONE: resist extra work. There are gentle ways of doing this. "I am already doing a lot", "I would prefer not to", "I really need to focus on X this year". Don't worry: you will still get work. But you will get a bit less and you will be held to lower standards. 11/.

But for you as an individual, I have a few specific suggestions. 10/.

And perhaps the bitterness relates to a sense of hopelessness which has developed around some of UCU's work being rendered ineffective by Byzantine in-fighting. I hope this changes soon, because we will need a strong union in the next few years. 9/.

While it is fair to criticise leaders, there needs to be a clearer focus on realistic steps which could improve things. Very few anonymous HE critics seem prepared to do this. That said, the burning moral case for saying "this is bad" remains urgent. 8/.

I've often struggled with the bitterness I see in some corners. I don't really think there are villains in these stories; even the most hard-nosed VCs wouldn't have maliciously sought this situation. 7/.

It also seems likely to me that neurodivergence and poor mental health are parts of the Academic Workload problem. If you are always frazzled or if your future seems joyless, I think you should seriously consider seeking a medical perspective. 6/.

At the same time, some part of Academic Workload is about personal choices. The vocational sense of Universities as a social calling? It contributes to the "greediness" of the work we do. Teaching, research, even admin: these tasks will take as much as you give them. 5/.

But sometimes they are harder to articulate. Decreased collegiality, the churn of fixed-term colleagues leaving, the need to impress when you are precariously employed, restructuring as a School or a double-barrelled Department. 4/.

The dimensions of sweating are sometimes easy to identify. Mostly they relate to increased student numbers (or initiatives to increase numbers), increased administrative burdens, increased research expectations. 3/.