This post, at Exposing OCD, was helpful. Even if I'm not sure which thoughts are obsessions and which are compulsions, I should start listing them so that I know what I have to fight. It feels good to realize that these thoughts are compulsions, as that means I can use exposure response prevention therapy to fight them.
I spend way too much time working as a teaching assistant. Grading 15 papers a week takes hours. Writing up solutions in Mathematica, carefully formatted, with detailed explanations, takes hours. I help students for hours each week beyond the one office hour we as TAs are required to give. I have realized that I am taking too much time, but I can't force myself to stop. This is complicated by the fact that I feel strongly about quality education, and it's hard to separate the obsessions from my opinions. I am a harsh critic of ineffective teaching (although I rarely voice my opinion). I want to give my students clear explanations. But it's not practical. Naturally I'm just awkward and can't improvise, but I probably expect far too much of myself and other teachers in terms of how much preparation is necessary for a lecture, how fair and logical grading should be, how clear and explicit an explanation must be.
I'm here to get my own degree. I know too much handholding is not helpful for the students. But I remember struggling for hours on homework assignments simply because the problems were not worded clearly. I want to help people, so I spend my time clarifying. Back then, I should have gone straight to the professor with my questions when I got stuck on HW. Now, people should come to me (or the professor, really, as I should only have to contribute so much time) when they have trouble. And they do ask me for help. But I still obsess over the possibility that questions are going to be vague, and that those questions are going to make people struggle like I did. I need to face my problem, and so do they.
I just found your blog, and I'm glad I did.
ReplyDeleteI can relate so much to this post. Long ago, I was a graduate assistant and then a teaching assistant in grad school. I taught English, mostly composition. I spent hours on teachinig, even teaching one class, to the detriment of my own work. I don't mean that I should have shortchanged my students--not at all. But I agonized over each essay I graded--reading it over and over and taking a long time to write comments and come up with a grade. I am sure I overprepared, but it was hard for me to feel like I had prepared enough.
My OCD definitely was at play here. I felt hyper-responsible for my students and felt like I was doing something wrong if I didn't do everything I could think of to come up with a good class. And I read and reread the essays worried that I had missed something, or that I hadn't read it "well enough." OCD was one of the reasons I stopped teaching.
I'm no expert on exposure response prevention--I just started cognitive behavioral therapy a couple of months ago--but perhaps you could do some exposures with the grading. For example, allot a certain amount of time for each paper, then move on and refocus on something else, even the next paper.
Again, I am glad I found your blog!
Tina
Hi Tina,
DeleteThank you so much for your comments. I'm sorry that you had to deal with this problem too, and that it prevented you from teaching. It is reassuring to know I'm not the only one who has struggled with this, but I wish you didn't have to. I've only graded problem sets; I can't imagine trying to grade essays. That would completely shut me down. This semester has made me question whether I really want to teach, or whether it is just an OCD fantasy that's been developing since I began college.
I think practicing exposures with grading is a great idea. I read your comment yesterday and tried timing myself while grading today. I think it helped me remain aware of how long I was spending. Cutting myself off was impossible, though. Eventually I ran into situations that I needed more time to address (I try to understand the source of errors before assigning a grade), and I gradually forgot about the timer (my memory can be very selective). In the future perhaps I can decide on the amount of time I am allowed to spend figuring out where a student's argument has gone awry, and if I take longer, cut myself off by writing "See solutions," and forcing myself to assign a grade. Then, as you say, I need to refocus.
Thanks again for your advice. I wish you the best of luck in CBT.
Hi For Confidence! I too was an English composition teaching assistant, and didn't know I had OCD, just that it took me a really long time to get any grading done. Like Tina, I would recommend a timer, and remind yourself that stopping sooner is going to feel uncomfortable, but that OCD is promising a certainty that it can't deliver. You can't ensure a student understands the assignment completely and OCD also has a tendency to cause the thing you fear--ie. spending so much time explaining things only to confuse students even more. I needed an exposure therapist to help me face the anxiety of doing an "imperfect" job, but it really helped. Freedom from OCD by Jonathan Grayson helped too.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. I'm sorry I didn't reply earlier. I'm hoping that my psychologist and I can come up with a way to practice exposures soon. I finished my last set of grading over the weekend but I couldn't concentrate on sticking to a timer. I think timing myself could be useful in other situations though. You're right that taking so long explaining something can lead to confusion. I think I will eventually need to practice communicating more quickly, and forcing myself to take less time honking about what I want to say will be an exposure.
DeleteThanks again!