can we stop pretending it's normal to be so miserable at work?
links we saved in march
our fave long(er) reads:
The Rise of the Concierge Moms (Amanda Parrish Morgan, Romper)
What it’s asking: What do we lose when we refuse to let kids experience failure?
Favorite quote:
This is what I mean when I tell what I hope are compassionate anecdotes about my hydrated and punctual students: They seem to have grown up in a world radically different from my own. I know this is in part the requisite stance of curmudgeon professor, but I don’t just mean that my students have used fewer card catalogs or walked up fewer snowy hills to get to school. I mean that my students seem like products — and I use that word literally and deliberately — of a culture in which the end goal of any pursuit is the accumulation of some kind of capital. With this framework, there is no room for any problem — a need, a mess, an illness, a mistake — that cannot be solved with a service.
I want my students to know that it’s OK to get a bad grade on a paper for no better reason than because they were daydreaming about the boy helping them with their calculus homework, that it is OK to have a messy dorm room and unflattering clothing, and more of all, that is it OK to mess up doing for themselves all the things they are just learning to do.
On Princesses and Privacy ()
What it’s asking: “Why in the everliving fuck are we participating in this fucking pantomime?” (Or, are we really defining feminism around what hurts a monarch’s feelings?)
Favorite quote:
The bait-and-switch that’s taking place here is not just one where KM’s [Kate Middleton’s] monstrous privilege is replaced by the time honoured trump card of the delicate wilting rose, but where the people who fund that privilege are now being chided for daring to step on it. I’m exhausted even thinking about the avalanche of think pieces being filed right now about a woman and her right to privacy, drenched in the sombre tones of people whose compassion in regards to this situation is mostly driven by the thought of their piece going viral.
Your Work Is Not Your God: Welcome to the Age of the Burnout Epidemic (Jonathan Malesic, The Conversation)
What it’s asking: Why are so many of us burned out? How did we get to the point where work related burnout is ubiquitous?
Favorite quote:
The promise of greater productivity without greater cost: that’s why engagement and flow are such appealing concepts to management in the postindustrial age. Employees are a liability, according to current business doctrine. Hiring another one is risky. So why not see if you can get a little more effort out of the ones you already have? And why not convince them, through surveys and workshops and airport-bookstore bestsellers, that if they commit themselves totally to their jobs, they will be happy?
Are Workplaces Inherently Toxic? (Samia Madwar, The Walrus)
What it’s asking: Can we stop pretending it’s normal to be so miserable at work?
Favorite quote:
Workplaces rarely invest in dealing with conflict, because profits tend to be prioritized over well-being. You could argue that the two go hand in hand: from a business perspective, work stress can result in lost productivity, absenteeism, medical costs, and high turnover, among other consequences. Given how much time we spend at work, how much self-worth many of us associate with our careers, and how job stress inevitably spills into the rest of our lives, the true damage may be impossible to quantify.
podcasts we listened to:
Gilmore Girls x Normporn with Karen Tongson ()
Episode description: Karen Tongson, Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, English, and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, is the author of Why Karen Carpenter Matters and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. Her newest book, normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us provides theory for this episode about the beloved TV show, Gilmore Girls.
Griselda Blanco: The Dark History of Cocaine’s Queenpin (Heart Starts Pounding)
Episode description: Before there was Pablo Escobar, there was Griselda Blanco, a woman who left the slums of Colombia to become a billionaire boss of the cocaine trade. If there's one thing Griselda knew, however, it's that the high couldn't last forever.
our picks from instagram:
our picks from tumblr:
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