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All Work, No Play?
Finding Balance in Complicated Times Emma Nguyen
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n a normal day, junior Ryan Taffe says he goes to bed at 12 a.m. if there are no major assessments the following day. On nights before tests and quizzes, he tries to go to bed earlier. “Only on Friday and maybe Saturday or Sunday do I have a break,” Taffe said. “Otherwise, I’m always working.” Taffe says his work ethic, though not perfect, is at least good. Between Advanced Placement Biology and other rigorous classes in his schedule, the workload every night takes at least a few hours. But a positive COVID-19 exposure forcing him to move to online learning and the lack of time between sports, academics and homework has led to a poorer balance for him of late. “It takes at least an hour to do just math,” Taffe said. “Overall, I have a lot more anxiety.” Managing work and relaxation effectively is not an issue new to Greenhill, but for many, COVID-19 has eroded the boundaries between the two. “I couldn’t separate myself from being at school and being at home,” junior Charlotte Purcell said. “But it’s gotten better since we’ve gone back to in-person.” Last year, Purcell says, her work-life balance was worse, given the amount of time she spent being online. Now, she tries to keep strict boundaries between the work she needs to do and time she sets aside to relax. “I try not to do homework in bed anymore since it’s not productive,” Purcell said. “If I’m hanging out with my friends, I try to have my homework done before so I can just focus on my friends and relaxing.” The rise in omicron-variant COVID-19 cases in January caused a brief surge in online learning for Upper School students. According to COVID-19 protocols sent out on Jan. 11, those who test positive “may return to school on day 8 if they have a negative antigen test on day 5 or later, or they may return on day 10 with no test required.” Students are now offered a camera’s-eye view into class if they are under quarantine. For Taffe, who had to quarantine for a week, distinguishing between work and relaxation online became more difficult, especially since connecting to what was going on in class was harder. “I found myself having to work harder by myself to learn the material,” he said.
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The advent of email, in many ways, eliminated clear-cut boundaries between work and home because there’s that expectation you’re going to respond in the evening. I don’t know that COVID has changed much that hadn’t already gone that direction.”
The increasingly available online communication and remote work possibilities have also inhibited work-life balance, as tasks that would normally be seen as work now extend to home. But to Upper School math teacher Melissa Battis, COVID-19 hasn’t necessarily changed things. “The advent of email, in many ways, eliminated clear-cut boundaries between work and home because there’s that expectation you’re going to respond in the evening,” she said. “I don’t know that COVID has changed much that hadn’t already gone that direction.” Setting explicit boundaries between work and relaxation is a priority for Battis. “I’ve been pretty clear with students that I do not use the [Microsoft] Teams chat except during class time,” she said. “I do not want that boundary to be crossed because as soon as we start crossing, that would run into an even fuzzier space.” At a time when work-life boundaries were already eroding, COVID-19 has created further complications for teachers. Battis notes that even if a teacher falls ill, they have to work to ensure a smooth handoff with a substitute. “If you’re sick, you still need to have your lesson plans done to get classes covered,” Battis said. “Most teachers
will say that they would prefer to teach sick than to try to plan for a [substitute teacher] because it’s that much harder.” Junior Hannah Zhou says their life has veered into a state of imbalance, but the cause might be burnout — not COVID-19. “It’s terrible,” Zhou said. “My life is work. I had better work-life balance in ninth grade, but I think I got burnt-out. I don’t know if that was COVID or not.” To Zhou, a myriad of other factors inhibits work-life balance, including the culture surrounding work at Greenhill. “A lot of people buy into the ‘all work, no life’ kind of thing,” Zhou said. “I don’t think anything’s changed.” According to Taffe, retaining a wellbalanced work ethic while still enjoying recreational activities requires careful planning and support. “Having a support system, having
parents [and] having teachers who are willing to help you so you don’t have to spend as much time by yourself learning the material definitely helps,” Taffe said.
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Having a support system, having parents [and] having teachers who are willing to help you so you don’t have to spend as much time by yourself learning the material definitely helps.”
To mitigate the pressure, Greenhill has created breaks in the schedule, including Community Time and Office Hours, to help students better manage their work load. “There’s a good community of people
Graphic by Emma Nguyen
who work during Community Time or during break periods, and I try to work during those times as well,” Purcell said. “I think it’s a pretty good balance, [except] maybe just more communication between departments so there’s not tons of work for students.” To find a well-balanced work ethic, Battis says communication on all sides is key. “The expectation that every [test] grade is going to be amazing has created a culture of stress among students and their families that has affected work-life balance for everyone,” Battis said. “I want to partner with families, but I think that there has to be a balance that we find in how those partnerships work.”