I Lost All Feeling (But Got it Back): An Essay Account of “Publish or Perish” During COVID-19

My COVID-19 era started in Los Angeles, California, as a second-year graduate student and chronic overachiever. Like many in my cohort, I felt pressure to move my academic career as quickly as possible. While publish or perish was never overtly stated, it was definitely an observable practice of my institution. A select few openly eschewed publish or perish long before the start of the pandemic, but most proudly touted increasing publication numbers as COVID lockdowns in our city progressed, heralding publications that extra time and privilege working from home suddenly afforded. As my cohort and I worked in isolation, the fear of Am I doing enough? compounded with the email list of department publications shared each month.

Years before a pandemic locked down schools in the United States and sent many graduate students to work from home in isolation, scholars had warned academic leaders to “be careful not to encourage (even unwittingly) an arms race based on sheer quantity of published work” (Reese, 2014). The warning was valid but unheeded in the United States. Rising expectations of publication requirements for junior scholars is well documented (Rucks-Ahidiana, 2019) as is historical exploitation of graduate students within the academy (Hatrick, 2020). It is therefore unsurprising publish or perish manifests in U.S. graduate students during a pandemic where being forced to work from home has been generally accepted as an opportunity for more efficient productivity (Parker, Menasce Horowitz, & Minkin, 2020).

Admittedly, publish or perish was my siren song long before COVID lockdowns. Academic work and isolation didn’t make me an obsessive workaholic but did provide a perfect venue to continue productivity beliefs I’d had for years. It also led to incredibly dangerous consequences, uncovering troubling implications publish or perish beliefs can have on students, and how critical it is for academics to collectively uncover and uproot them before they grow unwieldy and multi-generational.

In March 2020, all of my university classes went online. Like many, I made publication plans and outlined multiple studies I could run from the comfort of my home. The subsequent summer was spent working hard. Too hard. Focus became difficult. I bolted up in the middle of the night thinking about research and paper revisions, a clear sign of Zoom fatigue. Zoom fatigue results in tiredness and worry, and burnout emerged from the overuse of virtual platforms of communication (Lee, 2020), although at the time I simply called it Zoombie brain. Despite my increasing issues, however, I pressed on, going through the submit-revise-submit cycle at lighting speed and pressing my fingers to the keyboard until the letters disappeared.

All of this work started to yield results—but I also developed sore hands that medication couldn’t touch. Despite incorporating hand stretches and long breaks, the pain remained steady. My sweet grandmother sent a tube of arthritis cream and despite religious use, my hands refused to stop aching.

My doctor shook her head and diagnosed severe carpal tunnel syndrome. It was happening a lot to patients, she said, but you’re awfully young. Upgrade your workspace ASAP. For upwards of $500—an expense most students can’t afford—I purchased an ergonomic keyboard (hated it), new upright mouse (hated it more), new ergonomic chair (expensive but totally worth it), and power-lift desk with three programmable heights so I could always keep my hands in proper alignment. I implemented stop-work reminders, setting my “Forrest” app to grow virtual trees in 45-minute spurts. After each successful tree, I would take a 15-minute break (and grow a shrub). While my virtual forest bloomed, my own two hands withered.

By September, I was waking up in the middle of the night in pain, wearing wrist braces full time and exclusively typing with my non-dominant hand. Soon my left hand started to ache as badly as my right, and I was back in my doctor’s office.

Did I mention my qualifying exams were in two weeks?

Four days before the scheduled start of my tests, I collapsed in tears in front of my doctor. She recommended I reach out to our university disability office, and within 24 hours, an advocate routed a request for accommodation. Forty-eight hours later, I had a test accommodation for time extension in hand. The system worked perfectly.

But did I slow down and take extra time? No. Instead, I used dictation software and left-handed typing to finish my exams within the standard allotment. Despite everything I’d endured, I still believed I just needed to work harder, instead of allowing myself to accept any “special” treatment. Publish, or perish.

If this sounds absolutely ludicrous to you, we are in total agreement. It was. But it reflects how deep graduate student insecurity surrounding productivity can go unchecked. If you are a graduate student mentor—please, take heed and recognize this behavior in your own students. Without your honest assessment of what is actually required to reach our goals, we answer the Am I doing enough? question poorly. We never believe it is enough.

Although I passed my exams, things were obviously not ok. I lost total feeling in my right hand, and a hand specialist recommended I not type for the next six months. Depression set in; I became despondent asking my professors for a month away from the computer in an attempt to restore feeling in my hands. While they didn’t push back, I worried I would lose my spot as a research assistant and snuck in hours chicken-pecking my keyboard on projects. No one asked questions; no one stopped me. I certainly didn’t stop myself, either.

By the start of 2021, I could no longer hold a pen. Scared that I’d lost my ability to write forever, I explored second opinions. In a stroke of serendipity (or some astute Google algorithms) a renowned institute for hand rehabilitation popped up. A week later I was seen by a specialist and booked for surgery. While I cannot gloss over the fear and pain that surgery entailed, it was miles better than the fear associated with losing the use of my hands. Within 48 hours of surgery, sensation in my fingers returned. Remarkably, every day since has been an improvement.

Now that I am recovering and reflecting, I realize the most painful lesson learned is not that I risked my health and livelihood for the sake of publication and deep insecurity, but that insecurity was fed by a productivity obsession that almost deprived me of my livelihood. I was scared I wasn’t doing enough (without knowing what actually was enough), so I pushed myself to write more, which hurt myself more. When I pushed past that hurt, I created more hurt. I worked silently in this loop, my frantic head work lessening my hand work until I could no longer do either well.

I also put my mentors in a difficult position by keeping silent. Trapped behind Zoom, they couldn’t physically see me or my struggle. When I spoke up about post-surgery dexterity issues it was clear they had no idea how bad things were. Honesty about how I was and what I needed would have given my professors an opportunity to help, and to also share their own experiences in overcoming struggles. But until I opened that door, they couldn’t help.

We academics—both new and experienced—are better than this. I regret I was not honest with my fellow graduate students and academic mentors until my hand was literally forced, my silence reinforcing the glorified productivity system. Hatrick (2020) argues that a successful academic future lies with a commitment to producing less, not more; I wholeheartedly agree. Communities of color, disabled persons, and women are all disproportionately impacted by unsustainable productivity expectations (Hatrick, 2020; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2019). If we aim to support these communities and destroy harmful productivity edifices like publish or perish, change starts with collectively working together to work less. The first step in this process is speaking truth to where we actually are. Acknowledging the mental and physical difficulty of this COVID era is a crucial first step. Then we must start making visible efforts to stop working—cancelling assignments, writing fewer papers, taking on less academic labor and acknowledging increasing demands of home labor. When we do work, our focus must be quality—not quantity.

Let today be the day where you put away the keyboard and instead read a good book, take a walk, check in on a colleague or spend a few extra minutes getting to know your students. Let today be the start where all of us all work together at not working so this COVID era may finally be the time where publish or perish does, in fact, perish once and for all. All of us—new and seasoned academics alike—deserve to break this cycle once and for all.

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