Social Jet Lag

Recently, in watching an episode of Huberman Lab, Andrew Huberman subtly mentioned the idea of “Social Jet Lag.”

It struck me as the missing descriptor for the subtleties of teacher burnout. Teachers typically make more than a thousand decisions per day and given that your average teacher in the higher grades teaches between 80-150 students, engages in even more individual interactions in a given day. This is not including supervision or conversing with other staff or administration. With this level of verbal and cognitive load, it is also easy to see why it can be exhausting when you include the multi-faceted nature of teaching as this also does not include planning, meetings, extra-curriculars, etc.

Now, most teachers, in my experience, enjoy being social people. One of the best parts of our job is we get to engage with so many different kinds of people and learn their quirks.

With burnout, I have always admired teachers who refuse to succumb to it as it is something teachers sometimes cannot even go a day without hearing. I even remember one of the teachers jokingly saying it on the first afternoon in our staff meeting returning from summer break that she was already burnt out and was met with an array of approving laughter.

The symptoms of burnout typically manifests itself within me in November, and begins to clear up in February. It usually results in me slowly reducing my presence in the gym, slowly eating just a little but more chocolate after supper, and craving even more sleep that does not result in adequate rest for the following day.

While this typically made sense to me as just being generally tired from having a career and weather changes, I did not really think I was burnt out. Rather, I assumed my social chops and creativity had just run dry. I do not think burnout is something that creeps into us not wanting to teach or do our job well, but that it dulls our experience in other areas of life by having us appear withdrawn due to exhaustion.

Now, this may just be me, but when in a state of burnout fog, socializing is one of the last things I want to do. It is as if socializing genuinely takes effort once your burnout begins to kick in. It then creates a positive feedback loop where then people see you as withdrawn, think you are not engaging with everything in the same way that you used to, and you then feel forced to do more, making your burnout even worse.

There are varying definitions of Social Jet Lag online, but the presence of slight exhaustion interwoven into your social interactions, both professional and personal, which lead to an absence of quality social connection seems to be the most fitting to me.

Whenever scanning the discourse on burnout, it typically suggests it begins with the onset of stagnation, but I think there may even be an intermediary step where Social Jet Lag unexpectedly creeps in and harms your performance. In considering the layout of the school year, I would place the period where Social Jet Lag begins to creep up in between the end of the anticipation for a new school year and the periods leading up to extended breaks where everyone puts on their best actor role and makes it to the finish line beaten down, and wondering where it all went wrong.

The positive feedback loop of interfering with social relationships is also one of the underrated parts, especially as an early educator. The truth is, there is so much to learn in your first few years where teachers do, in a way, need to work a considerable amount to eventually feel like they are in a flow or harmony and teaching their courses at an adequate level.

I do think there is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Newer teachers are also in a strange phase of developing their adult identity as well as their professional one. It is almost strange if you do not get burnt out to an extent. Combine learning the nuances of a complex, busy profession in with potentially buying your first home, getting married, or any number of other things, the period of when teachers typically leave the profession is also littered with a number of external life developments which often go unconsidered in the level of burnout, not to mention the taxing informal expectations to be involved in extra-curriculars placed on them on them as well.

In scrolling through teacher instagram, you may find comments like this one:

What do you do to prevent Social Jetlag?

The Pod This Week:

Jay Yoder - Jay Yoder is a Teacher, Comedian, and Podcast Host. He is currently a Co-Host on the Teachers Off Duty Podcast and is one of the headliners on the Bored Teachers Comedy Tour. On part one of our conversation, Jay and I discuss his transition into comedy, being scared to start teaching and the pit stains that came with it, how he would bring an extra shirt to work each day, the importance of having other passions, feeling like he was raised in “witness protection” by having lesbian mothers and thinking he needed to hide it, adjusting his vision of fatherhood after having a daughter with autism, and, much more.

Upcoming Guests:

Gaspare Randazzo - Gaspare is a Teacher and Stand-Up Comedian based in New York, NY. He was recently on the Netflix Show The Trust and we discuss his time on the show, his move into standup, how he is not a ‘Teacher Comedian,’ how his family and students responded to him being on Netflix, and, much more.

Jennifer Love - Jennifer is an ELA Teacher based out of Nashville, TN. On this episode, Jennifer and I discuss making time for yourself outside of the classroom, making extra income online, differences between the Canadian and American education systems, and, much more.

Link for image: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/21/social-jetlag-are-late-nights-and-chaotic-sleep-patterns-making-you-ill