The most important advice gained from the workshops is that support can only be given when communication occurs. This means that ECRs must advocate for themselves.

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Do not hesitate to ask your chair, who should be your main ally, for help with adjusting your workload or getting additional support to manage your workload. Such support could include:

• Tenure clock extension

• Additional teaching assistants or grading support

• Reduced service obligations

• Alternate teaching workloads (in some cases, institutions may be willing to provide course relief in exchange for teaching at a later time)

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Set realistic expectations for yourself.

• In research: recognize that there are inevitable delays and setbacks associated with this pandemic. Pursue what you can and try not to stress about things you cannot change. If you have sought a tenure clock extension, some of this hardship should be mitigated.

• In teaching: you do not need to be the world’s best online teacher. You need to teach your students well and provide them a quality education experience, but it does not need to be the best online experience ever. Your knowledge is what they have paid to learn.

• Do not hesitate to borrow from what others have already learned! Recreating the wheel is simply a waste of effort. Some helpful resources to seek out:

1. Canadian Political Science Teaching and Learning Network

2. APSA syllabus bank

If you are applying for promotion, a grant or have to prepare your CV for any other type of evaluation, this may be a particularly stressful time. It’s important that you provide whoever is evaluating your file with the information necessary for them to gather an accurate picture of your pandemic interruption.

• Consider providing details in your personal statement, cover letter and CV. You should only include as much detail as you are comfortable with. As noted by a panelist, mentioning the number of children you have and going into details about domestic responsibilities may signal different things for racialized individuals.

• Can you estimate the change in work time? If a normal work week is 40 hours (!) and due to other responsibilities you found yourself just able to carve out 10, consider indicating that - “My work time capacity was reduced to only 25% from March 2020 until August 2020.”

• If you had to transition to online teaching rapidly in March 2020 and found that your teaching-research-service balance deteriorated to be 100% teaching, indicate that, again providing an estimate of the timeline.

• Mentioning the general scope of extra responsibilities is fair and relevant. Elder care, for example, may not be widely understood but assuming responsibility for all of the errands of another person can be quite time consuming. Child care and homeschooling may be more easily recognized.

• We know that the burden of increased childcare, homeschooling and domestic work has disproportionately affected women. We have compiled a list of reports that document this (see below). Consider citing this information when you indicate the particular responsibilities you had to take on.

• Important note: While we know about general trends in pandemic burdens, we cannot assume that we know the specifics of any situation or for members of specific minority communities which might have been especially hit. If you think that your own situation may not be recognized (for example, noting the existing research, if you are male and took on the childcare responsibilities in the home because your partner’s work was inflexible), consider providing such details.