People Trapped In Time: A Study Of "time Anxiety" Among Young College Teachers

Since the 21 st century,Chinese society has entered a new period of accelerated development,and the highly competitive environment,rising cost of living and the prevalent quantitative performance assessment methods......have plunged young university teachers into the anxious state of racing against time.The gap between ideal and reality,the opposition between free thinking and institutional norms are complicated and intertwined,making the impatient attitude and the wind of quick success prevail,and young teachers in colleges and universities can no longer keep a quiet desk and calmly sharpen a sword for ten years,and the leisurely curiosity becomes a romantic extravagance.Therefore,when the motive of hurry does not originate from strong academic interest or pure ideal adherence,it is necessary to rethink the reasons for "hurry".Rosa's critical theory of social acceleration views time as a social phenomenon in general,arguing that acceleration negatively affects social structures,processes,institutions,interpersonal relationships,individual experiences,and personal perceptions almost indiscriminately.However,modern time syndromes arise in a specific social context and in relation to other social variables,and social time has different dimensions and structures,and the typological theory of social time provides a theoretical framework that can compensate for this deficiency in explaining modern time syndromes.The theory assumes that each level of social structure has its own temporal structuring characteristics: at the individual level it is self-time,at the group level it is interactive time adapted to informal interactions and institutional time adapted to bureaucracies or other formal organizations,and at the sociocultural level it is cultural time.The four temporal levels are embedded in each other and form a stratification,which hold each other in the process of seeking structural synchronization and determine the time perception of people who are in the temporal structure.This study constructs a research framework of time anxiety and its influencing factors among young teachers in colleges and universities,and develops a set of Questionnaire on Time Anxiety and Its Influencing Factors among Young Teachers in Colleges and Universities,and conducts a questionnaire survey on 1008 young teachers in colleges and universities.The survey results show that the time anxiety of young teachers in colleges and universities in China is generally in the middle to upper level,and shows heterogeneous characteristics in several aspects,such as gender,education,the number of raising minor children,school level and region.In addition,there is an inverted "U" correlation between time anxiety and job performance,and a significant binary correlation between time anxiety and physical health of young teachers in colleges and universities.Based on the results of the questionnaire survey,we found through purposive interviews that the time anxiety of young university teachers in China is mainly manifested in three aspects: overwork anxiety caused by spontaneous overtime work,acceleration anxiety caused by race-like rush,and time loss anxiety caused by self-blame time management.Further analysis of the factors influencing the time anxiety of young university teachers in China reveals that: at the level of cultural time,the acceleration preference in the policy discourse and the rejuvenation orientation of talents in the social opinion have jointly shaped a racing culture,which has driven the teaching life of young university teachers to the fast lane with the help of modern information technology;at the level of institutional time,the time nodes in various assessment requirements have caused strong countdown At the level of institutional time,the time nodes in various assessment requirements cause strong countdown pressure,the blurred boundary between life and work time increases the hidden work time,and time fragmentation causes attention disorder and prolongs the ineffective work time;at the level of interactive time,the competition logic makes young university teachers emotionally indifferent and detached from each other,yet it is difficult to get rid of the continuous attention and secret comparison with others under the synchronous preference of not wanting to fall behind;finally,at the level of self time,the inflated time expectation and low Finally,at the level of self-time,the inflated time expectation and the lower sense of time efficacy push young university teachers to the poles of fight or flight,and they are reduced to the hard-working time poor.The four conformational facets of the modern academic career time structure in higher education form a complete structure with interlocking layers-self-time is influenced by the synchronous preference of interactive time,and the meaning is connected intact through the value orientation of cultural time under the regulation of institutional time.The structured demands of time and the expectations of the actors constantly collide and rub against each other,and through the reflective monitoring of the actors themselves,the reconciliation and symbiosis with the time structure is achieved,and the resulting action results support the "re-acceleration" of the time structure of academic career in universities and contribute to the "acceleration loop" of academic career in universities.The result of the resulting action supports the "re-acceleration" of the time structure of academic career in colleges and universities,and contributes to the further acceleration of the "acceleration cycle" of academic career in colleges and universities.The accelerated cycle of academic career time structure contributes to the birth of the group of "young teachers"(young teachers with high time anxiety)in colleges and universities,and also causes the unexpected result that some young teachers in colleges and universities choose to "lie flat".Therefore,the national support policies for young teachers in colleges and universities should follow the inner development rules of academic career,set flexible time requirements,weaken the propaganda of accelerated culture,and focus on internal guidance;the administrative departments of colleges and universities should change the concept of work function,change from managers of college teachers to service providers of college teachers,dilute the color of elimination,reduce the formalism of management,and provide more efficient and convenient system for teachers.They should optimize the community environment,improve the time ecology of young university teachers' interaction,create a teacher culture based on mutual trust,and fully stimulate the academic enthusiasm and teaching vitality of young university teachers;young university teachers should also deepen their self-awareness and make long-term and reasonable plans for their career.