It’s 2018, before COVID-19 both exacerbated faculty burnout and forced widespread—and necessary—conversations about it. Rebecca Pope-Ruark, who literally wrote a book on faculty productivity, can’t concentrate on anything and she doesn’t know why. She’s also tired and worn-out, but she attributes that to a difficult year as a professor and a recent health scare (which thankfully turned out to be just that). She obliges her worried husband by going to a therapist, whom she asks, repeatedly, for attention deficit disorder medication. Pope-Ruark has never been diagnosed with such a disorder before, but late-onset ADD is her only possible explanation for what she’s experiencing. Her therapist has a different diagnosis: burnout, a severe case of it.