Glutamate Overload: Why Teaching Online Feels Like Running a Marathon While Sitting Down
My alarm buzzes at 6:00 AM. By 7:45, I’m anchored to my desk — coffee cooling, laptop humming. The screen flickers to life: a grid of student faces materializes on Teams. “Good morning, everyone. Let’s dive into the types of logical fallacies and cognitive biases and how to spot them in the author’s argument…” And so begins another day teaching academic reading entirely through a screen. Classes, office hours, department meetings, grading essays, writing feedback, answering emails; all flowing through the same digital channels from 8 AM till 7 PM. The physical exertion? Minimal. A walk to the kitchen, perhaps. Yet, by late afternoon, a profound exhaustion sets in: a bone-deep weariness that feels entirely disproportionate to the stillness of my body. How can sitting and talking leave me so utterly drained? Why does a day of virtual teaching feel like I’ve run a marathon? My journey into this paradox led me past blue light filters and ergonomic chairs, down into the intricate, electrochemical ballet of the brain. There, I found a culprit: a relentless glutamate overload, a neural tax silently levied by the very architecture of our digital existence.
The Glutamate Treadmill
Think of glutamate as your brain’s primary accelerator pedal. It’s the spark plug firing for nearly 90% of synaptic communication. When I’m explaining bandwagon bias or unpacking a dense journal article, glutamate is surging, enabling focus, memory recall, and complex reasoning. It’s essential. But like any powerful engine, the brain needs brakes, chiefly GABA, the calming neurotransmitter. Excitotoxicity happens when the accelerator gets stuck, flooding the system. Too much glutamate, for too long, overwhelms the neurons. Calcium floods in, energy factories (mitochondria) sputter, and the delicate machinery starts to fray. This isn’t just about strokes; research hints that chronic, low-grade excitotoxicity can occur under sustained cognitive pressure. My brain, I realised, is often stuck in that high-rev state.
My Daily Glutamate Gauntlet: Picture this: It’s 10 AM. I’m mid-flow on Zoom, dissecting a journal article on reading comprehension when suddenly I catch myself committing a hasty generalization. Suddenly:
· Visual Strain: I’m trying to read subtle shifts in understanding on postage-stamp-sized faces, blurred by compression. Is Maria’s slight frown confusion about the types of logical fallacies or just a bad connection?
· Auditory Labor: Ellen’s audio cuts out mid-insightful comment. “Sorry, Ellen, you froze. Could you repeat that?” The cognitive effort to reconstruct meaning from fragments is immense.
· The Chat Avalanche: While re-explaining straw man, the chat explodes. Amanda asks for the slide link, Fatima shares a relevant article (great, but now?), Amin privately messages about an extension due to illness.
· Hyper-Vigilance: I’m suppressing the lawnmower outside, ignoring the email notification blinking from my other screen (department meeting reminder?), and consciously projecting energy into the void. My prefrontal cortex is screaming, juggling all these streams. It’s pure glutamatergic overdrive. This isn’t teaching; it’s neurological triage. How can a simple conversation about academic reading feel so perilous?
Teaching Without a Body is Exhausting
We forget how much teaching is embodied. In a physical classroom, meaning flows through posture, proximity, gesture, the shared energy in the room. I’d lean in for emphasis, catch a student’s eye to re-engage them, sense the collective rustle signalling waning attention. My whole body participated. Online? I’m a floating head. My physical toolkit is amputated. Communication becomes impoverished, stripped down to pixels and soundwaves. This “embodiment deficit” isn’t neutral; it forces my brain into overdrive to compensate.
Performing Presence: To bridge the gap, I become a relentless performer. On camera, I deploy exaggerated nods and overly expressive eyebrows to signal engagement. I consciously modulate my voice, injecting warmth, gravitas, enthusiasm, knowing the microphone flattens nuance. “Eye contact” means staring unnervingly into a camera lens, not connecting with human eyes. It’s utterly draining. Hosting virtual office hours? A student emails in distress about a personal crisis affecting their work. My response, typed or spoken into the void, requires immense cognitive and emotional labour to convey genuine empathy without the calming, co-regulating presence of physical proximity. Where is the shared quiet, the subtle reassurance of a shared space? Replaced by a frantic neural effort to simulate it, fuelled by more glutamate. Is it any wonder I feel hollowed out and zombified afterwards?
Why One Job Feels Like Ten
The promise of digital efficiency often feels like a cruel joke. Instead of streamlining, online teaching explodes my role into fragments. I’m not just a lecturer anymore. I’m also:
· Tech Support: “Dr. A, I can’t hear your voice!” “My mic isn’t working!” “Teams crashed!” Constant troubleshooting mid-lecture.
· Chat Moderator/Curator: Simultaneously delivering content while pasting links into chat, answering quick queries, managing the flow of digital contributions.
· Digital Stage Manager: Sharing slides, managing breakout rooms, monitoring attendance digitally, recording the session.
· 24/7 Email Hub: The deluge never stops, assignment queries, extension requests, administrative notices, student anxieties, all demanding immediate cognitive shifts.
The Micro-Tasking Marathon: Yesterday, during a text dissect lesson on postcolonial theory:
1. 9:15 AM: Explaining Fanon’s concept of the “gaze” (High glutamate: complex theory articulation).
2. 9:16 AM: Noticed Lisa frozen. Asked her to restart Teams (Visual scan, quick decision).
3. 9:17 AM: Pasted the critical essay PDF link into chat (Motor shift, working memory load).
4. 9:18 AM: Saw a private Teams message: “Can I submit Essay 2 late? My relative passed away.” (Emotional processing, policy recall, composing empathetic yet boundaried reply).
5. 9:19 AM: Back to Fanon, trying to regain the thread… but the flow is shattered.
Each shift isn’t seamless; it’s a hard cognitive reboot demanding fresh glutamate. Neuroscientists like Adam Gazzaley confirm this constant context-switching is incredibly costly. My brain never settles; it’s perpetually revving. The natural pauses of physical teaching — walking to the board, handing out papers, the rhythm of group work — are gone. Replaced by an unrelenting cognitive sprint. Where does the brain find time tobreathe?
When Your Tools Become Traps
Our digital tools aren’t passive conduits; they’re active architects of our exhaustion. The Learning Management System, MS Teams, WhatsApp — they’re designed to demand attention.
Get Norazha Paiman’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
· The Notification Siren: That little red dot on Teams. The “New Submission” email. The “Meeting Starting Now” alert. Each ping triggers a micro-surge of dopamine (anticipation) and glutamate (attention alert!). It’s a potent, addictive cocktail. My limbic system — the brain’s threat/reward centre — stays perpetually primed.
· The Infinite Scroll of Grading: Facing 50 digital essays isn’t like a physical stack. The backlit screen, the endless scrolling, the interface nudging me towards rapid, shallow feedback — it keeps my brain locked in “evaluation mode,” sustaining low-grade glutamatergic hum long into the night. The blue light further sabotages my sleep, crippling the natural recovery processes.
· The Boundary Erosion: The laptop is always right there. Checking “just one email” at 9 PM becomes routine. The LMS makes student work constantly visible, accessible, and therefore, perpetually pending. The workday never truly ends; the neural engine never fully idles. When does the ‘off’ switch exist in a world that’s always online?
Reclaiming My Neural Sanity
Understanding the “why”, the glutamate tax, is empowering. It moves me beyond feeling vaguely guilty for being tired (“I just sat all day!”) towards concrete, neuro-aware strategies. This isn’t about perfunctory “self-care”; it’s about neurological sustainability.
My Survival Toolkit:
1. Movement is Medicine (Literally): I schedule walks immediately after intense blocks of teaching or grading. No podcasts. Just me, the trees, the sky. This isn’t a luxury; it’s neural first aid. Physical activity boosts GABA (the brake), helps clear glutamate, and builds resilience. Even pacing during phone calls helps.
2. Ruthless Boundaries, Sacred Buffers: My new commandments:
o Email Sabbath: No student emails after 7 PM or before 8 AM. Auto-responder set.
o Notification Purge: All non-critical notifications OFF. Teams status: “Do Not Disturb” during deep work.
o The 90-Minute Rule: Hard stop every 90 minutes of screen work. 15 minutes away from all screens. Stretch, stare out window, make tea.
o Single-Tasking Sprints: Dedicated blocks: 90 mins for lecture prep (email off), 60 mins for batch grading (Teams off), 30 mins for emails. Fragmentation is the enemy.
3. Optimising the Digital Dystopia:
o Audio-Only Respite: For some classes or meetings, I propose switching off cameras periodically. The visual processing load is immense.
o Print to Preserve: Crucial readings? Print them. Marking complex essays? Print them if possible. Give your eyes and brain a rest from the glare.
o Voice Notes over Typing: For nuanced feedback on drafts, sometimes I send a short voice note. It’s faster for me and often more personal for them, reducing the cognitive grind of crafting perfect text.
4. Demanding Neurological Ergonomics: I’m starting the conversation. We need institutional recognition that online teaching has a unique metabolic cost. This means:
o Realistic class sizes and workloads for online delivery.
o Protected, uninterrupted preparation time (not fragmented by constant pings).
o Explicitly scheduling “recovery time” between back-to-back online sessions.
o Challenging the expectation of 24/7 digital availability. Respecting the off-hours.
The Exhaustion is Real — And It’s Written in Our Synapses
So, here I sit at 7:10 PM. The last student logs off from office hours. My final email is sent. The laptop lid closes with a soft click. Outside, the world continues. But inside my skull? It feels like a battlefield after the fighting has stopped: silent, but strewn with the wreckage of synaptic overuse. The stillness of my body is a lie. My neurons have been running a desperate, high-stakes relay race for eleven hours straight, bathed in a relentless bath of glutamate.
This fatigue isn’t burnout in the fuzzy, psychological sense. It’s not laziness. It’s a physiological invoice, presented by a brain pushed into chronic overdrive by an environment it never evolved to inhabit. The disembodied interactions, the relentless fragmentation, the algorithmic demands, the sensory poverty; they all conspire to jam the accelerator and weaken the brakes. We aren’t failing to adapt; we are biological beings straining against the unnatural demands of the virtual.
The next time you emerge from a long day of screens feeling inexplicably shattered, remember the silent storm raging in your skull. It’s not just in your head. It’s on your head — a neural tax paid in glutamate. And the cost? Not just our energy, but potentially, the very quality of our thought, our empathy, our creativity. We are magnificent biological machines, but we are not computers. We cannot process indefinitely without rest, nor connect meaningfully through cables alone.
So yes, I teach online. I love my students, I love the subject. But I refuse to pretend this is sustainable without change. My brain is not a machine to be relentlessly optimised. It is a fragile, exquisite ecosystem humming with electrochemical storms. We must design our digital lives, and demand institutions design our digital workplaces, not just for efficiency, but for neurological survivability. Because the final lesson might be the hardest one: When the screen goes dark, the quietest casualty is often our own exhausted mind. The question isn’t just why we’re so tired. It’s whether we can afford to keep paying this price.
