At some point in the academic-socialization process known as graduate education, when mastery of subject matter appears to be well on its way, it seems only natural that the work habits of the faculty itself should come to take on special curiosity for students. How do you decide what to write about, they wonder? Where do your ideas come from? When do you write, and how do you go about it? What are the methods of that unusual class of professional blessed — or cursed — with vast stores of unstructured time to think and read and compose?
In a way, graduate students are not all that different from the average taxpayer, legislator, or parent, who would like very much to know, What is it that you actually do all day?
Doctoral students are presumptive apprentices to a craft that will, if they're lucky, become their livelihood, so the question of how professors work is for the most part a practical one. Underneath it lies an assumption that you as a faculty member might have something of value to impart to them, that by making a study of your work life and emulating — or ignoring — your example, they might improve their own prospects for productivity.
The backstage lives of faculty members are mysteries, occasionally even to the faculty itself. If our curricula and other graduate-school experiences give students little direct insight into the actual work of the profession as it is conducted behind the scenes, any attempt to shore up the knowledge gap ought to be applauded as a healthy academic exercise and not as a diversion. So, in the spirit of indulging my students, here is a rare peek beyond the curtain, where dwells the ugly truth of how I — and perhaps you — work.
Setting the stage. First, it's a good idea to have daily work goals, or so the conventional wisdom goes. My own "goal" — the ambiguity here should be revealing — is to write for two or three relatively uninterrupted hours several mornings each week, when the demands of teaching, advising, committee meetings, and other regular duties aren't allowed to intrude.
A fanciful notion, that. I have never come close to achieving it. The energy expended in getting myself into a productive frame of mind capable of going such a distance without distraction usually extrudes whatever remaining resources might be applied to the task. Understanding that my capacities have thus been diminished, I enter into every writing session with the solemn recognition that I won't be long for the sitting.
Whatever is to be accomplished must be done quickly, perhaps in the first hour or so. After that, mental and physical exhaustion will kick in, and thoughts will turn to whether I should treat myself to a grande or a venti latte at Starbucks. Is that a reward for time logged or a balm to soothe the pain of a paltry showing? Unclear.
If I should, miracle of miracles, last more than the projected hour, it is highly likely that I will become vividly aware of the fact that I am working, that I am on a roll of sorts. This phase is characterized by the onset of extreme consciousness of the mechanics of the work being performed: the way my fingers dance across the keyboard, the way I lift my finger to my chin in studious concentration on the words before me — in short, the details of performance as if in a play. That will lead me to conclude that we are all merely players, or that professional life is nothing more than acting as if from a script of how professionals should act. I will despair at the fact that Shakespeare and many others have already said these things and said them much more interestingly, which will get me wondering whether there's anything truly original left to say.
At some point, too, I will find myself marveling at my great good fortune at having the leisure to pursue this kind of work and lifestyle. The term "leisure" will strike me, on second thought, as a bit problematic; it implies playfulness or repose, and I seriously doubt that the tax-paying public — already inclined to regard professors as layabouts — intends that I should spend my days thus.
It is true that I derive pleasure from what I do, and sometimes that simple fact makes my work feel like a pastime, not like the drudgery so commonly associated with other labors. Enter feelings of guilt here: "What gives me the right to enjoy such flexibility, to be left largely to my own devices?" I will resolve henceforth to effect more of a pose of severity, to assume the "anguish'd face and flying hair" that Matthew Arnold ascribed to a madman in one of his poems, so that I might be in solidarity with my less-fortunate brethren who are shackled to oppressive jobs — or just in case one of my neighbors should espy me from the road and mistake a moment of contemplation for mere idleness.
Props. Whether such free-associative musings count as work or are simply an escape from it is open to interpretation. Maybe the best that can be said about them is that they have instrumental value — something else happens through them. In this way, they are like props.
One of my favorite courses in graduate school looked at the craft of scholarship, including the peculiar tactics used by scholars to encourage a creative frame of mind or stimulate productivity. Some academics, we learned, liked to work in a room with plenty of plants because the presence of an ecosystem close at hand suggested life and vitality. Others needed open windows for the circulation of fresh air, and if such a condition couldn't be achieved naturally, it was manufactured by placing a fan behind the curtains to give the appearance of breeziness. If creativity won't come of its own accord, or if we simply can't will the machinery to action, we can at least trick our minds into such a state.
In my case, I occasionally like to type with a mirror in view so that I can catch the expression on my face as I go, a way of gauging my reaction to whatever I'm writing. Sometimes I see in my reflection a confused or puzzled look, sometimes a slight smile, sometimes a blank expression, sometimes surprise. The man in the mirror — at this moment unshaven, oily, disheveled — is a sort of audience. If I don't know what to think about something I've just written, I can always lift my gaze from the computer screen to that other reflective "screen" on the wall, arch my eyebrows in a quizzical manner, give a little shrug of the shoulders, and invite the critique of the person sitting across from me. Writerly solitude, or isolation, is breached in this way.
I also like to keep a cup of cold, malodorous coffee near me because its presence suggests that whatever energy I started with has long since drained away, and the decaying residue is a kind of warning system telling me to get moving and wrap it up already. This happens far too often for my taste.
Scene changes. It is usually the case that I am engaged in an epic contest, locked in a staring match with the words on the page, or the place on the page where the words should go. One or the other of us — I or the page — will submit, but there's no telling how long the competition will last.
At such times, taking a cue from Faust — "Up! Flee! Out into broad and open land!" — it helps to move the action (or the inaction) to an entirely different setting. The locomotive principle worked well enough for Coleridge and Wordsworth; their poetic inspiration often came while walking. So, too, for Rousseau, who exclaimed, "My mind only works with my legs."
Inexplicably, sometimes mine works only with my car. After I drop the kids off at school and the car is silent except for the radio, I begin the drive back and consider, just for a moment, the possibility of an excursion to the coast. It is Friday, my spirits need buoying after the requisite hour's worth of unproductive struggle at the computer, and the enticements of the music and the moment seem to be pushing me to strike out on a mini-adventure. I could go off-schedule, off-course, off-setting; I could completely improvise the day.
The casual observer wouldn't know that I'm still doing work even as I journey out to the coast on a whim. The laptop may be back at home, but what I've got with me — as always — is my neck-top: that little sphere that ultimately takes care of all of my processing. There are times I'd like to power it off or hurl it against a wall (like I've done, or would like to do, with other computing appliances).
But whether I'm at the coast or behind my desk, the portable neck-top is computing. Alas, I don't know how to convince someone that I'm "at work" in such situations, and attempts to do so have usually proved futile. "It sure as hell doesn't look like any kind of work I'm used to," say the critics.
Maybe not, but if they were to take a trip with me out to the water's edge sometime, they would very likely see plenty of professionals — including a few of their own colleagues — unmoored from their offices in search of the next big idea. After all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2006 that 21 percent of employed Americans did some or all of their work at home, and "home" is probably best understood as a covering term for any location beyond the office building. Itinerant workers and members of the "creative class" — Richard Florida's designation (in his book The Rise of the Creative Class) for the estimated 38 million people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music, and entertainment — are in the vanguard of an employment revolution rapidly obscuring the familiar spatial and temporal markers used historically to signal work.
Naturally, the new norms engender suspicion, and even outright disdain, in some quarters. Seen from a distance, the habits of academics and other so-called knowledge workers often appear too messy, quirky, undisciplined, unsupervised, and inefficient to even qualify as work. In other words, they confound standardization and uniformity, making it difficult to assign them a value.
But it would be a mistake to assume that, just because we register what appears to be one hour's worth of productive labor in a day, we are not actually on the task around the clock. The rhythms and routines of our work make for easy parody, but so does a public that only understands or appreciates work when it conforms to traditional notions of where, when, and how it should be performed.
(Non)performance. Much as I like to imagine academic work as a drama, it often resembles a comedy in the terms that Emerson described it: "a nonperformance of what is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance." To wit, I wrote this when I was supposed to be working on something else.
Apparently, I can only get the gears going when I'm trying to dodge appointed duties. So much comes of its own volition, without warning, without planning, without a script. This is but a poor representation of what was intended, the product of an evasion. But it stands as evidence enough that work was done.
Coda. This may or may not be sufficient to satisfy external judges. Our working days mystify even our most ardent patrons; we are, in the end, "devoted heroes of the invisible life, the life of the mind," to use Nuttall's phrasing. A good deal of academic work is unseen. Interior scenes and dialogue may not make for great theater. The audience may grow restless suspending its disbelief. Still, the craft is being plied.
