August is upon us, and we academics are nearing the end of our so-called ‘summer vacation.” My heart always sinks a little when I hear someone (usually a student) call it that, since I know the truth—it’s the busiest, most stressful time of the year. Those three months after grading ends and before the next term begins is when we try and finish every article, start several new ones, plan courses for the upcoming year, write grant proposals, and accomplish a million other small tasks that can supposedly be crammed in since, after all, we are not teaching (ok—some of us aren’t). These insane expectations, perhaps most often held by the untenured among us, lead to 80 hour weeks where we work frantically in fear that come September our to-do list won’t be any shorter. It’s hot, the pool calls, our kids are around to play, but we ignore all that and keep going.
Is life like this after tenure? I’m terribly afraid it is. I’m also sad to think (to realize) that this is likely the life of most Americans—especially those with no hope of eternal job security, whose hourly wage is so low as to demand these long hours? I’m betting yes. Will it ever change? Is there any hope of bringing a little sanity to our working lives, such that we can feel good about saying yes to questions like “will I take a vacation this year?” and “will I take one now?” Since I’m fairly sure that intermittent periods of relaxation are required for mental and physical health, I sure hope so. I’d love to see the Secretary of Health & Human Services get together with someone like the First Lady to take this on. This is a stressful time for so many reasons—and we (all of us) deserve a vacation. Or at least, an afternoon beer summit.
3 Responses to Nothing to Do, and All Day to Do It
goxewu - August 2, 2009 at 2:40 pm
This is, I take it, supposed to be gentle irony. If it isn’t, it’s a major embarrassment instead of just a minor one, for “Brainstorm”: a whine from an academic wonk about the summer not amounting to one long, unbroken vacation, made even more disgusting by a disingenuous attempt at solidarity with those non-academic Americans suffering from scant job security and low wages. Prof. Goldrick Rab must count the likes of brushing her teeth, combing her hair, and who knows what else as part of those alleged 80-hour work weeks.
_perplexed_ - August 3, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Don’t know about Prof. Goldrick-Rab in particular, but since many academics are paid for 9-, not 12-month appointments, I wonder just how many hours per week goxewu thinks academics should work over the summer…
goxewu - August 4, 2009 at 9:46 am
If tenure-track professors are paid only three-quarters of the salary their jobs would ordinarily merit because they’re working on merely “9-month appointments,” then the majority of them would take any summer jobs they could get in order to tide them over. But they don’t because, however inadequate they may perceive their salaries to be, tenure-track professors consider themselves to be de facto working on all-year contracts that have the perq of three summer months mostly “off.” (The old saying, “There are three reasons to take a job as a teacher: June, July and August,” applies to college professors, too.) I was a tenure-track and tenured professor for a couple of decades and a department chair for a few years in R-1 universities similar to the University of Wisconsin, and I know what I’m talking about.
The situation for tenure-track faculty in other kinds of schools, and especially for adjuncts, is different and worse. But it’s still my opinion that Prof. Goldrick-Rab is a) whining and, b) grossly exaggerating about her alleged 80-hour work weeks.