Balancing Act

Sleep and the Sabbatical

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By Susan Blum

People keep telling me I look "happy," "young," "great." I can't tell if that is because I really do -- after all, I just turned 50 and have a new set of lines from my nose to my lips -- or if it is because they know I am "on sabbatical" and imagine a carefree existence that would make any person feel young.

But in truth, I do feel happy, young, great. And it is because of my sabbatical.

I have one semester off, paid, with no professional obligations. I could spend it all getting massages or watching movies. But instead, what I am doing (so far, because I am only about three weeks into it), is writing a book and getting a decent night's sleep. More often than not, and more often than in my usual life, I sleep through the night again, like a baby who has been trained.

The life of a professor is not what I imagined it would be. I came into this line of work without much knowledge or planning. I had "played school" from my earliest years. Books are my life. Ideas can keep me excited and passionate. Teaching -- sharing a love of ideas, learning, great writing -- seemed like an obvious choice. And when it goes well, it is a great source of satisfaction.

Research -- learning something new, in a profound, sustained effort that can take many years -- and writing are also richly rewarding, as they permit me to feel that I can genuinely answer a meaningful question.

But what I had not expected, and do not like, are many of the other aspects of the academic life. I had not expected students to care only about their high grades (A or A- are the only acceptable "good" grades) and about getting work done so they can get on with their partying or video games ("relaxing") or even sleeping. I had not expected that students would dash off a first draft and think it should get that desired A. I had not expected that students at a first-rate university -- because you should know that the institution offering me a coveted sabbatical is a generous, well-endowed one with high admission criteria, unlike some of the other universities where I taught -- would know so little of books and the intellectual tradition.

And the real whammy, the genuine shocker, was all the other stuff: I turned out to be a conscientious committee member and an imaginative administrator in running an underfinanced center. Then my life began to fill up with what I consider mental spam: meetings, strategies, proposals, reports that go unread or even missing when they are finally needed, lunches with candidates, time spent lobbying colleagues for support for votes, informational meetings about how to work the computer program that keeps track of student activities, and scheduling for all the meetings, lunches, and committees.

Those are the things that keep me up at night. Will our paltry $7,500 really be taken away? Will the committee that approves majors and minors really reject our proposal? Will I have time to get from the women's committee meeting I chair back to my office in time to meet with the student who forgot to sign up for the major even though he is about to graduate? How can I turn in my report about this past year's budget when nobody will give me their piece of the information?

I usually check my e-mail many times every day because of the demands of students with urgent concerns ("My roommate got sick, and I can't finish the paper." "I have a job interview in Minneapolis during the midterm." "I don't understand what you mean by 'Write two discussion questions about the reading.'"); because of scheduling issues ("Tomorrow's meeting is postponed because Dr. Ace, the budget director, is stuck in Atlanta."); and because of various administrative minutiae ("Please vote to approve the third version of the minutes of our August meeting by December 3.").

I try hard to sign off e-mail when I am really trying to do some work. But the e-mail keeps coming, bringing with it new worries and new appointments and new unwelcome tasks.

So on my sabbatical, I am checking e-mail only after I have written several decent pages. In fact, I just spent an entire weekend e-mail free. I think that is the first time I have done so since traveling abroad where it was too hard to use the unfamiliar keyboard at Internet cafes.

I had a sabbatical once before, an entire year supported by a wonderful, generous, competitive grant. That year, I wrote the manuscript for my second book, which has just now been published after wandering around in search of a publisher not put off by its unconventional content and approach.

I have talked to a lot of colleagues about their sabbaticals. Sometimes they finish a major work. Sometimes they get a lot of exercise. Sometimes they finish up all the late book reviews and journal-article revisions that have been piling up for years. Sometimes they end up attending sick parents.

I have a long list of things I would love to do on my leave, if all the stars aligned perfectly: Write a book, exercise, play the piano, work in my garden once the ground thaws, learn Spanish, cook meals from scratch, prepare for next fall's classes, write all the thank-you notes left over from last year, clean out the files in my office and the boxes of old papers at home, have lunch with friends and maybe even my husband, and pick up my daughters cheerfully every day.

Needless to say, the stars rarely align. But lately I think they are moving together a little. So here's how I have been spending my time.

I get up early, read the newspaper, and drink my tea. Then I wake my two sleepy teenagers and rouse my husband, supervise the lunch-making and the breakfast-eating and the backpack-assembling, and drive the high-school student to school.

I arrive at my office. I open the "writing log" file and note what time I begin, and check the box that reminds me what to start on each day. (I don't always follow my own instructions, but sometimes it helps. Especially on a Monday.) A good day has me getting to the office before 8 a.m., but most days it is between 8 a.m. and 8:30.

I work on my project, trying each day to rough out or polish one small section of the book I've outlined. (I have written a draft outline, for myself, of a handful of 30-page chapters, and several are almost finished in different forms, but the first one I've been working on has now ballooned to 90 pages. Severe surgery is required.) Writing will raise new questions, and then I will spend time looking for relevant articles or books that will help me respond to those questions.

Sometimes those new quests will lead me completely astray from the writing, but I'll learn something new. I usually spend the entire morning absorbed in the project, unless colleagues stop by or I take a break to check my e-mail.

If I get four solid hours in, I may spend the next part of the day reading something, answering e-mail, finishing reports and letters of recommendation, or responding to departmental and university queries that are due despite my sabbatical.

A few sunny days, I have walked around the lake with a colleague. I have gone to some lunches, which always make the morning shorter and less fulfilling because my mind is on the next interruption.

But even ordinary obligations are easier to take when you're on sabbatical. When my younger daughter had a half day of school, I took her out to lunch without panicking about all the unfinished course preparation I had to do. A doctor's appointment got scheduled without any angst about work interrupted.

By afternoon, after I've checked my e-mail and started doing reports, I am finished. With reading material in hand, I can then go begin the driving-teenager part of my day, which sometimes stretches from 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. -- between lessons and rehearsals and Mock Trial and Quiz Bowl and basketball and dinner and the orthodontist.

I have not really exercised. I've played the piano about three times. I have gone through the top section (the easy part) of a box of papers at home. I have not had lunch with my husband. I have not worked in the garden because we just got our first real snow (about seven inches), though I bought a new bird feeder and have enjoyed watching the competition between sparrows and cardinals for precious sunflower seeds.

But I've written 90 pages, I've read countless books and articles already, and I have stopped the brain-spinning that is my usual lot. (I think of my common state of mind as a CD that spins and spins but doesn't play any music.)

And usually these days, though not always, I sleep without too much worry, all through the night.