I sometimes feel sorry for myself when the mountains or the beach or my children are beckoning and I am slogging through making my syllabi for the fall, or learning a new basket technique to teach my students or driving in to work for curriculum or search committee meetings to hire new staff. I feel sorrier when I get wistful comments from relatives or even strangers about how nice it must be to get the "summer off." And I feel sorriest of all when I think about how this work is unpaid.
But apparently I have it easy. I have a friend from the dept who is in South America on a vacation he paid for. And someone got wind of it on campus and asked him to spend 3 days of his vacation HE PAID FOR to travel to a completely different country and, unpaid, look after some students who are going to be there. And he didn't feel like he could say no.
Q: So, is your summer a chance to recharge after the year, or a series of unpaid resented activities and missed opportunities?
Usually, recharging. I get back in shape, learn something new, write a book, read for fun.
ReplyDeleteThis summer, slightly less so, because I'm on a booger committee (a term I just coined for a committee whose work is always "just about" wrapped up, but you can never completely shake it off).
Alas, these days most of my research counts as an unpaid resented activity leading to lots of missed opportunities....
ReplyDeleteThey asked him to go to another country to "look after" a few students? How in the world did your department become an international nanny service? And what was that admin-flake smoking, so that I know to keep it out of the hookah?
ReplyDeletePart of what keeps me active in research is that I do research in astronomy, much of which is so cool, I can barely stand it. Part of it is that, when I was an undergraduate, my education was marred by professors who were abusing their tenure and were coasting to retirement. They hadn't done any research in many years, and wouldn't you know taught us a whole bunch that was out of date. Part of it is that, by plugging away, every now and then I do get a research grant from NASA. Whenever that happens, I get to do cool things, such as use Hubble Space Telescope, go observing in Chile, go to conferences in Europe or Boulder, and also my income for the year goes up by 20-30% from summer salary. But the best part is that, since I'm one of the ever-diminishing fraction of faculty at my university still active in research, and seeing how our adminiflakes still have pretensions that Middlin' State someday become an R2, if I can publish, bring in grants, and involve students in research (they especially like that last), I may keep standards in my classes as high as I want, and yell at snowflakes as much as I deem necessary. And as you may know, being allowed a good yell every now and then at some clueless. irresponsible flake every now and then is highly therapeutic, at least for me, and sometimes is even educational for them.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I have tenure. Without it, I'd do much less research, especially of the kind that involves students, who often are not capable of doing the kind of research that brings in grants. Instead, I'd spend nearly all my time on the treadmill for survival, the way I did as a young postdoc and especially as an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor. Whenever I get wistful (clueless) comments about getting summers "off," I think I can answer them with a clear conscience.
DeleteP.P.S. Absolutely no fucking way do I ever pay for research expenses for more than $100 out of my own pocket. If an adminiflake were to tell me to travel to a foreign country at my own expense to supervise some students, I'd cry poverty, plausibly since I'm still paying back student loans for that very expensive pedigree for which in part they hired me.
DeletePerhaps I'm a rare breed. Or perhaps it's because I'm at a community college. Or perhaps it's just the culture of my department. But I always take the summer off and go travel.
ReplyDeleteI spent this summer in Southeast Asia and last summer in Australia and New Zealand, and I intend on continuing to travel for most summers. I'm always a happier person when I'm abroad, and it's what gets me through some of the more trying days of the semester.
Aside from hiring committees, every other committee gets its work done during the academic year because they know not everyone is around for the summer. And hiring committees try their hardest to do so as well. All I do during the summer is a bit of prep for my fall courses, but I'd never call it "unpaid" because whenever I choose to do it, it's a part of the job they're paying me to do.
I get to travel during the summer, too. And I usually buy an everyday thing like a comb (Scotland) or a cute hairbrush (London) and when I am doing my usual routines during the day (good or bad) I see or use those things and remember that I did have some fun at one time.
DeleteOur vacation money went for vet bills, so I spent the summer writing like crazy, reading for fun, and working on the yard and our gardens.
ReplyDeleteAs a GTA and previously an adjunct, summer is mostly a period of grueling poverty. And gardening, which is the bomb, and very relaxing as well.
ReplyDeleteTime off? Hahahahaha! I typically work a full time non academic job and juggle two adjunct gigs at a time just to stay a float.
ReplyDelete@FML: By any chance, are you related to HTML? If so, please say hi to her for me. We used to have some good times back in the day.
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