Things are getting a little weird blogging wise because I'm shifting over a fair amount of what I say, at least professionally, to G+. Most of it's limited to my circles but I'm starting to share some things publicly here and there. Here's a draft of something I'm going to put on Google+ soon.
Recently a colleague of mine wrote a post on Facebook expressing some exasperation with the fact that her department was nearly empty at 4:15 on a weekday. This led to a fairly long series of comments, and I decided to write about it in a more extended manner here rather than clutter up her wall with my opinions.
So, the exasperation was born of the belief that appearances matter, that public perception is important, and that there is a need for expensive university building to look open on weekdays. My colleague remarked "being present more often on campus is likely a coming requirement if we want more compensation."
Now that I have tenure I'm going to go ahead and be honest and open about my working hours and my beliefs about how much we professors are working and should be working.
The exasperation was perhaps born of a belief that the university building should be filled with professors in their offices during the normal working hours of 9 to 5, or something like that. This colleague is not in my own department. But in my department, things do look somewhat different. For instance:
-- Many of us are in our offices up until 7, 8, and 9 p.m. because we teach afternoon and evening courses that working graduate students can take after their normal work day is completed.
-- Many of us are in our offices on the weekend. I go in every Sunday, which I will talk about more in a moment, but the place isn't deserted on those Sundays. I have one colleague who I hear walking down the hall to and from her office each Sunday. I have another colleague in my own area who is often in our shared suite on Sunday.
-- Many of us are also in our offices before the typical work day starts. The head of my area is often in the office before 8. He comes in after he drops his son off from school, and on certain days he leaves early (around 2:30) to pick his son up from school.
-- Many of my departmental colleagues are not in the offices much because they are off giving talks, keynotes, and plenaries, going to conferences, serving on review panels and advisory panel meetings, receiving honorary doctorates, and otherwise engaging in very public forms of scholarship around the country and the world. This does not appear to have harmed our department's reputation. In fact, it seems to have helped it.
I feel lucky that my department has always been supportive of the work we do, caring much more about our productivity rather than the appearance of productivity, or face time. We have a huge amount of autonomy in terms of when and where we work. All of us work long hours. I don't personally happen to know anybody in my department who works fewer than 40 hours a week. But many of those hours do not necessarily occur in our offices. They occur in the classroom, in the field when we're collecting data, on the airplane, and, yes, at our homes. Sometimes at 10 p.m., or midnight, or 5 a.m.
I am facebook friends with some of my departmental colleagues who have tenure, who voted on my own tenure case. If one of them had posted something in exasperation about not seeing more faculty in the office at 4:15 p.m. on a Wednesday, that would have had a chilling effect on me pre-tenure. It would have scared me, and made me worry that I need to be showing up at the office more, regardless of how much actual work I would have been getting done. It would have suggested to me that it's more important to physically be in my office (maybe even goofing off and surfing the web) than to be at home writing a paper or analyzing data.
So, I have to say, I'm really glad my departmental culture is different. Because let me be honest here. As a professor, I have worked a lot of hours, more hours than were healthy or appropriate leading up to tenure. I did it for a salary that is quite low considering my education and background. I did it for benefits that have been slashed, and take-home pay that has been reduced dramatically each month. I'm in a state where professors in particular and state workers in general have been attacked and denigrated. I don't get prestige, I don't get respect, I don't get a fabulous salary, but what I do get is an amazing degree of autonomy in how I do my work. And this autonomy, this flexibility, is what makes this job worth it for me.
I love my work. I love the research I do and I love teaching and interacting with students at all levels. The thing that makes my type of job a dream job is that I get to work on what I choose, and I get to do it how and when I choose. This is the one major perk of my profession. I'm lucky enough to be in a department that strongly believes in the autonomy of its faculty members. Our culture is such that we believe we are a group of talented, committed people, so it is important to allow us the freedom to do our work as we see fit. What matters to my departmental colleagues is what we produce. The work we do. Nobody cares when or where we do it. If there was some rule about me having to be on campus until 5 p.m. every weekday, that would be incredibly limiting. It would also be insulting. It wouldn't take into account the work I do every Sunday, the work I do in the evenings, the work I do when I fly to and from conferences.
Why do I go into work every Sunday? I do this because I stay at home with my kids every Wednesday. At first, I did this because I could not afford to have my kids in full-time, 5-day a week care. I am the primary wage earner in my family. My salary wasn't high enough to cover the cost of full-time care when we are already paying more per year to send our kids to preschool than we'd be paying to send them both to U.W.
In the past year my income went up and now, although it wouldn't be easy, I could afford to send my kids to preschool and after-school care, full time, 5 days a week. But you know what? This wouldn't be as good for my kids. They are 4, and they get exhausted from being in school. They really relish that day off in the middle of the week. It lets them recharge. It is good for them, and it is good for me to provide it for them. In a year and a half they'll be in kindergarten. This time I have when they are small is so fleeting, so I enjoy spending Wednesdays with them. In exchange, I go into work every Sunday while they stay home with my husband. The fact that I am able to do this is what makes my low salary and diminished benefits worth it.
I am really grateful that the head of my area set a precedent for this type of flexible schedule by leaving early to pick his son up from school. This sent the message that our families matter, our outside lives matter, and it's okay to be more than just a brain on a stick. I'm glad nobody in my department has communicated the attitude that it's face time in the office that matters more than other things, things like the quality of work I produce.
Because the thing is, as soon as you start chastising people for not being in at a certain time of day, that means we all have to agree on what those acceptable times are. Is it going to be M-F, 9-5? M-F, 7-3? What about those teaching evening classes? What about those who run weekend workshops? What about those who have labs with experiments that need to be checked 24/7? What about winter break or spring break? Technically, we faculty do not get any vacation days during our 9-month contract. So anybody who is going to chastise people for not being in the office at 4:15 on a Wednesday had better not take a vacation during spring break. If public perception matters, that perception shouldn't be of us off drinking wine in Napa when we should be on campus earning our keep. Are we really willing to go down that road? I'm not.
