I won't promise to be creative and original on this blog -- I do that all day with teaching and research, so I feel comfortable about resorting to cliches and other crutches when writing this blog. After all, I know I can't say anything revolutionary (nothing to match, much less, beat all the professional bloggers and veteran parents' insights), so I'll just be myself and say whatever comes to mind...
That caveat in place, I'm writing at 11:23pm on a Thursday night, nervous about my 95 students who are submitting their final papers by tomorrow at 5pm. In the previous stage of my life, I was the anxious student who had either procrastinated to the point that I was writing my first draft (freshman and sophomore years of college) or revising my n-th draft obsessively (junior and senior years of college). Now I'm still on edge, and I'm grading the darn papers.
The more important thing is that I'm still trying to keep up the blissful schedule of "working all the time" that most academics embrace. People think we have light, easy, flexible schedules when in fact, we are pulling long days and nights like our peers in other professions such as law, investment banking, and government. Our hours may not be fixed to office schedules but we do try to keep churning out quality work for as long as possible each day, so a 10 to 15-hour work period is not that unusual. And things get worse during crunch time (yes, we have crunch time too, not just certified public accountants during tax season or attorneys preparing for court).
So, well-meaning friends and colleagues have been asking me if I plan to "keep it up" once my bundle of joy arrives in July. They don't automatically assume that I'm going to drop everything (although the inquiry about whether my career will proceed post-baby has come up more than once) but the implication is clear that time will be the most constrained resource. Not good when your professional well-being is predicated on squeezing productivity out of every non-essential-for-other-functions hour. [True to stereotype, a lot of academics don't even take time for leisure travel -- attending a conference or doing research in a location other than one's own home base is already considered a luxurious trip -- some "faculty brats" grow up thinking that their vacations were earmarked periods for Mom and/or Dad making breakthroughs in archives]
Hmm, will I be waiting up to see if my students are writing to me late at night, panicking about their assignments? Will I be checking email every few hours to stave the tide of correspondence from colleagues and students, so that they all get a response from me in a timely manner? Will I be telling my daughter that "Ooh, we're so lucky, we're visiting X-country because Mommy needs to do research there" (in fact, she may be going on one or two such trips this very year)? Perhaps, perhaps.
And if I'm up anyways at some ungodly hour for feeding, soothing, or whatever, I may turn a sideways glance to email to see how my non-blood-related (but nevertheless precious) "kids" are doing. :)
That caveat in place, I'm writing at 11:23pm on a Thursday night, nervous about my 95 students who are submitting their final papers by tomorrow at 5pm. In the previous stage of my life, I was the anxious student who had either procrastinated to the point that I was writing my first draft (freshman and sophomore years of college) or revising my n-th draft obsessively (junior and senior years of college). Now I'm still on edge, and I'm grading the darn papers.
The more important thing is that I'm still trying to keep up the blissful schedule of "working all the time" that most academics embrace. People think we have light, easy, flexible schedules when in fact, we are pulling long days and nights like our peers in other professions such as law, investment banking, and government. Our hours may not be fixed to office schedules but we do try to keep churning out quality work for as long as possible each day, so a 10 to 15-hour work period is not that unusual. And things get worse during crunch time (yes, we have crunch time too, not just certified public accountants during tax season or attorneys preparing for court).
So, well-meaning friends and colleagues have been asking me if I plan to "keep it up" once my bundle of joy arrives in July. They don't automatically assume that I'm going to drop everything (although the inquiry about whether my career will proceed post-baby has come up more than once) but the implication is clear that time will be the most constrained resource. Not good when your professional well-being is predicated on squeezing productivity out of every non-essential-for-other-functions hour. [True to stereotype, a lot of academics don't even take time for leisure travel -- attending a conference or doing research in a location other than one's own home base is already considered a luxurious trip -- some "faculty brats" grow up thinking that their vacations were earmarked periods for Mom and/or Dad making breakthroughs in archives]
Hmm, will I be waiting up to see if my students are writing to me late at night, panicking about their assignments? Will I be checking email every few hours to stave the tide of correspondence from colleagues and students, so that they all get a response from me in a timely manner? Will I be telling my daughter that "Ooh, we're so lucky, we're visiting X-country because Mommy needs to do research there" (in fact, she may be going on one or two such trips this very year)? Perhaps, perhaps.
And if I'm up anyways at some ungodly hour for feeding, soothing, or whatever, I may turn a sideways glance to email to see how my non-blood-related (but nevertheless precious) "kids" are doing. :)
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