the problem of no boundaries

I'm a professor, and that means that I have a very peculiar kind of job. I've noticed that the way you characterize the profession has to vary according to discipline, as well as by type of college/university.

I am in the sciences at a major research university, so I have graduate students, post docs, all kinds of biosafety types of applications and approvals to get, equipment to keep running, etc. in addition to the teaching and service. Oh, and in the midst of all of that I'm supposed to do research. I was actually hired b/c of my research skills, although those get used less and less as I move forward through the career path.

I find this very frustrating.

But that's another post.

Today I want to write about boundaries. I am extremely good at the keeping-personal-life-out-of-work boundary largely because I have very little of a personal life, and because I learned early on that women are deemed less of a scientist if your colleagues think you do anything else. So for a long time, I didn't do anything else.

But as I passed through tenure and a bunch of BS with colleagues who's bloated sense of self importance is far beyond their actual merit, I started to come to terms with the fact that if this is all I am, then it kinda sucks.

But the job is really one you can't drop at 5pm and go home for the weekend. In order to keep the job there is a minimum amount of work you have to do just to keep things running, so that grad students and post docs have what they need, so that classes get taught, so that committee service is met, and so that once in a while I get to think about my own research. (which was the whole point of doing this career in the first place, IMHO)

Where is that minimum line?

I'm starting to think that it's at 70 hours a week. Seriously.

I have worked about 65-80 hours a week every week for the last 15 years. I'm not kidding. I'm also not complaining. It was my choice and it gave me a lot of success.

But it's gotten to be too much. I really need something else, at least a little mental break every now and then.

So in January I decided that I would not go to school on Sundays (I used to go every day of the week except for the time I had surgery and literally couldn't go for about 5 days).

This has mostly worked. One Sunday a student in my lab needed to practice a job talk, and Sunday was the only option, so I went in for a few hours for that. But otherwise, I've managed to stay away on Sundays.

But that doesn't mean that I've been good at not working on Sundays.

If I don't check email, it means that I'll spend a couple of hours at least on Monday trying to catch up, which sets me back ALL week. And today I'll also read through some student essays, luxuriously at home, but it's still technically work.

So why am I writing about all of this?

Because my university is one of those that put faculty and staff on furloughs. Now they want us to fill out a form that states the exact days on which we took furlough.

Huh?

I actually have had MORE work because of the budget BS than I did before. I still teach, research, service, etc. but my university service has increased dramatically as we all have to find ways to work around the problems created by the budget problems. My research productivity has definitely plummeted, and I'm trying to only work 60 hours a week and keep my sundays "off" for my sanity.

So what days do I claim for my furlough?

I would be lying if I said it was Friday, or next Monday, or some random day in December.

It feels like a legal trick. I think the University wants us to legally claim particular days so that we can't come back and point out that we didn't actually get a reduction in our work load in exchange for the reduction in our pay.

But maybe I'm just jaded... age will do that to you. Or is that wisdom?