The end of the school year always brings conflicting emotions for me. On one hand, it's great to be wrapping things up, the weather is in that perfect not-too-hot, not-too-cold spot, and (mostly) all I have to look forward to now is three months of (mostly) not working.* I'm excited to have some time away from my teaching job, for which I'm not able to take any vacation days at all and can only take sick days if I'm able to make up the work I miss by working nights and weekends, for nine months of the year.
It's usually once I start thinking about all the awesome things I'm going to do over the summer that I start feeling guilty for not working. Especially now that Lindsey works at a "real" job, it's weird to have the entire summer "to myself" when everyone else is at their job, (supposedly) working away. I've lost track of the number of times over the last decade that others have explained at length to me exactly how I've got it better than them, able to just not work three months of the year. The implication is twofold: 1) they're jealous of my long "vacation," and 2) they simultaneously think that taking such a long vacation is lazy, slothful, and that somehow I don't work as hard as they do. It's number two that, in my weaker moments, makes me feel a bit like shit. So I decided that during my lunch break today (literally the first lunch break I've had, honestly, since October when my boss took me to lunch to talk about...work) I would figure out if I actually work less than Hypothetical Jealous/Contemptuous Joe Schmoe.
I'm working on the assumption that during a year of perfect attendance, Joe works 48 weeks out of the year, for forty hours a week. Joe takes his four weeks of vacation. This totals out to 1,920 hours of work a year. If Joe is an absolute maniac and takes no vacation, he works 2,080 hours a year.
After almost ten years of working as a university instructor/teacher/professor, I estimate that I average about 60 hours a week per work during the school year. This includes about 50-55 hours per week plus 5-10 hours per weekend. At my current job, this amounts to 60 hours a week for 30 weeks, or 1,800 hours. When you add to that the (unpaid) 15 hours average per week I do the rest of the year (during Christmas break, spring break, and summer break), you add another 330 hours to that to come up with 2,130 hours.
So. Mathematically at least, I have nothing to feel bad about.
Anyway, this was an interesting little experiment to me, and I wasn't at all assured of the result as it came out before I started.
Because this is going on the internet now, I suppose I'm obligated to add a little note to say I don't mean this as a complaint; clearly, there are more lucrative and, frankly, easier-to-get jobs than a tenure track professor in the humanities in 2014, and if I was dissatisfied or wanted to be doing something else instead, I sure as hell would be. Instead, this is my way of responding to all those "Oh, so you don't work all summer" sneers.
Yes, actually I do work (a bit) all summer, and even if I didn't, I still likely work about as much as you do. So pffffffftthhhhhht.
Back to grading.
* And, notably, not getting paid. So, you could say that in addition to working as much or more as "full-year" employees, I only get paid for 75% of my work. Yes, now that I'm tenure track I make a decent amount of money (an amount that is, by my standards, extraordinary), but no, we don't get paid "extra" over nine months to be compensated for the three months we get "off."
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