Anyone feel like life is passing them by due to being an academic?

[BaileysWithIce]

I just end up spending so many weekends trying to catch up on work I couldn't finish during the week, I'm starting to feel like life is passing me by.

I was a bit like this as a PhD student and as a post-doc. Now I'm a lecturer with lots of teaching as well as research commitments, I'm starting to feel like academia is slowly 'stealing' my life.

I wish I knew how to change it - both before my husband leaves me, and before I wake up in ten years' time with very few memories apart from sitting in front of the computer...

Goodness some of these posts are really depressing!

Like hefzi I spent a year as a temporary lecturer (a bit like a TF I think). As she says, it was tough, because I had a big lecture load (three big lectures a week + seminars, tutorials etc) and I had to write them all from scratch. I also finished the copy editing and proofs and did the index of my first book that year, and wrote and submitted a new article from scratch (because I thought there was a particular hole in my publication record that needed plugging to get a permanent job). I was (happily) single at the time, and I definitely did work more hours than I do at the moment. But there is no way I worked 120 hours, any week! I suspect I was probably averaging 60. And in my view/experience, that level of work is unsustainable long term if/once you have a partner, even, let alone children.

One thing I do really remember about that year is that the first few lectures I gave I had written out completely, but that within a term I was turning up with just a copy of the handout. I would acknowledge that the ideal is somewhere in the middle (!), but it was really useful for gaining lecturing confidence quickly.

Oh, and I met my now-DH in the last few weeks of that temporary lecturing job, so it was also a very good year from that point of view!

In my current position, PhD students "count towards" annual teaching hours (I think each PhD student is counted as 10 hours of teaching). This is quite a new change and has been helpful for me, as I have several PhD students. But I'm guessing this is not universal practice.

Interesting article.

I wonder if I'm just being really inefficient then? But I feel like I'm much more efficient than I used to be, and yet doing less in what I know is 42-45 hrs of actual work a week.

I do remember one point in my PhD I was working 98-hr weeks, and that is the most I have ever done. I did it during a field season, and it was definitely that much: I woke up around 5am, showered and got dressed, and was in the field by 6am. I ate breakfast in the field (granola bar) while taking data; I collated the data over lunch; analysed it in the afternoon, and then did extra things over dinner (I remember being given yet another task and thinking 'I'll do it over lunch, oh wait, no I do data over lunch; I'll do it over dinner, oh, wait, that's occupied too...'), and finally clocked out at 8pm - when I would read and/or watch TV before sleeping. So it was 14-hr days for 7-days a week. It only lasted 8 weeks, and was a massive drain. After returning to the 'normal' 10-hr days, 7 days a week, I finally collapsed a few months later and just took a week off. I remember my supervisors asking how I could still be tired from the field season, and tried to explain that I had had no rest. But they totally didn't get it - complete workaholics. I remember another PhD student who had the gumption, when one supervisor was bawling him out for having taking a week's holiday at Thanksgiving (US), Christmas, and Easter (new relationship; they did T-day at one family, Xmas at the other, then took time to themselves at Easter), with the argument that 'normal people' only got two weeks off a year (again, this was the US), he said "Normal people get weekends" and left. Apparently she didn't bring it up again.

I haven't read everything, but I have never worked that many hours. During my PhD the expectation was that you would work 9 to 5 and take plenty of holidays. Which I did. And everyone more or less did.

Now I work school hours + odd hours here or there if I need to - I'm on 60% contract. Seem to get everything done and papers and stuff, but not looking very good for promotions...

I think what this thread has taught me is to check out the working culture of any new dept I am considering applying to. I had wrongly assumed that RG unis would have a more reasonable workload because they have some administrators left, things work more times than not and they have fewer very weak students who need lots of hand holding and formative feedback to pass, as well as fewer resits. But it sounds like that really ain't so! Folks at RGs - what is the big time suck for you? Research? Grant applications? Committees? I would really love to know. I often feel like I will struggle to get to 'a better place' because my time is dominated by stuff which will do absolutely zero for my CV. But maybe they aren't better places if you are all expected to overwork on other things?

Higher ranked universities also tend to pay less: many people who are professors in newer universities wouldn't ever be professors in mine. I'm not sure I would move from a newer university to a RG university.

Big time sucks: teaching and administration. Very few administrators, particularly for research related activities. Increasing teaching load (particularly in places where student numbers have drastically increased). Graduate teaching necessary and required by UKRC PhD training but not included in workload.

There is an even better link within Kalidasa's article - it is called the 'seven year postdoc'. Excellent.

I lurk on academic threads but am gradually coming to the conclusion that I don't want to do a PhD (at age 40!) - maybe life really is too short?

I had noticed that disquisitiones! I was offered a position a while back one step down from where I am now and with a considerable pay cut. I just can't afford to do that so declined. They seemed REALLY surprised! The endless grind of very poor students really wears me down so I might have considered accepting if it had been commutable but it would have meant uprooting everyone and moving house. For lower pay and lower status - I would struggle to justify that even if I could afford it!

Really like that article MaybeDoctor. Thanks for flagging it up!

I'm reading this thread with some interest.
Let me qualify, I'm not an academic now, I run my own company, but I used to be an academic, working in stem - a field science.

I still work the same hours as most of you. As a self employed person, if I don't work I don't earn.
I have clients ringing and emailing during business hours, then a break for dinner and homework/ music practice supervision, then back to work, and sometimes coding well into the night.
I'm writing rather large reports every two weeks-(larger than my thesis in some cases) these are based on huge amounts of variable data we collect, crunch and analyse. I haven't had a paid holiday in 17 years, but I can and do take a day off once a week. I have three books on the go: a history book, a economics book, and I'm learning a new language.

The difference is not the the time I work, but my own agency and the feeling of control I have in my life. From what I'm reading, all of you have very little say in the management of your jobs. And you have to take responsibility for others over whom you have no control or input.

For sure I don't have tenure, or a gold plated pension, or even plans to retire, but I'm captain of my ship (as much as market forces allow). There's a huge reduction of stress in that.

This business is my fourth, and I'm about to start another start up, and yes I work all the hours, but I'm in charge of that. I train my clients when to ring me (and not to ring at 8am) to email me first, and see if we can sort them out before we waste spend time on the phone.
I've fired clients who pay late and take up too much time. I'm pretty ruthless. I've turned down jobs that don't pay enough, or if the client is faffing and indecisive.

I really don't know why you all don't go into business for yourselves.

Academic instruction is more and more online these days, and this makes sense, as we are all more mobile. No one really needs to physically go to university, not for longer than a year here and there. The field techniques I used were taught on residential blocks of two weeks. I taught experimental protocols over an intensive week. The rest of the time we really didn't need to see students.

For sure research needs to be done, but wouldn't it be better if it was funded commercially instead of the endless and demoralising cap-in-hand rounds of grant applications. It's not like you have blue sky funding anyway, to do as you wish, most of you are severely hampered in your research direction and freedoms by the grant criteria.

Why not set up companies and get commercial backing and have a fulfilling job, and more importantly a life as well! Teaching can be done online - lectures by subscription- or in short modular bursts, with students taking responsibility over their own learning.

I can't see universities surviving much longer into the future, TBH, and with your inhumane treatment, and lack of agency and stress associated with that as described above, maybe that's all for the best?

• Blue skies research is still funded, even in the UK. Astronomy, mathematics, fundamental science,... would not be funded commercially but are "fulfilling", fascinating and give many of us "a life".

• Online teaching doesn't work well - look at the recent reports of how poorly students in online high schools do. Particularly disastrously in my own subject.

• Many of us do need to work physically in a university in labs etc.

• Many of us do need intense contact with students; leaving them to self study doesn't give good outcomes.

• For many academics moving to other countries would be a preferable option to switching to commercial work. Other countries spend a much larger fraction of their GDP on research.

I'm glad you're happy with your own path and I would certainly encourage would-be academics to go into it with their eyes open, but for many of us research makes academia worth it. Even with the current shortages in money and REF/grant pressures, there is a lot of academic freedom for research in the UK. I do have commercial interests as a hobby but would never switch to doing this full time, even though I could radically increase my income by doing so.

And personally I find it hard to believe that (top) universities won't survive much longer. I don't say this from naivety but because online education (at least in my own fields) does not deliver.

I agree with disquisitiones.

Quite a lot of fundamental research have no immediate commercial value and will never be funded commercially. Just look at the example of what is used commonly now for online security. It's a culmination of hundreds of years of pure mathematical study, and nobody knew it was going to be quite so useful... The number theorist Hardy said "No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world." He would never get commercial funding...

As for no one needing to physically see me for academic instructions, that's what I've been trying to tell my students ...

So was there ever a golden age? Something along the lines of 'Educating Rita'? He fell down drunk in front of students and was rewarded with a sabbatical!

I think the point about lack of agency is a good one and think that bears out in general research about occupational stress. But I'm no lover of the free market and don't think that lots of small competing micro-academic providers are the answer - where is the dialogue, mentoring and collegiate stimulation? But look at today's IoE blog for a prediction that small, free-market HE institutions will try to cream off courses that are both popular and cheap to provide...

I take your points.

I know other academics in the uk who are quite hampered by their research funding, and their management, and it seems to me most would be better off striking out on their own.

I'm not in the uk btw, and know academics here who have started up campus incubator companies which seem to do very well indeed. Most of these are in medical devices, engineering and medical testing, so they would have a specialist product. A lot of them move off campus eventually with venture funding.

I understand there's not a lot you can do in the commercial field if you're in humanities, and teaching students how to think is a valuable contribution to society, even if they never go on to postgrad. level.

I hope that you all find some work/ life balance. Maybe get together with others and publish some research about your working hours and the impact on that on health and happiness and look at gender differences?
And lobby for a more humane schedule!

I was involved in a study years ago on why women left STEM after postgrad, and it was very illuminating- not long after I took part, I left academia as I wanted a life on my terms.

Good luck all.

There's not a lot you can do commercially in pure mathematics, or high-energy physics (unless you are Brian Cox), or any form of theoretical sciences either. But it is not to say that these fields of research will not produce successful technology further down the line. I think if we don't invest in these not-immediately-profitable fields one day we are going to run out of new ideas...

Anyway.

The golden age:

What would The Golden Age look like? Maybe it's not a bad exercise to list what we all would like to see. Let me start. For me:

1. Do the research you have a passion for.

2. Supervise/teach students who have a passion for learning.

3. 9 to 5 or earlier and then go home to play your piano/clarinet/basketball etc. :)

VenusRising - interesting post: I have a slightly different approach to my work than many of my colleagues, as I had a life before academia, working for myself, and I still have the understanding that if I can stand up more or less, I go to work - because that was what I did when I worked for myself. I wish I was remotely entrepreneurial, as I would indeed go back to being self-employed: but I don't want to return to consultancy for a variety of reasons, and options are a bit limited otherwise in my area.

And you are spot on about the removal of agency - I am fucked off in the extreme about having responsibility without power, and never being permitted to exercise my professional judgement :-D

Does anyone know what happened with the then ARM research on mothers in academia? I think it was supposed to cover three countries, possibly Canada, Aus, UK? It was about six years ago though I think, before ARM folded and became, hmmm, MIRCI? I was just reminded by Venus' post that I hadn't seen any papers from that study. Possibly because I wasn't looking though...