I'm an academic and I've dedicated 5 years of my life to getting here and DH wants me to leave my job....

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Just that really DH hates my job and wants me to leave. I have spent the last 3 years doing a PhD, which I completed early last year with no issues and was extremely lucky to walk straight into a permanent senior lectureship (like gold dust in my sector!). However the strain on universities now and what they expect from their staff is immense (or maybe it is just my institution?!). To do my job well (which is the only I way I want to work) I have to put in 50+ hours a week, often more, and continuously dart from stressful situation to stressful situation. I've seen a number of colleagues go off on long term stress and mental health problems, which sadly then increases the strain on the rest of the team. The thing is I love my job, I absolutely love it, I just don't like the amount of it I am supposed to do on a weekly basis.
Dh, quite rightly I feel, hates it, he feels it is impeding too much on our family time, quality of life and more than anything my emotional state - which impacts on me as a parent etc. He is extremely supportive at home and takes on 80% of the household stuff and children school runs etc. I've tried lowering my work load, seeking support from management etc and all to no avail. I'm expected to teach a ridiculous number of hours (with all the prep, assessment and marking that comes with that), oversee students well-being, provide students with one to one support, carry out high level research, generate income, publish high level academic articles, oh and of course write a book or two on the way.... Just not sure where to turn - stick it out and hope it gets easier, or go back to the career I had where I was on equal money, and closed my inbox down at 5pm each day, but I was unhappy!

Come on over to Academics' Corner, OP. Lots of us struggling with workload. The 'aim for good enough' advice is worth taking though.

I'm a STEM academic. I haven't had a day free for a year. Admittedly, weekend days may only be 30mins or so of necessary work, but it's a three hour round trip so I try to make it higher value than just doing the minimum.

My first couple of years post-PhD were frantic. I'm still no stranger to 12 hour days a couple of times a week, but it was relentless back then. Things DO get easier. Lectures take less time to freshen up than write new. You accumulate vast amounts of standardised work that can be recycled so things like funding applications don't take as long. You learn to make every presentation the exact same format so talks can be thrown together from any of the previous decade's lectures/talks. You get quicker at marking exams. You care less about reviewing the minutiae of papers for others (I used to take a few days to peer review a manuscript - I genuinely wanted to make them better. Fuck that.)

I have never had children though, so coming home at 9pm is not and won't ever be an issue.

It's true that there is likely to be an expectation that you do more than your contracted hours in any professional job, especially if you are still working your way up the career ladder. I am strict with when I work my 'extra hours'. I do Monday-Thursday longer days/evening work fairly regularly, Friday evening is very occasional and weekend work very rare. I often do a bit in the evening after the kids are in bed. But I do try not to work after 9pm as my productivity goes down dramatically, so I always have an hour to myself or with DH before bed. You'll struggle to do 68 hours over 4-5 days but if you could get it down to 10-12 hours a day over five days, then at least you could always have the weekend with your family. And agree with other posters, don't look at email outside of your working time, it can only lead to more stress. I have a rule not to look once I've finished work for the day (whether that's at 4:30pm or 9pm) and not at weekends unless there is something very specific I'm waiting for, which might happen once or twice a year.
You are not alone in this, me and many professional friends often discuss giving it all up and going to do a 'non-professional' job that you can walk away from at the end of the day.

Hahaha at the very long holidays. She's not a primary teacher where she, notionally, gets the school holidays off.

Can you look at staying in academia in a different role? I know it would be hard to give up a permanent contract, but it's not really permanent if you want to leave. Or even look at relocating overseas.

I feel for you.
The thing to remember is that you only have one life. Your children are only young once.

Your husband sounds like he is looking out for the best interests of you and your children (and himself, completely reasonably).

I think you ought to get yourself a blank notepad. Write the word "LIFEBOAT" on the front, and then use it as a way to look at alternatives.
Part time? Research only? Portfolio career? Something completely different? SAHP while your husband works full time? Both part time?

Can you start refusing to take on further projects until current ones are more manageable? As a senior person in a public sector job (NHS), I have learned that "No" is a complete sentence. I now no longer overload myself with things I have no chance of doing within a reasonable number of hours.

I agree that your hours are unreasonable. My suggestion would be to get a bit of union support and then meet with your line manager (or higher up) to discuss that fact that you wish to curtail your hours to meet your contractual agreement, in line with their family friendly policy (I'd be amazed if an academic institute in the UK doesn't have one).

They either agree (yay!) or they don't, in which case you will know that they intend to work you until you drop, and that they don't value their human assets. Would you really want to work there in these circumstances?

You say you love your job, but some of your replies on here imply that maybe you're kidding yourself a little.

Sorry, a bit of a stream of consciousness there, but hope it is useful.

PS: DON'T LOOK AT YOUR EMAILS OUTSIDE NORMAL OFFICE HOURS! This was the biggest life-changer for me.

Ooh, sorry big lie right at the start. I went on holiday in June

"long holidays" Ha! Yeah, that's a myth. No, academics usually work more over the holidays when there's no teaching.

And when you have MSc students doing Summer projects, it's really hard to find a slot of more than two weeks in a row.

The key thing to understand, sadly, is that it is impossible to do all the things academics are expected to do to a high standard. Even if you did nothing else, you still couldn't. So you may as well just decide on how much you're willing to work, do that, and focus on time management. Use a time tracking app and review ruthlessly: what did you do last week that actually would have been better replaced by something else? You won't have an effective manager, so you have to be your own. If you can't be happy doing this, then yes, you need a different career. Maybe politician, and help the rest of us?!

You must have very long holidays though? I am sure you are spending lots of time with your dc then? And dh?

^^

Echos hollow and bitter laugh

God this gets my goat - people who think academics have lovely long holidays. Yes, that's right, because all those books and journal articles just write themselves! And the research income generates itself too. It's amazing. I teach and prep and mark and run a programme and do all the associated admin all throughout the academic year and then breeze off to the tropics every summer and come back and a book has just written itself and there is a magic pot of money from the AHRC on my desk with a unicorn sitting next to it!

I don't open email until after lunch. Recommended by a university-led management course so I don't even feel guilty about it

Have you read Deep Work by Cal Newport. I think it would speak to you. He is an academic who wrote about how to get good work done and still have a life.

50 is fine, 68 is not.

I see both sides but I know how very difficult it is to get the job you have got, it is a real achievement, it would be a shame to have to walk away!

My dh works 70 hours a week, I work close to 40 and sometimes more. It is not unusual many professions.
If you are finding your hours are too long, then cut them back or change your job. I find the posts on here extraordinary. There are thousands of jobs that are far more stressful and demanding than this one!!!!

Some of the posts are ridiculous.

I think, as others have said, this is climbing the mountain to get to a place where you are delivering the same lectures again as opposed to writing new ones. There may also be some merit in looking at your time management/approach to productive time that might help. And, as others have said, being excellent in everything is impossible. Choose your battles wisely.

But it should be noted that where the positions are reversed, these threads contain a lot of advice that the man should just get another job, that he cares more for his career than his family and that its unfair that everything at home is not 50/50. So well done on not getting that advice (which seems a tad hypocritical to me).

The first few years are really tough! Partly because you're having to write things like teaching from scratch, partly because you're still learning how to do the job and getting faster at it.

I do think there is a colossal difference these days between workloads and expectations in different departments, which makes it very difficult to offer advice. In some places, management is still pretty light-touch and it's possible to exercise more discretion about certain aspects of the job. For example, in some places it might be possible not to respond to emails rapidly; in others this will be a disciplinary issue and you will face action if you are repeatedly not responding within 24 hours. In some places, lazy senior staff are allowed to palm off huge amounts of admin and responsibility to junior staff, in others workloads are more equitably divided. I guess the best advice I can give is to look at the highly specific pressures and circumstances of your own department and work out what you can let go a little. Triage your workload into stuff that needs to be done at 100% effort, stuff that needs to be done at 70% and stuff where 50% is enough, and to allocate time commensurately - and, most importantly BE SMART about it. It's not a matter of personal choice, it's a matter of how you operate within the institutional and organisational culture of your institution, which is about what others value as well as about what you think is important. (And be prepared to challenge if you work in one of those organisations where senir staff aren't pulling their weight).

My friend who is the Dean of a faculty at a RG university. I asked him how he copes, and he said "You just get really, really good at doing the minimum, and doing it quickly".

I find the posts on here extraordinary. There are thousands of jobs that are far more stressful and demanding than this one!!!!

How is this helpful to OP? Yes, she's not working down a coal mine, but she is doing something she finds stressful and demanding, and telling her that she's not allowed to feel that way because some people have it worse is both unproductive and nasty.

God this gets my goat - people who think academics have lovely long holidays. Yes, that's right, because all those books and journal articles just write themselves

Well, I find some people just assume that certain things are not part of the job. I'm in the middle of writing a (academic) book and family and friends often just assume that it's a little hobby rather than part of my job, e.g. 'Are you working? Oh you're writing your book? Ah well it's good that you are taking a little break!' 🔪

Be cautious about going part time. The people I know who've done it have dropped to 0.6, and ended up spending their two days 'off' working anyway to catch up, but now on a reduced salary. And plenty of management conveniently forget you are on a pt contract and apply the same expectations anyway. Personally I would say stick with it, but enforce boundaries much more strongly.

Email: the advice I got was to look at it twice a day for a set amount of time, and then close it down so you don't have the stress of pinging new messages all the time. Don't look at weekends. Everyone will have to adjust.

Your husband has a point, but so do you. Your bosses are being very unreasonable and it's not worth your health to try and meet their unreasonable expectations. I'd like to suggest a middle ground and ease your own workload.

For starters: Turn off the email notifications. Restrict your replies to five sentences each and with each email consider if it even needs a reply at all. Ruthlessly delete anything that could be considered as fluff from inbox. Devote only an hour a day to emails and don't look at them when you are not in the office. Excessive emailing is a known source of stress. Plus, tasks that are constantly interrupted take longer to complete, which makes you less productive.

Furthermore, cut out any tasks you can get away with. I suggest you stop overseeing students and only focus on the lectures and your research. Maybe even stop giving exams and grade students based on class participation and explain to the students why. And try not to do any work from home anymore. You need your rest and I am sure you'd be sorry to miss out on any family time too. Kids grow up so fast and all.

In all cases start doing some hardcore prioritizing and if your bosses don't like it, tell them why it's necessary and remind them how many of your coworkers were at home with a burnout last year.

I think I should also add, in relation to those posters who are focusing solely on the hours, that this is not the sole or even the main pressure. Academia is unusual because of the huge variety of the work - there are very few professions where one is expected to be a world-class researcher, a nationally-good teacher, a project leader and an expert manager too -as well as being responsible for the pastoral care of students. The combination of those very different kinds of labour is particularly challenging at a mental and emotional level. I've worked at Director level in the public sector in a highly stressful, nationally-high profile environment with very long hours, and early career academia I find more challenging.

It's really hard that you love the job but it's unsustainable in the current form. Is there no way you can reduce hours at all?

My dh has a PhD but decided not to stay in academia, partly because he knew he wanted a family life and it wasn't really compatable. I must say i would be very upset and frustrated if my dh was working those hours and I had to do 80% of housework and childcare. It does sound like you are putting your work before your family although I can see why this is unavoidable.

Furthermore, cut out any tasks you can get away with. I suggest you stop overseeing students and only focus on the lectures and your research. Maybe even stop giving exams and grade students based on class participation and explain to the students why.

I know this is meant well, but it's wildly unrealistic. She can't stop seeing her pastoral students, it's her job (and it would be really irresponsible to just dump them with no pastoral tutor at all). And changing the assessment of her modules will be impossible at this stage, and would cause a riot if she did somehow manage it.

My dh is a professor and he doesn't ever answer emails straightaway. He always leave them a few days. (Yes, I know he is lucky there are no repercussions for him for this and his colleagues probably hate it but he says that 50% of the problems have sorted themselves out by then!)

Lots of good advice here OP. Hope that you get time to read it Reading with interest - need to make some serious life changes myself