My students seem to think that I get the whole summer off. Since they leave for a few months, the school must surely shut down in their absence, right?
The faculty seem divided when it comes to summer work. Since our salary is for nine months, some feel that they shouldn't work in the summer (actually, they refuse to work in the summer). Others view the summer as the only time to move forward on research, and so they work even if they do not have a summer stipend.
I fall in the latter category. My salary is more than enough to live on all year (we're paid in 12 installments, after all). If I don't work in the summer, I won't have enough research done by the time I go up for tenure. That is how it works at most undergrad institutions. Is it that different in the non-sciences?
What about you? Do you work when you technically aren't paid?
7 comments:
I'm working essentially full time this summer. But I do enjoy longer lunch breaks and will take a 2-week vacation. Not working over the summer is not an option when you have a lab to run.
Same as Anon 9:53
I took no vacation while on tenure track though, but now I do take between 10 days and 2 weeks every summer. There's a ton of work to do, and all the interns and undergrads on top of my regular group members, so summers do get crazy...
This is my first year on tenure-track and I'm planning on having almost 4 months of blissful, uninterrupted vacations. Long summer break is the best thing about our profession, so I would never give that up. If I get bored with doing nothing, I might do some research. Or not. I feel that I have done a lot of research during the year, so everything else is icing on the cake.
I'm in Humanities, though, so there is no lab to run. :-)
I would recommend trying to block out some time (might be a solid couple of weeks, might be a series of long weekends) which is Officially Vacation, just so that you are focused on doing fun stuff on those days, and will feel come the autumn (which will come far too fast!) that you did actually have a break as well as getting some research done. Often I do more in 4 days knowing I have a long weekend planned than I do in 5-plus-the-weekend when I mess around and feel like it's not fair I'm working in the summer...
To me, not getting paid during the summer means the school can't ask me to do anything. No service, not really required to answer emails from students, can't expect us to be in town, etc. It's a huge benefit not to be paid.
But I would never correlate that to not-working at all. When else would research & writing happen?
I have a colleague who always described his summer as being "unemployed", although he couldn't collect unemployment!
I don't have to do research, so I spend part of my summer recharging my batteries and thinking about what I will change in the fall. I teach a minimal load in the summer, more for the change of pace than the money.
I'm not faculty, however I am housed within the faculty department at our college. It is interesting to see the very different mind set of faculty regarding summer work. The students tend to catch on as well.
I often work when I'm not getting paid. Unfortunately student emergencies do not typically happen 9-5 Monday-Friday. There are many staff that would look the other way, however I trudge on. Though I do need personal time to recharge, I cannot imagine not prepping for future work, answering emails (particularly the urgent ones), or helping a student organize a project, application, etc.
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