Something to consider

Well, for me at least. Someone pointed me to Diana Senechal's piece on Calling an End to the Day (specifically, the teaching day). She wrote it, apparently, in response to another piece (linked in her article) suggesting the idea of a "24 hour school day" to accommodate kids with odd family schedules, nontraditional learners, and the such.

And while I'm not so terribly opposed to the idea of night school, or round-the-clock school, or whatever, PROVIDED the people teaching and the support staff (you gotta have secretaries and people like campus security available as long as campus is open) are willing to do it....I wouldn't be. I wouldn't want a schedule where my daytime was night and my nighttime was day. (There is also some evidence that that kind of inverted shiftwork may be bad for people; there's some evidence, for example, that it raises one's risk of certain cancers, possibly because of hormonal weirdness).

But I see the ads on television for online schools, and they make the idea so seductive: go to "class" in your pajamas. Tailor your schedule to your life. Professors are available when you are! (really? At 2 am? I'd hate working somewhere that expected me to hold "office hours" at that hour).

And Senechal makes a good point, I think:work is slowly sprawling over into our off-work life. How many people carry a "work" cell phone, so they can be reached at any hour? I get that in some careers that's a trade off for higher pay or flexible hours, but I think we need to ask what we're losing by requiring some people to be available 24/7, and by promoting this expectation that in some fields, you are never 'away' from work. (Even world leaders golf. Or sail. Or do something...)

Describing the run-up to her spring break, Senechal notes: "I had neglected meals, dental work, basic home repairs, correspondence, friends, family, musical instruments, and book upon book that I hadn’t had time to read." I guess I don't work as long and hard as she does, but yeah, there have been times I've put off home repairs (or just plain cleaning the place up) in favor of churning out the next exam or reading yet another journal article. Or I've had some little health weirdness that I tried to ignore until it either got really dire, or until I was on break. And there are weeks where, if I didn't feel like I "had" to practice to prepare for my lesson, I wouldn't touch the piano.

And she notes that "you can end up with nothing but school." How many times on here have I whinged about "I really should be doing more research" or "I really should be over doing prepwork" or "I should get to that grading NOW." It's good to be diligent but I do find it's hard not to let the go-go-go atmosphere, the push to always be achieving, get to the point where I feel bad if I'm NOT involved with work. A lot of times while sewing on a quilt top (on a Sunday afternoon, which is "supposed" to be my Sabbath), I start feeling like, "You really would be better off working on research."

As I said earlier today, I often feel bad because I'm not doing any Big Things: my research is small, and I'm slow to try to publish it (part of that is time constraints; teaching 3/3 or 4/3 eats up a lot of time, giving students the attention they need eats up a lot of time, committeework eats up a lot of time). But even if I had more time (or made more time) for research, I don't know that I would do Big Things. My school is small, our resources limited. And as I said, I'm not a super-genius when it comes to coming up with research ideas. (And some of the cooler ideas I have are not implementable, because of time or facility constraints).

But, I don't know. It came back home to me today when someone came to me while I was going through my soil samples trying to extract invertebrates, and they needed me (apparently) RIGHT THEN and because I said, "Can you give me 10 minutes to finish this sample up, and then come back?" they were unhappy and went away un-helped. (And I am praying they don't go to an administrator and complain, which then leads to the dictum of No Research During Office Hours! Just Sit In Your Office And Wait For Students!)

I've said before I'd make a poor mother because I don't deal well with being needed RIGHT THAT MINUTE - and I know kids can be like that, you can be going in to the bathroom to take a much-needed pee, but then they NEED you so you have to wait another 15 minutes. Or bring them in with you. Or something. I get overwhelmed when there are too many demands on my time.

And, I don't know where I'm going with this, other than the idea that work/life balance is hard. If I go too far to the work side, I start to get sad and frayed and I freak out over every little thing because my life is nothing but school and anything that changes or goes wrong at school means my life as I know it will never be the same, or everything about my life is wrong. But if I go too far to the life side, I start to feel guilty that I'm slacking off. But I realize on some level that I'm not doing the Big Things in part because I'm unwilling to totally give up on the little things (like knitting, and piano, and doing stuff at church, and maybe having a garden this year....)