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drmcr — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:48:01 -0500

My experience is that the level of humanity in my workplace is related directly to the way I choose to establish boundaries for myself and the choices I've made on who I work with (or for, earlier in my career). For example, when I was getting my postdoc set up, I had a great fellowship offer from a prestigious immunology lab to work there for 2 years. In the final interview, however, the PI, a single male, said to me, "Well, please tell me you're not going to do something stupid to srew up your career like have kids, okay?". Needless to say, I did not tell him that, and although it was a tough call, I said no to the fellowship, even though I lost the opportunity to work with a guy who'd had 4 Science papers in the prior year. The decision was, frankly a no-brainer, but given my expecations for my scientific career, it was a watershed moment for me.

I recently blogged about this issue of balance in two posts on my own blog. Please check them out and lets start a larger conversation about this issue- it still affects me to this day!!

http://professorandparent.blogspot.com/2008/07/thinking-gray-about-boundaries.html

http://professorandparent.blogspot.com/2008/06/myth-of-balance.html

Mary Coussons-Read, Ph.D.

http://professorandparent.blogspot.com/

http://www.powerfulmindcoaching.com/

Research and education careers and the mythical 40-hour workweek

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:46:48 -0500

In many ways, I'm one of the lucky Ph.D.s: I may not have a tenure-track job or the status that comes with it, but I do work (mostly) 8 to 5, week after week. It's funny, because the reason I went back to school is because I couldn't stand 40-hour workweeks--too boring, too much thumb-twiddling in entry-level jobs. I longed for the flexible schedule that came with pursuing a life of the mind--even if that meant working more than 40 hours a week.

Fast forward to motherhood. I turned in my dissertation the day after my toddler turned one year old. Three months later I gave up adjunct teaching full-time in favor of a staff job that offered more stability, a better salary, and far fewer papers to grade. No more staying up into the wee hours grading papers or fielding dozens of e-mails from students the weekend before their papers are due. I love my 40-hour week because my evenings and weekends are, for the most part, mine to spend with my family and friends. I tell my grad student friends (and the occasional new assistant professor who isn't sure what she's gotten herself into) that a staff job is actually quite nice, but they nod and think I'm just trying to make lemonade from the lemons the craptastic academic job market has handed me.

But not everyone in academia--or in K-12 education--is so lucky. My parents taught high school, and they were burdened with loads of homework, from course prep to paper grading to filling out Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for special-education students. In the humanities, it's easy to fall into the trap of always having to read another book, to work up another paper for publication, to prep extra hours for that class you teach. In the sciences, it's another matter entirely: hours in the lab and field add up quickly, and while humanities folks tend to work alone, in the sciences there's pressure to put in face time with your lab mates and other colleagues.

Several science bloggers recently weighed in on the mythical 40-hour workweek.

Mad Hatter points out that she has never worked a standard 40-hour week, then asks who does:

So who are the people working 40-hour weeks? The only people I know who work those hours are secretaries, clerks, and some lab techs. My labmate, D, knows some people in his neighborhood who work 40-hour weeks in mostly low-paying labor-intensive jobs. Between the two of us and another labmate, we couldn't come up with a single job that only requires 40 hours a week that any of us would find intellectually satisfying and would want to have.

Granted, the three of us are comprised of one PhD and two MD/PhDs...probably not your average population. And one could argue that all of my friends are non-representative as well because I've preferentially associated myself with other Type A workaholics. But I have to say I'm extremely skeptical of the existence of jobs that are intellectually challenging and that pay decently, in which someone could work 40 hours a week and still be competitive. And the reason, of course, is because intellectually challenging, decent-paying jobs attract people who are ambitious and driven.

Wouldn't it be great to be ambitious, driven, in love with your work--and still only work 40 hours a week? Arbitrista asks a variety of this question in the comments to Mad Hatter's post, which led to this exchange:

Arbitrista: I just wish we could re-structure the workplace so that we weren't all trapped in this prisoner's dilemma, where everyone thinks they have to work more than 40 hours a week. Working more than that just seems unhealthy, but we all end up being forced to do it anyway. I mean really - what's going to happen with the rest of one's life when all there is is work?

Mad Hatter: I agree, but I don't really see how that restructuring can be effected unless we create a system in which there are no avenues for advancement and there is 100% job security. Because as long as there is incentive for people to work harder, some people will. And everyone else will feel the pressure, real or imagined, to keep pace. The problem is that such a system will end up populated with unmotivated people who don't care about their work, which isn't good either.

In the same comments thread, Arduous asks the question that was always on my mind in my former, thumb-twiddling jobs:

I wish I worked 40 hours a week! But one of my biggest beefs is that after 8 hours, most people start becoming way less productive. And I'm an efficient worker so I can finish in 6 hours what takes others 8. So it's frustrating to me that then I have to stay 9-10 hours to "look good."

EcoGeoFemme laments the ambiguous expectations about academic hours:

It’s different in a university setting because people are off doing all sorts of things that make them absent from the office/lab. Students are teaching or taking classes, faculty are teaching or in meetings. This makes it easy for people to breeze in and out with little accountability for their time. I have no doubt that many academics work an obscene number of hours. But I also suspect that many students (and faculty for that matter) would be surprised by how little they work if they actually clocked their time spent really working.

The tricky thing is that students don’t really have to work any set number of hours. Their TA or RA is probably for 50% time, which is pretty unclear since they are obviously expected to work more than that. Nobody tells incoming students how much they should work, so some treat it like undergrad, showing up for class and doing everything else at home. Others, like me, treat it like a job, which may inhibit their progress. And of course, work hours are a central source of conflict in many student – advisor relationships.

Just one more thing that new academics are stuck learning for themselves. How many problems could be prevented or solved by just telling people what they need to know?

ScienceGirl says she couldn't--and doesn't want to--keep up with the long hours:

But even with all the opportunities in the world to apply my curiosity, here I am, a disgruntled grad student. Why? Because I have let myself to get convinced that there is only one way to stay on my career path: make my work the center of my life. I watch people that devote every waking minute to work; people that think that having any other commitment in life means that you are not serious about your work. Talking about non-work reveals your lack of commitment, and thus is frowned upon. Leaving work at 5 involves an apology and an excuse. Going to bed on time and without guilt means you are a slacker.

I followed the rules, and I burned out.

In another post, Mad Hatter explains what keeps pulling her back into the lab: competition. She writes,

But efficiency can only get one so far. An experiment I often perform is started on Day 0, must be manipulated again on Days 3 and 6, and must be analyzed on Day 7. If I were to never work on weekends, I would only be able to do two of these assays a week, whereas someone who is willing to work on weekends can start seven of these a week. Even if we work equally efficiently, that person would still beat me to publishing the results and, by extrapolation, out-compete me for jobs and funding.

This is the crux of the matter: long work hours are driven not by excessive workloads per se, but by competition amongst scientists for limited resources.

[...]

One could also choose to work in positions that are less demanding, as Propter Doc suggests. There is great variance in work hours between labs, departments, and institutions, but there's a catch: places that are less demanding also tend to be less highly-ranked. And there is definitely a "pedigree effect," based on the prestige of one's PI or institution, that influences one's chances of getting grants funded, even at the postdoctoral level. At the faculty level, working at less highly-ranked institutions will affect one's ability to attract high-quality graduate students and postdocs, which in turn affects one's productivity and ability to get funding.

Jennie writes about the blurring of home and work that comes with long days, and particularly if one's partner is also an academic:

My husband became more focused when he wrote and I became more distance. He became the wake-up-police. We would commonly work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. At first I enjoyed the new separation of work and home, since I no longer took work home. But then the line started to blur between work at home. We would call our dept. home and our home work. I started not working so well in my office since I felt trapped there.

Since, in theory, academics are supposed to be pursuing things that interest them, it's very easy for work and home lives to become blurred. You socialize with other academics, who may want to talk shop. Your leisure reading might be academic or scientific journals, or the latest book from your favorite university press. (Doesn't everyone have a favorite university press?)

ScienceWoman admits to feeling a twinge of guilt for leaving her daughter, Minnow, in daycare over spring break so that she can get some work done, but then reflects:

I prefer to think of my working spring break as one of the few times a mommy-profs gets a chance to catch up with their childless colleagues. I hope they are all staggering around drunk and not accomplishing anything. It might level the playing field.

The problem, I think, is that the people overseeing the research in labs often expect their grad students and postdocs to work "after hours" (whatever that means in an academic context), on weekends, and even over break. In a comment on a post by Amanda at A Lady Scientist, Academic shares this anecdote:

I remember sending an email to my advisor at 1000p from the lab on night because I was trying to get some code running. He replied AND he said that he was glad SOMEONE was in the lab! Apparently he thought that all graduate students should be married to their research.

What's the solution? Would it help if the people running labs were women who are also balancing the demands of marriage and childrearing? If so, how do these women secure those positions? And when women are in positions of power, are they really kinder, gentler leaders? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the first generation of women scientists to secure tenured research positions were put through a trial by fire--and some of them put their own women grad students and postdocs through the same trials in order to "toughen them up."

What are your thoughts? Is your workplace humane? Do you work reasonable hours?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.

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Research and education careers and the mythical 40-hour workweek