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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
