Chaos Descends

School has begun. I teach two (undergraduate) classes, take two (graduate) classes, and grade papers for an hourly wage on the side. Lots of busy. I've decided that what kills me about academia is the summer and the regular (and rather lengthy breaks): All that time off is forever an unfulfilled promise. You begin teaching thinking you'll have such a great schedule with big, huge breaks on holidays and during the summer, but this never turns out to be the case.

The cycle begins every August when you wake up and realize that the summer is almost over. You panic and try to pack as much in to the final weeks off as possible, which usually means you have to catch up on mundane chores like yardwork or whatever that you've put off all summer. This means you don't really prepare well for the fall (by spending more time developing your syllabi and lesson plans, or by reading ahead for the classes you'll be taking). Since you start a bit behind, work begins piling up quickly and you just as quickly start mentally scheduling fall break (Thanksgiving) as a catch-up time. Work through fall break, taking a day (maybe two) to lay in front of the tv and let your brain have a bit of a breather. Then bam! The semester's over, it's winter break (Christmas), and you've postponed so much over the course of the semester that you spend half or more of the "break" finishing up a paper that you had to ask for an extension on, so that again you start the spring semester behind and without adequately preparing lessons and materials for the classes you're going to teach and take, which means you're behind when spring break rolls around so you work through that, too, and when May finally comes and summer is supposed to begin, you probably have a paper (or by this time, two) dragging into June, and as soon as you finish that (or while you're finishing it) you're frantically looking for some sort of summer income to make it through the lean months and if you're lucky you find some kind of teaching- or editing-related gig that provides you (at most) something like $1000/mo. during summer, meaning you still can't really take any breaks because you have to work and because you can't afford to travel or indulge in any extras, and then it's late August and fall semester is starting and you haven't had the time or energy to prepare your lessons and class materials and....

....and it all begins again.

The bottom line is this: You get less vacation as an academic, not more. (And this isn't even getting into the fact that you never get a free weekend since weekends are filled with grading and class prep and catching up on the reading you fell behind on during the week.)

Don't you wish you could be a college English graduate student and instructor!? Good times, man. Goooood times.

(Of course, some people love the academic life, and thrive in it, and to them I say "More power to you." However, if you're thinking of applying to graduate school in the Humanities, let me humbly suggest that you not make the same mistakes I made and ignore all advice along the lines of the above about how it's often not all it's cracked up to be. One thing I've definitely learned in the past three years is that sometimes we should listen to the people who have gone down the road before us. Perhaps that's why I've been so obsessed with finding opinions and information about law school and law before jumping in with both feet...)

Posted August 29, 2002 09:42 PM | life generally