just to try to make something clear

although it has become something of a cliché among academics to joke about (non-academic) people thinking we have the summer off--lazing about drinking margaritas and watching movies and what have you--i nevertheless continue to catch wind of people still actually thinking that this is true, that we are on vacation during the summer. of course, i hear this from people who have directly and repeatedly been told otherwise, but in any case it bears writing down one more time. (relatedly, i continue to catch wind of people thinking that graduate school is only an exercise in endurance--that in graduate school, you don't actually have to try anything or learn anything. perhaps another post.) if you're reading this, spread the word!

while i cannot deny that this job rules for its flexibility and allowance for creativity, to think i am on vacation during the summer (unless i am on vacation) is laughable. being a college professor is not being a teacher in the way people might think of being a teacher. on any typical summer day, i have several emails to respond to from administration or colleagues, and one or two (more or less formal) documents to work on: meeting minutes or forms related to curricular development, or course descriptions or syllabi or advertisements for speakers, etc., etc. (and multiply this times twenty during the school year.) none of this is "difficult," but it is somewhat time-consuming.

and because we are not seen as strictly "teachers," although teaching is certainly a major portion of what we do, we must also conduct research and publish as well as perform service to the university. and you know what? research and writing is fucking hard. and also tedious. (service tends to be just the latter.) you don't just get to sit down and type what you're thinking, from beginning to end, send it off and look for it in print soon thereafter. you have to write bits and pieces, scattered all over the place, rearranging and throwing out tens of thousands of words. you have to pore over bibliographies to make sure they are formatted correctly, and you have to write and re-write and re-write again introductions and conclusions and make sure all word choices and paragraphs in between contribute to one overall argument. you have to constantly check to see if what you're doing fits in with or contributes to other ongoing scholarly conversations. etc., etc., etc. once you get rejected (if you're me), you have to figure out which journal to try next, and how to make your article fit in there.) now again: this can be accomplished after sleeping till noon and in one's jammies, but i grow a wee bit weary of people who think that academics are just sort of spoiled and only have to "work" two days a week, september to june.

don't get me wrong, i'm not complaining, just trying to point out something that has been pointed out millions of times before, that even though you can't personally imagine it, academics do actually work outside those 4 hours a week in the classroom. of course and nevertheless, people persevere in believing what they want to believe. just needed to get it off my chest. in the next installment: how graduate school is different than just sitting in one place for six years.