Science and Society
Public Perceptions
Intelligent Design
Academic Culture
Recently an undergraduate asked about managing work-life balance as a scientist, and how they had heard that so many faculty in academia struggle with this. My answer was, "balance"? Later I was thinking some more about this. Perhaps we are self selecting for people in academia who do not manage work-life balance well. They throw too much of their time and energies into work; this may be the kind of people that do well in school, college, and get into grad. school, then are successful publishing, getting grants, and teaching classes? We typically end up putting much more than 40 hours a week into our jobs.
When I talk to people outside of academia about what my job is like they are often confused by it. On top of teaching and internal administration, which is a full time job itself, I am required to (and want to) do research, but I have to find my own outside funding for this. Once I do this I have to pay a journal to publish a paper of the research results. This is the same journal that I volunteer reviewing other papers for. Then the university library has to pay a subscription in order to access the paper from the journal describing my research results.
From a non-academic perspective: Imagine working at a factory. You are a paid worker. Most of your time is spent training other (unpaid) workers and taking care of office paperwork. However, you have to work overtime to produce pens, with new designs, or you will be fired. You actually like making the new designs; it is part of your job that you most enjoy; however, this does not mean that you can choose not to do it and keep your job. You have to find a way to pay for the materials and tools to make the pens from funds outside of the company; the company will not pay for this. Then you pay an office store, from the funds you secured, to sell the pens. You also volunteer some of your time to help stock the store with other office supplies. In order to continue doing paperwork your company has to buy pens, including some of the pens you made, from the office store. The funds for this come from the unpaid workers who have to pay for their training. However, most of the funds from the workers goes to pay for other things at the company, including the salaries of people that do not train workers or make pens. (This is an unfair and oversimplified comparison, especially in how students and teaching is framed, but it might help people in academia understand the confusion that some people have about our jobs.)
