Student vs Employee Part 2: Work Hours

One of the perks of an academic job is the flexible schedule. That creates ambiguity for students, who may not know the expectations for grad student time. It seems that many advisors are reluctant to directly address the questions: how should a grad student define her/his work schedule? How much work is expected? Do they get vacation time? Sick days? Comp time?

Typically, if you have a job at an organization as large as a university, the HR department controls your compensation, including schedule and fringe benefits (at least I think that’s how it works since I’ve never had a regular job!). But grad students fall through the cracks and it can be confusing.

As I’ve said before, I spend most of my time at a place outside the university, so I work among people who have regular 40-hour work weeks. I feel like an ass if I’m not there approximately when they are even though my status and compensation are totally different. So I work 40 hours/week plus some weekends and figure I’ve done my duty*. I figure I can take 2-3 weeks vacation each year (including the winter holiday break but not the holidays themselves) and if I want more than that, I need to make up the time by working nights and weekends. Actually, I probably work enough beyond my regular 40 hours to make up at least part of those 2-3 weeks without tracking it. I do not log sick days, but I don’t take many of those.

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?

*This is largely to deal with guilt about not working all hours, i.e. if I work hard during normal hours, any extra time is bonus.

Oops, brain fart!

I forgot to call out the March anniversary edition of Scientiae. If you haven't yet, go check it out at Rants of a Feminist Engineer. Skookumchick did a bang-up job compiling the carnival!

NYR February Review

Another month has breezed by; it's time to check in on my New Years' Resolutions.

Project Efficiency has gone downhill. I haven't been writing daily goals, which is the centerpiece of the program. I have also been checking my bloggy email and maybe sometimes peeking at bloglines during work. On the other hand, there hasn't been a lot of fake working. I think I can be proud of that. I'm optimistic about March after reading Silvia's book and getting Slimtimer. So my goals for March are to get in the habit of actually using Slimtimer regularly while establishing a writing routine.

Money went pretty well in February. In addition to the normal big-for-my-income sum that gets automatically transferred to my ING savings each month, I had a little bit leftover on the 29th to add to the kitty. Having two international trips planned really motivates me to save. In other news, Psycgirl and I are thinking about starting a multi-author blog (similar to the Active Academic ) to discuss all manner of money issues that academics have. Anyone interested in that?

We cooked most of our dinners, but there was more pizza than there should have been. Oh well, it was yummy.

Work has been medium. I made some more progress on Chapter 1 paper and discussed what I have so far with both advisers. There's still a lot to do though. There was a little progress for Chapter 2 as well, as I had to complete the final laboratory analyses on one chunk of samples and partially work up the data for a conference abstract. My goal for March is to finish a complete, decent draft of the Chapter 1 paper.

Overall, February was medium. I'm hopeful that the longer days of spring will revitalize me. But, who am I kidding? It won't be spring around here for another two months. I guess I may as well be working!

Writing a Lot

Yesterday, I went to this very cool new coffee shop around the corner and read Paul J Silvia's How to Write a Lot in two hours and ten minutes. Loved it. The book basically explains how to pull your thumb out and get your writing done by sticking to a schedule. Other bloggers have reviewed the book more thoroughly, so I won't do that here. I will say that my favorite aspect of Silvia's advice is that if you have a writing schedule and stick to it, there should never be any guilt or anxiety attached to writing and you won't feel like you should be writing in your free time. This is my kind of advice.

I usually get to work between 7:45 and 8:15. Other people in the lab roll in between 9:15 and 10:30. Typically, when I get to work the first thing I do is check my email while eating a portable breakfast (granola bar or english muffin). I also go through journal TOCs and download relevant articles. I could, however, easily schedule my writing time for 8 to 9:30 or 10 am. I could get to work and start writing right away, saving my email stuff for after writing time. I could keep my door closed during this time for extra focus, although few of my coworkers would be there to interrupt me at that time anyway. Plus, I would have the whole rest of the day for lab work. That would relieve the daily dilemma about whether to do labwork or writing.

Silvia also recommends a way to keep track of progress using a spreadsheet (not particularly novel but helpful nonetheless), which is cool since I was wondering about that recently.

I can't wait to get started with the new system. I think it will mesh well with my new work timer.

A monster in my midst

I am quite certain that there are no beavers around here.

What the hell is eating this tree? Squirrels? Gremlins?

New attitude (for now)

I'm sick of The Race. I'm both irritated and bored by the rush to finish projects and write papers and not get scooped (which almost never happens in my field anyway) and all the rest of it. I want to just relax and enjoy what I'm doing. If I do it right, then presentations and papers should come naturally as part of the process.

I want to do science because it’s interesting and fun and valuable. There are lots of other jobs I could be doing that would get me more money with less education. If science isn't fun or interesting, then there's little point in doing it for me. Sure, there's the benefit scientists provides society. But I feel like I could do as much or more good in another profession. It would just be a very different sort of good.

The other day, my carpool buddy was fretting about some deadline that he didn't think he could meet. Ecogeoman and I are constantly doing the same, both for external deadlines and the ones we set ourselves for motivation. But I suddenly realized how arbitrary our deadlines are. No one is going to die on an operating table or starve in the immediate future if we don't meet our deadlines.* My research is very important, but not it’s just not that urgent.

That thought brought on a welcome sense of relaxation. I have been thinking about how all this worrying about meeting goals takes mental energy away from actually doing the work. I want to focus on the parts of my job that are fun and interesting. I'm tired of spinning my wheels, planning and replanning my future, both immediate and distant. I need a break from all the fuss to just do my work and enjoy it for what it is rather than doing to meet an arbitrary deadline or because it's good for my career. I want to do it because it's good for science. My career will follow.

I hope that this change of attitude will provide some renewal of my motivation. But rather than renewing my fortitude to meet an arbitrary goal, I hope to renew my excitement about my research, and that’s all.

*I know some of you work in fields where this might be the case.
scientiae-carnival

Type A timesheet

We got another winter storm last night into this morning, so I worked from home until noon. I'm usually not very successful working from home because I goof off too much. I really want to be able to work at home sometimes (that's work, not "work"). And I want to be able to plan to do so with the confidence that I will actually get something done. So today I signed up with Slimtimer.com after seeing Dr. Shellie's comment on one of Saxifraga's posts, along with references to similar programs on other blogs. It's a website that lets you track how much time you spend doing particular tasks. You can add tags in order to group tasks by topic. I think it's possible to download daily or weekly logs of your activity. Good for seeing how you really spend your time.

I only used it for a few hours this morning, but seeing the clock ticking away helped keep me on track. I haven't logged enough hours to try out some of the features, but I bet that my totally anal retentive, structure loving personality will thrive on this sort of rigidity. Bring it on!