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.
