Happy Woman Professor

Susan says that today is "Happy Woman Professor Day." Cole and I are sort of both woman professors (inasmuch as Cole is sort of a woman and I am sort of a professor), so I thought I'd tell you about some of the things that make us happy about it.

I have already written here about some of the things I don't like about my career field, but honestly, most of my complaints could pretty much be made about any highly skilled, professional field a woman might find herself in, from medical doctoring to lawyering to rocket science-ing. It's the nature of a patriarchal and sometimes even misogynist society and work world.

But I love a lot of things about academia as a career, in spite of the fact that I have mostly stepped off the professional track and plan to be a part-timer and freelancer for an undetermined time. In fact, the ability to step back from the higher stakes, higher rewards but also higher stress path and still retain a semblance of professional identity and satisfaction is one of the things I like about my chosen field. Do I wish adjuncting was paid more equitably? Sure. I wish it offered access to benefits like health care and retirement too. But again, those tend to be issues with part-time work in general and are not specific to academia.

I like that I can teach a bit—currently my goal is one class per semester in person at Cole's U. and the occasional online job I was doing last year—write a bit, publish a bit, converse intelligently with people in my field and supplement our family income, all while mostly remaining a barefoot SAHM.

I don't like to speak too much for Cole around here, as this is my blog and Cole doesn't blog here or anywhere else, but I will add a few positives as I see it, of being a full-timer like her.

For one thing, she certainly averages a 40-60 hour work week on a yearly basis, no doubt. But academic life is almost bi-polar in its scheduling and requirements. So while some weeks of the year she is working 80 hour weeks, other weeks, she's working 10-20 hour weeks and those are nice weeks indeed.

Also, even the long, hard, stressful weeks are flexible to the extent that much of her work can be done at home. We might go "to bed" at 8 and read for three hours. That's three hours of work, but in the comfort of our home, side-by-side, filled with little interjections in which we share what we're reading with each other and discuss it briefly. So even in workaholic mode, we can connect, as adults, over something besides the children (a "problem" I always see in discussions about maintaining a good marriage when you have kids). Because we both do similar work, we can float ideas with each other, proof and edit each other's writing, and read each other's books.

One annoying misconception people outside academia are always repeating is "how nice, you have the summers off." No, we do not have the summers "off." Teaching is roughly 40% of a full-time academic job and in the summers, there's the remaining 60% still to be done. But it can often be done in Grandmom's backyard, while Nat runs through the sprinkler, and that, indeed, is nice. While we don't technically have any more time "off" than a clock-punching 9-5er, we can often take our work on the road and so yes, we do have more flexibility to travel and such when we are not actually teaching. When I'm teaching online, I can even take the laptop with me and work from a hotel room, a cafe, or wherever. And yep. That's nice.

Those are some of the things I like about academia. All in all, I have to say I have no regrets about the professional choices I've made, including the recent one to step off the fast track. I am grateful to have that option, as I know many, many people don't. But I think that in addition to Cole's ability to support us, the field I've chosen does allow for quite a bit of professional and even sometimes, financial reward, on terms of an individual's choosing.

So there you have it. Happy Happy Woman Professor Day!

Comments

[anne]

thanks for that -- it makes me happy to be in the professing business with you and Cole.