I think the easiest part of our jobs is teaching upper division and graduate courses. But that is only easy if you have a good research background and are engaged in research. Research and writing, and this kind of teaching are not hard. They do take specialized knowledge and advanced skills but that is a different question.
Hard is not having materials. Hard is teaching things you do not know how to teach or how you learned. Hard is teaching people who want to earn points and grades but not absorb material. Hard is being required to get people to a certain level by the end of the term when this would in fact only have been realistic had they taken an undergraduate degree or at least a minor in the field they are studying now. Hard is undertaking research in these circumstances. Research and writing in themselves are not hard – they are restful and refreshing – and I am sorry if I am disrupting the ethos of things by saying this but I am convinced it must be said.
Still harder than hard teaching are hostile work environments. I believe this is what many really mean when they say research is hard. They mean they have been disabled by their environments. I understand this and yet I still say it only compounds the difficulty to say research is hard.
What you can say is that it takes time, skills, interest and energy, because those things are true. But people who say it is hard, or too hard for you, or that it should be too hard for people like you, are either describing themselves, not you, or are themselves elements in your hostile work environment. They are bent upon your destruction, or simply do not have your best interests at heart.
I will say, though, that I may be unusual among faculty in that I had such good work habits as an undergraduate. Workload does go up from 55 to 70 hours a week when you move from graduate school to professordom, and it is somewhat frightening since, at least in my case, it always means in practice that some major task must fall by the wayside. Right now, for instance, I am behind on two deadlines, behind on grading, turning in poorly written minutes for a meeting, and putting off calling another meeting I should have called already, but this is the best I can possibly do because I have other things that need doing as well and that come first.
I think a great deal of the modeling of behavior by some professors is in fact negative modeling – they do not have good work habits. I also think a great deal of the advice to professors is designed for people who somehow got these degrees we have without forming good work habits.
The two pieces of advice that have always backfired for me are:
(a) Yes you can! This is not true. This advice was invented for people who enjoy hysteria, histrionics and the overwhelmed feeling. I never did. When I say some plan is unrealistic, or that it cannot be a priority for me at this time, I really mean it.
(b) Use time wisely! That is no panacea and if you have been using time wisely since time immemorial, it may “rhyme” (as Bandeira said) but it is no solution. As I suggest, though, I think a lot of faculty have time management problems that would have caused them to flunk out of my undergraduate program; I think this advice was created for them.
I will add that I am from California and I think free time is great. Where else do you get your good ideas except when you relax and let your mind wander? I think the dictum that you must use every minute and concentrate your hardest at all times was, once again, invented by those who wish you early heart attacks, who do not understand how the mind and body work, or who, perhaps, are not really intelligent enough to be professors.
I say this as a person with a 100 hour a week job assignment this semester, who has managed most weeks to do 100 hours of work in 70 to 80 hours; you cannot say I am not a hard worker or do not concentrate or am not efficient.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 