I am on sabbatical this semester. Unfortunately I am remaining in Manchester and am not leaving for places with drier rain. I have children who, perhaps unreasonably, wish to remain at their school and a partner who has her own career to maintain. So a sabbatical at home is the result. It is a mistake to maintain one’s routine and visit the lab as normal, because everyone assumes you will read student reports and review exam questions. I am becoming ruthless and refusing all requests that smell of teaching or administration.
So what can I do? I had grand plans about returning to the coalface and carrying out experiments but instead I am mining the seam of unpublished work from departed students and writing those grant proposals that were thought up but never begun because of teaching and other commitments. So since September I have written one proposal for the EPSRC (now being costed)and I have practically finished an outline bid to the MRC. Today I managed to spend the entire morning working on a proposal and a paper without interruption – a record.
I have a feeling I won’t make it into the lab. I haven’t worn a lab coat, except for effect, since arriving in Manchester in 1999. Nonetheless, the ability to focus on a problem, even if it is only marshalling the arguments for a proposal, makes a welcome relief from the normal daily grind in the university system.
How can you think of a sabbatical as being your regular ‘grind’? You’re just not taking it seriously or showing nearly enough gratitude…!
Oh, and since you’re on sabbatical, you’ll surely have the time to tidy your desk and take a photo (hint, hint).
I recommend that you use the sabbatical to learn a new skill, or do something completely different from your usual routine.
I agree with Henry on skills – you might start with Staring Vacuously Out of the Window.
If you want to return to the lab, as a service to your students, I insist you read the series of PhD comics starting here, and ending here.
Another hazard of not leaving all behind you when you take a sabbatical is the increased domestic task list: “As you are on sabbatical you can take the car in for its MOT this morning…”
What a great event! At nature we used to get a sabbatical every three years – the rules of how you could qualify were Byzantine but basically, it was a month off. Unfotrunately the company found these disruptive so they were negotiated away about 15 years ago, hence I read your words with great envy!
If I were a scientist like you I would use the time to go back to the drawing board on my research programme, re-think it, read around different subjects, go to visit other labs etc, and in other ways reassess my research direction and goals. Maybe at the end of it all I’d be quite happy doing what I was already doing, but I feel I would have benefitted from the exercise and the subseqent perspective.
And of course you could aslo write a book.
Or, as Bob says, stare out of the window.
I was lucky enough to have had two sabbaticals at Nature before the company
went back to the dark agesrestrategized its priorities.The Byzantine Rules Maxine alludes to were as follows – you could take an extra month off, every three years. But, if you saved up ALL your annual leave (about a month) and took that as well, the company would give you an extra month, unpaid effectivel, three months off on two-thirds pay.
For the first one, in 1992, I spent three months as a trainee at the BBC World Service – writing scripts, learning the techniques of radio and even producing a programme. The experience was invaluable and taught me a great deal about the techniques of science communication.
The second one came along just as the company was pulling out of sabbaticals. I was awarded a visiting professorship at UCLA that allowed me to spend a term teaching science communication at UCLA, and also do some research and travel, which I did in January-March 1996. This, again, was a wonderful experience and made me many friends and contacts.
Now that the car is in the garage awaiting its MOT (There may be trouble ahead…) and I have reinstalled Microsoft office after a day of mysterious crashes (no Apple comments on this thread please), I can read all your helpful suggestions.
@Maxine – The New University of Manchester has an avowed policy of having 10% of its staff on sabbatical. This may seem like poor maths. because 10% < 1/7 but it is a sad fact of life that despite their being a tradition (it isn’t in my contract nor was it in my contract at Oxford) of sabbatical’s at UK universities, it is also a tradition that staff do not always take them up. Partly that is because even traditions have small print.
Our condition is that we have to find someone to agree to take over all courses that we give to students during our sabbatical. So I have played the usual trick (see bullying in scientific research) and suggested to one of my postdocs that the experience of giving a course would look good on his CV (thanks Riaz). Otherwise it is a matter of mutual back scratching amongst academics as you promise to cover for them when they are on sabbatical too. This works fine if you are in an institution where most people take up their sabbaticals (as was the case in Oxford) but here in Manchester, prior to the merger that led to the gleaming new institution, there was no such tradition and people taking sabbaticals were regarded as deserters who made other people take on too much work.
Sabbaticals are good things. What shall I do now that I have undergone some navel gazing? This sounds like a good topic for a couple more posts over the next 2 or 3 days. Watch this space…