Working in science has its ups and downs. One downside is that the pay does not appear to be equivalent to that in other sectors where there is a requirement for an equivalent level of training and effort. This is, They tell us, because maybe that what we do is really not all that important, or because we enjoy and therefore should be happy to be paid less well. A logical fallacy, but not one I’m interested in addressing right now.
Another ‘unfairness’, if you like, is the pressure to work long and unsociable hours. I’ve worked in places where starting at eight in the morning and finishing at six pm, without much of a lunch break, was seen as slacking. Oh, and I should have been there at the weekends, too. The hollow laughter that greeted various EU directives on the length of the working week was not only from the medics.
This pressure is keenly felt by those in the profession who have spouses and children. “Don’t you,” They ask, “want to succeed in science?” (I’m not convinced that working every hour God sends guarantees success anyway—time management skills are possibly more important). And maybe, then—if it costs my family and my life—I don’t want to succeed. It shouldn’t be like this. The whole ‘work/life balance’ question should not even come up, but the whole scientific work ethic seems to be opposed to having a family, or even ‘downtime’.
Perhaps this is the real reason women leave science more readily then men: they’re smarter and realize what’s important.
I have worked in departments where taking your full annual leave entitlement was seen as slacking off. To such an extent that here in Australia, where even the boss organizes sporting events in the middle of the working day and, today for example, the entire lab is skiving off down the beach for a Christmas barbecue, I still feel guilty about putting in a leave request. I hadn’t realized just what an effect this has had on me until I joked by email that a friend taking Thursday and Friday off in the week before Christmas was ‘slacking’. I was brought up quite short when she chastised me, and I apologize for my attitude.
Go home. Have time off. Chill out. Take the weekend off.
And have a very happy Christmas, one and all.
Interesting you say that. Indeed, that would be a reason for me to leave science. It seems to depend however on the place you work. In my experience, the overworking is especialy prominent in the USA, where people seem to think never having time is an indicator for being important. In Germany and Sweden, people seem to understand better it’s a job and one needs a balance between work and private live. Working on weekends, after hours, or holidays is mostly disapproved of (of course this is only my impression, which is hardly representive).
Oh, and merry Christmas :-)
I’ve actually sometimes been jealous of people who combined lab work with a family: they were always so efficient, and they actually had to leave at a certain time to pick up kids from school or daycare, so they had an excuse to end the day at work at 5 PM. If I even left at 7 PM to go to an orchestra rehearsal, that felt as if I was being frivolous and unnecessary, and seemed a waste of time I could have spent working. Since I’ve never had anyone to come home to, I might as well have been at the lab 24/7. Or at least, that’s the impression I had of what was expected of me, and I always felt guilty for staying home an entire weekend to just do things for myself
There actually used to be someone in my lab – before my time – who slept in the meeting room in a sleeping bag at night. He was admired for his work ethic by the supervisor, but everyone else says he was just bad at planning and didn’t do any more work than people who were there 9 to 5.
It’s not just science, Richard, it’s all of academe, which is still set up for bachelors with housekeepers. I’m grateful that my dad, who had my mother in the housekeeping role, has started to catch on. Had a short convo in which he asked whether I couldn’t do the academic thing, and enjoy the “temporal and spatial freedom”, as he puts it; on poking he recalled things like late meetings, service requirements, evening classes, the everlasting travel, etc. Doesn’t work well with single motherhood. Or at all, really. The same fella, meaning nothing but well, got very excited about some project I’d got hold of a few years ago and was outlining all sorts of vast grants I could go after. At the time I had a two-year-old and a sick husband just out of the mental hospital. It wasn’t until I put it to him rather forcefully that I could not guarantee my carrying out the proposed work that he came back down to earth — because of course that would leave me with a bad reputation with the agency. As I recall his engineering-professor schedule, it went something like this: Up at 3:30 am, exercise, leave house before kids wake. Back at 2, read papers, more exercise, shower, run errand or retreat to basement office. Dinner, more basement office, drag self up stairs, glass of wine, bed. He used to carry a satchel easily 3x the weight of mine to family restaurants, and would review papers and grade homework between ordering and eating. I wound up uneasy around the friends’ fathers who came home and sort of lounged or palled around all evening — didn’t these men have anything to do? What kind of lightweights were they, anyway?
I think a lot of academics still carry around the idea that their work is what they do, and the family stuff is all very nice but for girls. Or, erm, the other kind of girls. The realities just plain don’t intrude, except upon the near-emeritus ones, who talk to me about their kids. I find they’re much less likely to whip-crack and tell me to stash the kid and get to work. I’m pleased to report that the near-emeritus guys I talk to are also happy to do the professional encouragement and glowing-reference-writing.
Through my 20s and early 30s, incidentally, I had no intention of having kids because I didn’t see it’d be compatible with writing seriously. And indeed that’s true. It is not, not for me, anyway. Seven, eight stories in the last five years, none of them finished to the point where they could be sent out. The science writing is a compromise. But there was a day when I woke up and knew, looking out the window, that it was no good living my old life anymore; I’d had 16 years of doing just as I’d pleased, for me, and there would’ve been a bad sterility in living that way for the next 50. It was my turn to be responsible, and that’s all there was to it. More a sense of timing than anything else. I knew the writing would survive a break, and it will. Better, I daresay, than most careers would, because it doesn’t rely on someone else hiring me.
Anyway we’re supposed to have 3/4" of ice out there by morning, and then 6 inches of snow, so I intend to sleep in and then maybe make waffles, assuming we have electricity.
Merry Christmas Richard!
I realised today when i answered “are you taking xmas off” with “yes ,I am going to have four days…well, I have to get in on Friday to split cells but then I am leaving” and the response was “that is not taking off Åsa, it is having the weekend off”. Same old, same old… ;) I miss the Swedish xmas leave of 24,25,26 as off days without vacation since the whole country shuts down ….
ah well, I will sleep in on the weekend and long for the next four day vacation called New Years ;)
Mmm, snow.
Mmm, waffles.
(oops, passed in the mail)
Yes, Åsa, cells don’t have holidays. (Un)fortunately mine got yeasted while I was away so I don’t have to look after them over Christmas. I’ll probably do some computer work though… or maybe A Momentary Lapse of Reason?!
At least you can freeze cells down. The poor fly people in my lab are screwed.
When is someone going to work out how to cryogenically preserve some life cycle stage of Drosophila? Seems like it should have been sorted by now. If only for the Christmas cheer.
Eggs?
Hrmm… this is where I display my disturbing lack of knowledge of fly life cycles.
Not just science and academia either! The grass may look greener….
Happy Christmas to you, too, Richard.
It’s such a silly system that equates time spent in the lab to productivity – and it’s one of the main reasons I left the lab. It frustrates me no end – but I’m not going to go off on one of my rants…!
Jenny, I’m pretty sure that someone somewhere has tried to introduce ‘anti-freeze’ genes onto balancer chromosomes in an attempt to cryopreserve fly eggs/embryos….. but maybe that was an urban myth. I always found that passing my stocks just before I left and putting them as 18oC worked fine for a week or two. And I learned not to set up important crosses before holidays (effective time management in my view – unnecessary delays to experiments to others!)!
I’m off to google/pubmed that anti-freeze thing now…..
Merry Christmas everyone!
No Dorothy: ranting is good!
Thanks Maxine. But I’m not changing jobs because I think it will be easier, in case that’s what you’re worried about…
I think I’m the only person in my dept. who used the entire 2008 vacation allocation. Everyone else seemed to be filling in forms to roll their days over into next year.