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This semester my TAs and I made a plan for how much time they should spend on the course and advised them to track their hours. Then I thought... what about my hours? How can I support others in pushing back against academia's culture of overwork if I'm not doing it myself?
I did the @NCFDD FSP program 2 years ago and have been thinking about my work week since, but more in terms of getting by and making space for research/writing. Not for limiting my hours, although I've been able to take one weekend day off most weekends since I got tenure.
My university has new financial software that lets me know that I am paid to work 40 hrs/week. This wasn't so visible in the previous HR portal. These 40 hours/week, by my contract, break down to 8 hours of service (20%), 16 hours of teaching (40%) and 16 hours of research (40%).
Thanks to @NCFDD, I work to timers; I track exactly how many hours I am spending on work/week. This week I tried to work a 40 hour week. Hahaha. One good thing is that with the tweaks I made to my syllabi for this term, I am spending about the right amount of time on teaching...
This includes prepping/recording lectures (8 hrs), writing assignments and rubrics (2 hrs), marking assignments/reading the discussion board (1 hr), replying to student emails (2 hrs), office hours (3 hrs), and peer review of teaching training (1 hr). 17 hours this week.
I should add that getting my teaching time down to what my university pays me for it was a major task during my @NCFDD FSP program session and I am glad that I figured it out. Before doing that program, my teaching was well over 25 hrs/week.
Service, though, is the quicksand factor now. It is 3:30pm on a Friday. I think I have about 5-6 hours of service left to do to catch up to where I feel like I should be for next week. But I also should probably spend the afternoon, delightfully free of meetings, writing...
By the 40-40-20 rule, this afternoon should go to research/writing as I've already done over 15 hours of service this week, but I haven't spent the hours on research I should have... But by the 40 hrs/week rule, I should have just not worked today since I met my hours yesterday..
So what's the solution? Putting off the service means next week will be overloaded, but neglecting the research means another week without making progress on the things I need to do. And, honestly, all I want to do is curl up on the couch with some bourbon and a mystery novel...
This tread took 30 mins to write and I am filing it under "Other" for my hours tracking, btw...
This *thread ahem
Okay, here's the (imperfect) solution. I'm going to write until dinner, then take tonight off (for Drag Race and pizza, our Friday tradition). Then tomorrow I'll do the service and try to also do 2 more hours of writing. Take Sunday off, rinse, and repeat...
But *next week* I am going to guard my hours more carefully and try, again, for a 40 hour week. Anyone want to join me?
