My Two Jobs

As I start this blog, you need to know that I have two day jobs.

My academic job pays me a salary. Taxpayer money (more about that in a later post). It requires me to devote 2/5 of my time to teaching, 2/5 to research, and 1/5 to administration. If I work a 40 hour week (I don’t; I work longer hours than that), then I spend 16 hours supervising graduate students, preparing classes, teaching them, and grading assignments; 16 hours are taken up with research, which in my case means reading scholarly books and papers, evaluating them, and writing my own papers and books, as well as organizing conferences, editorial work, archival and library work. And then there are 8 hours for administration.

Then there’s my other job. I call it “E-Mail Traffic Controller.” It’s high-stress. I sit at the console watching the messages arrive like blips on the radar screen. One of them sails in gently, lands in my inbox, lights flashing, and I steer it into my To-Do folder, where it waits patiently. Another one carries a load of illicit pharmaceuticals and I steer it off the runway where it crashes and burns. But here comes another one, all warning signals blaring. Gotta deal with it right away. OK, meanwhile this other one can wait in the inbox. I’ll deal with it soon. Another one headed for To-Do. And so on. This can go on all day, if I let it.

I have to choose. Some days I decide to return to Academia, and just let those messages glide, swerve and crash, all waiting for me to witness it the next day, and pick up the pieces, if I can.