“I've always imagined the people with actual jobs being productive starting at 8am, and then be done and guilt free at 5pm.”
It got me thinking about my schedule and how, during graduate school, it has mostly been decided by my husband and how my attitude towards working hours has changed progressively over the past six years.
When I first arrived in dissertation town my husband had been a graduate student for 15 months. He wasn’t the working machine he is now and we would commonly go home after seminar, around 6pm. The exception was on days when I had class until 8 pm or so. Most of my classes were hydrology classes and since my dept. offered a hydrology masters which was course work plus a “report” we had a lot of hydrology masters’ students who also worked full-time jobs (how tough!). For this reason my hydrology classes were never offered during regular business hours.
During the first two years I would be the wake-up-police. I tried to get us to the dept. by 8am, or earlier. This stemmed from my previous work schedule which included waking before 6am to meet with my carpool and arrive to work 40-60 mins later. I like this because we missed a lot of traffic and I was back in beautiful beach town by 5pm (leaving my work at work and ready to enjoy life, *sigh*). So, I use to be a morning person. I also felt like I had to set a precedent and impress the department, thus I must get to work early and work a lot. It didn’t take long to notice that my adviser, and most professors, didn’t get in before 9am and mostly not before 10am. However I still worked a lot those first two years. I would bring homework and literature back home and work most evenings and week-ends.
Then one day the switch happened. I’m not sure exactly when or why but it likely had to do with writing. My husband became more focused when he wrote and I became more distance. He became the wake-up-police. We would commonly work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. At first I enjoyed the new separation of work and home, since I no longer took work home. But then the line started to blur between work at home. We would call our dept. home and our home work. I started not working so well in my office since I felt trapped there. Last winter I rearranged the furniture in my office to get a fresh start. It helped some.
So here I am, working from home where there is only a small set of stair separating my office from the rest of my home. This line between work and home is very blurry.
As you’ve read I’ve struggled with coming up with my own work schedule and have again decided to let me husband dictate it. This is how my workdays have become more like a 9-5 day. I find when my husband gets home I want to stop working and hang out with him. So waking before 7am and really getting into my work by 8am is best for me since I want to stop by 6pm when he gets home. This is, however, a 10 hour day, although it likely works into a nice 9-5 slot once I’ve subtracted the time I spend eating, exercising, reading blogs and doing household errands such as phone calls and laundry or a walk to the grocery store.
I am still working on the week-ends, but not 10 hour days. A girls gotta sleep in sometimes.
Also check out the Happy Scientist on a related post.
2 comments:
My guess is that very few people who are in careers (as opposed to jobs) work 8-5 anymore.
It's sad. I used to work 8:30-8:30, but I'm trying to be less of a workaholic so now I work 9-7:30 or so.
And I try not to do any work on weekends.
It sounds like you are finding something that suits you better. :)
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