Tom Lutz writes in today Times:
On paper, the academic life looks great. As many as 15 weeks off in the summer, four in the winter, one in the spring, and then, usually, only three days a week on campus the rest of the time. Anybody who tells you this wasn’t part of the lure of a job in higher education is lying. But one finds out right away in graduate school that in fact the typical professor logs an average of 60 hours a week, and the more successful professors work even more — including not just 14-hour days during the school year, but 10-hour days in the summer as well.Why, then, does there continue to be a glut of fresh Ph.D.’s? It isn’t the pay scale, which, with a few lucky exceptions, offers the lowest years-of-education-to-income ratio possible. It isn’t really the work itself, either. Yes, teaching and research are rewarding, but we face as much drudgery as in any professional job. Once you’ve read 10,000 freshman essays, you’ve read them all.
But we academics do have something few others possess in this postindustrial world: control over our own time.
I remember the moment that I decided to go to graduate school. I was 22 years old working on the 16th floor the Gulf and Western building, which is now a Trump monstrosity. I had a hangover or I assume I did, because those were crazy times. I put down my manuscript for a moment to get my head together and gazed out the window at Central Park. It was early afternoon and the park was crammed with people. You could see the joggers and the roller bladers making the big loop. There were the moms with strollers and the old people on benches. There was probably even the crazy man with the bagpipes. And I wondered why these people weren't reading boring manuscripts in on the 16th floor. How could I have this life of leisure? Oh, go to graduate school I thought, which was just totally insane because my dad was a professor and I never saw him with the time to go playing bagpipes in Central Park, but somehow I thought I would be one of those cool free time professors.
But now that I know the TRUTH that academia is a lot of work, I am sticking with it. And, like Lutz, the flexibility is a big part of it. I am going to schedule my classes around the kid's school bus. I can make them dinner and take them to karate practice. Sure, it will mean that I will have to work in the evenings, but that's cool with me. There are few other jobs that will allow me to do that.