Even those without kids have found academia incompatible with a personal life. The high level of mobility and scarcity of jobs puts pressures on couples. Many singles must accept positions in rural areas of the country where there are little opportunities to date. Discuss.
7 thoughts on “The Lack of the Personal”
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Apt. 11d 
Okay, a few things. First, it is difficult for all women (and many men) to combine their work with their personal lives. There are stresses peculiar to every occupation and personal situation; I don’t think academic life has more of those stresses, just different ones. So long as academics persist in seeing the different and labeling it “more,” it will be difficult or impossible to recognize the general problems, or generalized form of problems, that affect everyone’s lives, and it will be difficult to find or adapt solutions that work.
Second, I can understand making a decision that one does not want to be an academic because one doesn’t want to live in TypeOfPlace X and those are the only jobs available. But, flipside, for those people who still get TT positions, and, eventually, tenure, you know what? You’re getting to do what you set out to do. It’s not perfect, I’m sure, but you wanted to be a professor and now you are. Many people do not get to do what they want to do–even more people have crappy jobs for crappy pay. Every once in awhile, when a class you’re teaching goes well, or you see a student make a heretofore impossible connection, or someone surprises you with a good paper, or YOU surprise you with a good paper, take some pleasure in it, okay? Please?
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I am extremely fortunate in that my first tenure track ever ended up in what we might call the biggest northeastern city there is. In some sense, this is the dream job for someone with a partner, because my goodness, it’s such a big city! But it just so happens that my husband, who is an engineer, is actually finding it difficult to find a job here, because engineering usually needs space (fabrication space) and so you don’t often find it in urban centers. So here I am, unable to complain because I ended up in a wonderful urban area–coincidentally close to both of our families–and yet my husband is still having trouble finding a job.
But there something else implicit in this which I, as a new faculty member, constantly have trouble with–the idea of a personal life, period. Am I “allowed” to have one? If I have interests outside my field of research, is it going to interfere with my ability to get tenure? As someone who doesn’t yet have kids, I’m able to spend all day on my job duties, and I still feel guilty if I spend an evening not working, or go to a museum on the weekend. I’m actually glad that I have a husband because it seems like it gives me just the tiniest bit of credibility in the face of my chair when I talk about spending time doing something (with him) other than research.
A just-tenured colleague recently told me that no matter how much you’ve done, at your P&T review they’ll tell you that you could have done more.
I am definitely one of those people who will wait until very close to tenure to have children. But I am lucky enough to have finished my PhD at 28 and I got a job immediately, so there *is* a chance in hell that I can make it work.
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The biggest advantage of academic life: flexilble schedule and summertime. Ahh, summer — time for writing, research projects, field work, dreaming up new courses, vacationing with partner, spending time with kids, daydreaming or blogging. Yeah, we do work in the summer but it’s work we’ve chosen, often the reason we wanted to get into an academic career in the first place.
The biggest disadvantage: to get a job, most people have to uproot themselves and move to another part of the country. This means leaving behind supportive family, close friends, a landscape we know intimately, a climate we love. Moving is rarely a good choice for partner’s career. And moving to a city, or worse small town somewhere, where we don’t know anyone is hardly a great way for singles to find a partner, if that is what they desire.
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Carla brings up an interesting point. Is academia worse than other professional careers in terms of accomodating families? I believe it is. I think I’m going to make a new post about this, because the singles and the married really wanted to have their say in this post.
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The academic life is full of severe trade-offs that are often not as extreme in other professions. My husband finished his terminal degree before I did, and he had a decent shot at a TT job, so I agreed to allow his job to dictate our next move, provided we could live efficiently enough so that I would still be able to focus on writing and art and could find a graduate program and would not have any pressure to get a “real” job. Luckily, we moved to SoCal where there were many reasonable choices for me, but it’s been hard to live efficiently in such a high cost of living environment.
We personally know many stories of academic couples who were unwilling or unable to compromise at all, resulting in terminated relationships, commuter partnerships, or very difficult arrangements that result in bitterness or acrimony. We know one couple who is literally keeping score: we did this for you, so now it’s my turn.
Part of the problem with academia is that it IS the big dream realized — so many years spent working on a distant and competitive goal, one that doesn’t become any less competitive once it’s attained. It’s hard to give up something that has taken up the better part of your adult life, particularly when you know that when you’re out of the game, you’re really out of the game.
I do know JDs and MDs with similar issues, but it’s easier to find a job with a law degree that pays a decent wage, even if you can’t get hired by a law firm, than it is to find a job with a PhD in Art History.
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I think one of things that contributes to our anxiety about personal life and what we should be doing with spare time (ha!) is precisely the job market and the realization that those of us with T-T jobs have actually achieved something that many who long to do, can’t/don’t (and through no fault of their own). My case of survivor’s guilt doesn’t really make it easier to take time off, and my institution is happy to have me work more, accomplish more, etc. There’s a sense that I don’t have the right to complain b/c I do have this job (though not tenure yet…). There was a Chronicle column – probably one of the First Persons – that referred to people who get T-T jobs as “last men standing” (or something along those lines) that summed it up really well for me.
I don’t mean this as, Boo hoo hoo, poor little me, those of you without T-T jobs should feel sooooo bad for me! I realize I’m lucky – extremely lucky. But that sense of being lucky makes it even harder to figure out what or how to change the current system – if we fought so hard to get in, what are we doing trying to change it?? I should be happy to live in the middle of nowhere, darn it, because then it won’t matter that I have no free time, because there’s nothing to do… (no offense to those of you in rural areas and loving it).
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