This is the third part in our series on how academic staff spend their time. Throughout the strike, we'll report from the frontline of unsustainable workloads. Have you ever wondered what a lecturer, a postdoc, a teaching fellow does outside of the classroom? Here is a look at one linguist's typical weekly to-do list (with commentary):
I am lucky if I spend one hour a week reading something new.
Emails: Right now, there are over 100 emails in my inbox that require some sort of action or significant response. I received the oldest of these two years ago (!). The list is ever-growing. On a typical day, 30 new emails needing a response or action will be added. If I spend just 2 minutes on each email on average, it takes an hour of my day just to keep from falling further behind (though many take more than 2 minutes).
Teaching: This is my light term, so I am only in the classroom teaching 3 hours per week. In my heavy term, it would be 8 hours per week. A lecture I have taught before takes 1-2 hours to prepare; a new one takes about a full working day to prepare.
Student projects: I need to urgently help students prepare experiments for their projects, else they won't finish in time. I prioritise this over my own research. In the past, I have had up to 12 student projects to supervise at one time (I try to meet with each student an hour every two weeks), though at the moment I have fewer.
Student meetings: On average, I spend around 6 hours per week in meetings with students (at certain times of year, this will be more like 10-12 hours), including PhD students, students in my modules, students I am supervising, students in the degree programme I run, personal tutees, academic misconduct panels, prospective students, etc.
PhD supervision: I normally meet my PhD student on a weekly basis. Right now, they are waiting on my feedback on a draft of a thesis chapter. This will take at least a full working day to do properly.
Programme administration: I am in charge of a degree programme, which carries its own workload. Right now, we are in the midst of the annual review (mandatory for every degree programme). We review survey data (NSS, PTES, etc.), other student feedback, and Faculty priorities, and develop a detailed plan of programme changes for the next year. The process and expectations for the review change each year, so each year's review requires significant work. Throughout the year, each week contains several hours of additional work related to programme administration, though the tasks vary from week to week (admin meetings, emails, open days, talking to prospective students, giving tours, admissions decisions, plagiarism cases, handling extenuating circumstances cases, meeting with students who are struggling, etc.).
Administrative meetings: Often at least one admin meeting occurs in a given week, including departmental staff meetings, departmental teaching committee meetings, divisional teaching committee meetings, faculty teaching committee meetings, departmental exam board meetings, divisional exam board meetings, faculty exam board meetings, SSCC meetings, etc. These last between 1 and 2 hours. In many cases, the content of these different meetings largely overlaps, but we are usually expected to attend them all, so we tend to hear the same information many times.
Marking: Between September and May, there is almost always some amount of marking (or second marking) waiting to be done. A standard written assignment will take around 20-25 minutes to mark per student (including giving proper feedback). More in-depth essays take closer to an hour per student. Dissertations take well over an hour per student. Right now, I have only a little marking to do, but at some points in the year, I have 120 essays to mark at a time in the span of a few weeks. Marking 120 essays in three weeks takes up almost my entire workload for those weeks, even if I take no breaks and do zero other work during that time period (which is impossible, of course). Those periods are very stressful.
Mandatory surveys, training, etc.: We seem to live in an age of endless surveys -- as students surely also feel -- and staff are not immune from this. Usually, the claim is that they take 'only 5 minutes', but it tends to be more like 15. Every part of the university seems to have its own survey now; a couple are sitting in my inbox right now. A few times a year, there is mandatory training that needs to occur. These are almost always important issues, so I understand the need to do them, but they are time-consuming nonetheless.
Recommendation letters: I need to submit recommendation letters for half a dozen students in the coming few weeks. One of these students notified me less than a week ago, but I will fit them in. One student is applying to 8 universities. A letter takes me about an hour to write, and each application takes about 10 minutes once I already have a letter written (they ask for extra information for each students than just the letter itself). Overall, I write dozens of letters each year.
Reviews: I have two reviews to do for journals. We get no pay or recognition for these (even though many journals make lots of profit for publishers), but the peer review process is important for the field. It takes me about a full working day to do a decent review. One of these is overdue and the editor has started to pester me about it. What can I put off to get this done?
Grant writing: The university places high priority on securing external grant funding. I am aiming to submit two grant proposals in the coming year. A grant proposal takes weeks of work to put together. An unsuccessful proposal (the vast majority of them are unsuccessful) gets no credit in our workload, as if the work was not done at all. Only successful ones are acknowledged. I usually only get around to working on these on the weekend.
Research: I have 8 ongoing research projects at various stages. One of these projects started 7(!) years ago, and I have still not been able to finish it. I am meant to spend 40% of my work time working on research, but I feel lucky to get more than a couple of hours during the work week. Mostly, if I want to have solid time to work on research, I have to spend my evenings and weekends. For academic staff, research (and grant funding) is by far the most important aspect of our work when it comes to professional advancement, but I spend the least time on it because other tasks (students, teaching, administration) end up taking priority.
(Self-)Marketing: In today's academic world, it is not enough to just output quality research; you are also expected to market yourself (and your research, and the field) to the world. These activities include things like maintaining a personal website, maintaining other profiles (e.g., Google scholar), maintaining social media accounts, contributing to blogs, giving conference and (especially) invited talks around the world, volunteering time to teach summer schools (usually without pay), seeking out media opportunities, contributing to initiatives promoting the field, talking about the field in schools, volunteering for national societies, etc. Most of these things are considered extra-curricular, to be done in our 'spare' time. I do some of these, but find it overwhelming to do others. I am regularly chided by some colleagues for not maintaining an active Twitter account.
Professional development and learning: When I was a student, I had the view that academics spent a lot of time reading books and articles, thinking, and using that knowledge to generate new ideas. In practice, I am lucky if I spend one hour a week reading something new. The list of articles I need to read to keep up with the field grows longer and longer. I also want to develop some new technical skills to push aspects of my research forward. If I want to do reading or pick up a new skill, I usually have to spend my evenings and weekends doing it. If my academic discipline were my only hobby and I had no family, then this might be fine, but it isn't my only hobby and I do have a family.
My to-do list only gets longer over time, and I am one of the lucky ones. Many university staff members have it far worse than I do.