When your parent's a professor...

...what's it like? Do they work long hours, or do they have an average workday? Do they bring work home, ever - if so, what kind? How flexible is their work schedule - say, if a kid had some school event that would typically conflict with the parent's work, would the parent be able to alter their schedule in order to attend?

Thank you kindly. :)

This was in the '70s and '80s, but my best friend from college had both parents who were professors at a state univeristy in the Eastern U.S.. (Economics and U.S. History) Here's what I recall him telling me over the years.

he wasn't ina lot of school functions/activities, so i can't help you there, sorry.

his parents generally worked pretty long hours, but his dad more so since he also worked for the U.S. government in some areas. (Agency for International Development) The brought a fair amount of work home but they were also able to balance their schedules enough that one was usually home - I remember him talking about a regular sitter but it wasn't like he had a full-time nanny or anything except perhaps his first few years of life. I think part of this was due to the fact one could be doing research for a book and such while the other was teaching and therefore they could juggle time that way.

What I remember most from his tales (and from meeting and talking to the parents)was the travel; it might differ with different subjects, but when you talk about "taking work home," this is part of it to me. They would travel often to different places, and my friend had been to quite a few different countries (AID work and also just lending his expertise to governments...here, his dad was actually notable enough for Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson) While His mom's research would send her to different parts of the original 13 states, so he'd been to a variety of them, too.

Of course, they aren't the typical college professors, perhaps (his mom maybe a little more so), and you might be ble to get by with a little more research being done via computer and such nowadays. You would certainly find the professors in question able to spend more time online with students nowadays. However, my guess is that, instead of wondering if they'd be able to fit school performances into their schedules, it might be more likely the child wouldn't have many at all.

Then again, they were very interested from an early age in encouraging my friend to experience the world and try to understand (on his level, of course, when younger) what they were doing, and made it interesting enough he stayed with it, so your mileage will vary.

It depends on whether they're tenured or still going for tenure, whether they're at a research institution or a teaching institution, and probably what subject they teach/how often they need to be onsite.

My father is a tenured professor in a scientific field in a large research institution. He has almost total flexibility with his schedule--as long as he teaches his one class and he and his lab continue publishing papers consistently, no one really cares about the hours. Practically this ended up being a regular workday--at the university in time for the morning lecture and back home by 5 for dinner unless an experiment or an administrative meeting was scheduled to run late, and no weekends unless he felt like doing something in particular. Shorter hours in the summer, but he still goes in every day.

In contrast, many of my friends are now just starting their careers as tenure-track academics (scientific field) and they routinely work 60-hour weeks trying to simultaneously figure out how to be a professor and try to publish as much of import as they can before their tenure review.

Bringing work home--I imagine you'd have the possibility of bringing more work home as a humanities professor since a lot more of it is study and reading, but either way you'll have things to do. He makes slides, TA lab plans, lecture podcasts, and exams at home and has a stack of journals on the kitchen table. The most time-consuming is the hundreds of e-mails from students arguing over their grades or asking "Is x-y-z going to be on the exam?" Administrative problems can come up after-hours as can experimental or computer emergencies. Again, younger professors will often have more work at home and take longer to get work done just because they're not as efficient yet.

Kids and school events--unless it happens during a lecture, policy meeting, or lab session the professor needs to be at, sure. If it was a big deal the professor could cancel the day's class at his/her discretion. In general you have more flexibility with hours than almost any other job I can think of.

It depends in large part on what the parent is teaching. My dad taught political science, so he was only *required* to be on campus during the hours he taught--9 or 12 a week--plus office hours--another 5-10. But it's more convenient to do class prep and grading at the office, and easier to do research and writing at the library and office, so he was away from home about the same hours as a 9-5 worker.

School events were usually in the evening, and he didn't usually teach then, so...no conflict.

It depends on the institution, and it depends on the subject being taught. In many colleges it will also depend on the time of year. My mom teaches various English classes, but she's always involved in the English as a Second Language program. Most of the time her schedule's fairly flexible - she has to be on campus during her classes, during scheduled meetings, and during regular office hours. Most of the time she will bring some work home, papers to be graded and lesson plans she needs to prepare for, but in general she doesn't spend unusually long days at the office - if anything they're shorter than a normal workday.

But like I said, it depends on the time of year. As she teaches ESL it's part of her job to help the ESL students work out all the difficulties they have with registration -- that includes renewing visas, trying to figure out transferable credits, dealing with situations where the student won't be financially cleared for another week because of issues between banks. For those couple weeks her schedule is impressively hectic. To a lesser extent the same thing goes for the week before graduation.

My dad is a math professor.

His workday is pretty average--he usually goes in to work around 7:30 or 8:00 and leaves between 3 and 5, I think. It varies depending on the rest of my family's schedule--who has to be in town when, who has to be picked up when, etc. I think he likes to keep this pretty normal schedule, but he can change it if our family needs it. He has to be at school for classes (he usually teaches two or three classes--well, two or three sections which could be all the same class or different classes--a semester) and his scheduled office hours, but other than that he is free to come and go as he likes. So he can come home at 2:00 on Tuesdays so my mom can get my little brother to his trumpet lesson, for example.

He definitely brings home work. Mostly it's grading homework and planning the next days' lessons. About two or three times a semester, he does an exam and he spends a lot of the weekend sitting at the kitchen table grading it. He used to pay my little sister and me and quarter to grade T/F or multiple choice problems for him. We were these little eight- and six-year-old girls sitting there grading college kids' exams. I didn't think it was weird at the time but now i think it's pretty funny.

It used to be he would work from home a couple of days a week, doing research. I think he eventually stopped doing this--there are too many distractions and other things that have to be done at home, and he didn't always get a lot done.

Grandpa was a professor when Dad and Uncle Peter were growing up. (He taught cello at a university in the mid-west.) He wouldn't bring home much work, but Mom said it was really weird to be going to her professor's house so she could see Dad. LOL Grandpa practiced the cello at home and had students who would sometimes come and take lessons. Grandma took care of Dad and Uncle peter (she taught before they were born, I think).

Dad isn't a professor, but he is a teacher. (High school and junior high and might be teaching Greek to seminary students next year.) He works from home, so we're used to hearing, "Okay, now remember that adjectives agree with their nouns in gender, number, and case but not necessarily in ending. So [insert adjective from Greek or Latin] needs to agree with [insert noun from ditto] otherwise it won't work." My sister helped him a little with his teaching maintenance--she uploaded things to the website, answered easy questions (like from the Latin One and Two students; she was great at Greek grammar but couldn't get the hang of the letters), moderated the conversations, and stuff like that. (It's how she was trained as a secretary, and it's really payed off.)

He grades tests (no papers in his classes) over the weekends and at night (laaate night since he's currently a full-time pastor and a full-time teacher and is going crazy from over-work).

Mom sometimes helps, too, even though she can't speak Latin or Greek. When National Latin Exams come up (which Dad absolutely hates and would kill if he could even though it helps the students a lot), Mom fills in the form bubbles and makes sure the lists are kept-up. One of our friends once spent four hours one evening filling in bubbles because we were getting ready for my sister's wedding and were too stressed to sit down and go through the incredibly boring experience of coloring bubbles.

I take him coffee or tea and lunch in the 15-minute in-between-classes time segments sometimes. And I'll run books to him and if I'm in the room and he knows I know an answer, he'll ask and it's super annoying if I forget the answer. (Dad did that to my sister, too.)

At the beginning of the year, he answers the same questions over and over again. Like, "How do I turn in the parent meeting score? I'M GONNA DIE IF I DON'T KNOW!!!!!!"