03 August 2010
By Sarah Davies
I want to like the summertime, I really do. In my head it’s an ideal time. I don’t have children so I never take leave in summer-holiday-time: why pay extra to go away surrounded by other people’s kids? Instead, I reason, I’ll make the most of the peace and quiet: no students clogging up campus, precious few staff, and no seminars or departmental meetings. I’ll read a paper a day and write an article a week.
Well, that’s the theory. And in fact summer generally is a fairly productive time for me; free from distractions, I catch up on my writing projects. But what I always forget is how dull summer is. What starts off as blissful freedom ends up as grinding boredom and more than a touch of cabin fever. By the time it gets to – oooh, about now, early August – I’m tired of being the only one in the office, desperately craving social interaction, and frankly a bit bored of writing. (And that’s before I even start to consider the ups and downs of British weather – the misery of another rainy summer or the frustrations of working when it’s sunny.) Come September I’ll be rushing into staff meetings and tearing up at the prospect of four hour research seminars.
So: I always manage to forget it, but I really do hate the summer. There’s only one thing to do. Next year I think I’ll give up, conform, and just go on holiday.
Rachel Talbot03 August 2010 at 04:48 PM
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This post sounds so familiar! I too don’t like the summer months either. I have spent at least 50% of my time working on European projects and very little or nothing happens during July and August (before going mad in September) so I agree it should be a great time to get on with paper writing etc and all those things you would get round to if you weren’t so busy... However I find the lack of action and reduced numbers in the office so de-motivating. I must remember that the summer is a window of opportunity and see Sept 1st as a deadline for achieving some of my personal research goals.
Andy Humphrey11 August 2010 at 10:51 AM
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Where I work, summer is one of the busiest times of the year. All the Masters students are in the labs doing research projects, which means a jam-packed lab, a busy office, and the attendant frustrations of not being able to access equipment whenever we need to. To say nothing of the duty of supervising them, which thankfully I've escaped this year... In previous years, no sooner have the Masters students left than we get a cohort of summer students doing research placements, and the whole thing starts again... For the academics here, summer is also really busy because of the very narrow deadlines between exam marking and exam board meetings. The bottom line is that most of the academic staff I work with don't actually get a summer holiday at all! (most of them wait until September and then disappear until the new academic year starts in earnest at the end of the month). In past years it has been difficult for the research staff to get away for more than a couple of days at a time too, due to the burden of student supervision. This year hasn't been so bad. Being part-time, I wasn't asked to do any student supervision; and because we've had so many Masters students this year, we've had to reduce our intake of summer placement people. So the lab situation hasn't been as insane as it can be. My union case work is accumulating at an alarming rate, though...
Tennie Videler16 August 2010 at 08:09 PM
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I am a total summer person and seem to function better with more sunlight... When still a researcher I used to catch up on my reading as it was much easier to force myself to get through the stack of must-read papers when the sun was shining and begging me to go and sit and read outside. I enjoyed the change of pace the summer represented (although it tended to take me by surprise). The change depended on the teaching intensity of the lab I was working in, as described by Andy. But there always seemed to be opportunities for courses or conferences abroad and tagging some leave onto those.... but maybe these are rosetinted hindsight spectacles at work!