# Go ahead--pit the first day of the fall semester **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 25, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593 "2009-08-25T03:09:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![rivulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rivulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rivulus)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/41 "2009-08-26T20:34:39Z")
Anyway, back to whining. Tonight is my first night class of the year. I was up until 3:30 last night attempting to hit a deadline on a project at work. No time for a nap today, so I’m off to class on 3 hours of sleep. Yawn. At least this time I’m _taking_ the class, not teaching it. No big deal if I drift off a little in the back row. I hope the prof doesn’t take it personally, though. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/42 "2009-08-26T21:12:11Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Really? Because when teacher’s in this thread complain about low “summer productivity” (Spoiler alert: in the real world, you have to work throughout _the whole year!_), it sort of undermines your claim. My brother (who isn’t a teacher) was recently complaining about his own lack of summer productivity. During his vacation and the weekends, he’s only, that I remember: added a new shower to the East-side balcony, opened a new closet under the stairs, re-roofed the house his wife inherited in a town 3h away from where they live (on lousy roads), repainted the boy’s room, the kitchen and the hallway. I know he wanted to do more work on the inherited house and put some protection on the balconies (he’s bought the materials but hasn’t put it up). My other brother, the Finance Guy, says about summer productivity “an interesting thing about working on the international level as I’m now doing is that you verify that it isn’t only Spain that closes down for July and August… sometimes I wonder why the hell am I in, when the three people whose work I need most in order to go forward are on vacation.” Mind you, he’s only completely redone the filing system. “Lack of productivity” doesn’t necessarily mean “sitting on my ass.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/43 "2009-08-26T21:15:43Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > My brother (who isn’t a teacher) was recently complaining about his own lack of summer productivity. Sorry, but Europeans don’t count. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/44 "2009-08-26T21:19:49Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Sorry, but Europeans don’t count. Sure they do, just not always in English. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/45 "2009-08-26T21:29:30Z")
**Kimmy** , I’d call you a cunt, but my vagina would take offence. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/46 "2009-08-26T21:45:48Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > **Kimmy** , I’d call you a cunt, but my vagina would take offence. A short joke Q: How many Europeans does it take to change a light bulb? A: That’s not funny. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/47 "2009-08-26T22:21:04Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Sorry, but Europeans don’t count. Why not? ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/48 "2009-08-26T22:28:16Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Why not? They’re not very productive to begin with. Most Europeans spend more time on vacation (or “holiday” as they say in European) than they do at work. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/49 "2009-08-26T22:32:30Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > They’re not very productive to begin with. Most Europeans spend more time on vacation (or “holiday” as they say in European) than they do at work. [singsong]Some-body’s jeaaaloooous…[/singsong] ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/50 "2009-08-26T22:39:34Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > [singsong]Some-body’s jeaaaloooous…[/singsong] _Bien sûr_, but still, it’s only good taste not to take most of the year off from work while insisting that you toil as much as those in other countries, or even a common college faculty member. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/51 "2009-08-26T23:19:56Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > They’re not very productive to begin with. Most Europeans spend more time on vacation (or “holiday” as they say in European) than they do at work. You have a cite? Cause just a quick google found a bunch of cites that say Europeans don’t in fact get 26 weeks of vacation. Also if they’re so unproductive how’d they achieve first world status? Why is the pound worth more then the dollar? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/52 "2009-08-26T23:31:33Z")
9-month workload: (in descending order of time spent) grading, teaching, lecture preparation, meetings, out-of-class interactions with students, research, writing, research and apply for grants. Summer workload: (in descending order of time spent) research, writing, fieldwork, research and apply for grants, lecture preparation, meetings. And that’s just the years I don’t teach summer session, currently only one out of the twelve years I’ve been teaching. I think your misconception is that teaching is all we do. But the second a job comes up where I can teach three small classes a term in my specialty and spend summers relaxing, I’m there. ---
**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/53 "2009-08-27T01:59:06Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > You also are an idiot. > > What some morons don’t seem to realize is that the United States has somewhere around 2,000 four-year colleges and universities, and the vast majority of those don’t have Harvard-style teaching loads. There are hundreds of places where even tenured professors have what is called a 4-4 teaching load (4 courses per semester), and are also supposed to produce something in the way or research and/or publications. > > In many of these colleges, there is simply no such thing as a TA. My wife is tenure-track faculty in the Cal State system, and they have no TAs to rely on when teaching their courses. The professors not only teach all their own classes, they do all their own grading as well. > > When you are teaching 3 or 4 classes a semester, and doing all your own prep and grading, the teaching alone is easily a 40-hour-a-week job, usually more. This is the case in the humanities, anyway, where grading essays for a class of 50 or 100 students can literally take days if you want to do it properly, with proper feedback on their work. And none of that even touches on the service requirements (faculty committees, job search committees, student advising, etc.) that academics have to do, nor on the fact that if you actually want to get tenure, you need to produce some peer-reviewed articles or a scholarly monograph or two. > > And for all of this you go to college for four years, getting pretty much straight A’s all along the way, and then spend anywhere from 4-7 years getting your PhD, to be rewarded in most cases with a salary in the princely range of $40,000 - $60,000 for an Assistant Professor. > > Yes, the profs at the top 50 or so research universities have it pretty damn good, as far as teaching goes. But some of these folks also put out multiple field-changing articles and books over the course of their career. And there are literally thousands of professors, at all levels from Assistant Prof through to full Professor, who get by with high teaching loads, modest salaries, and the same sort of constant productivity pressures that you would get in some mid-level business job. > > I’m not arguing that it’s the worst job in the world. It clearly isn’t, and it has a lot of rewards. But many of the traditional benefits of being a prof (getting to teach what you want; determining the direction of your own research; spending your summers doing work on things you love; setting your own hours) are being gradually undermined by the demands of teaching, and by budget cuts that pay professors less and expect them to do more. > > As i said earlier, the Cal State and UC systems have just cut faculty and staff salaries across the board, have jacked up tuition, and are currently contemplating increasing teaching loads even further next semester. And it’s not just California, and it’s not just public universities. Bless you, mhendo. You just described my life: many years of expensive education; hired at the pay range you mentioned; no TAs; grading hundreds of essays a month with no help; long hours of grading, planning, writing, developing. At some universities I suppose professors have cushy jobs, but not at mine. On top of that, over the last decade or so the student body has changed, so now I have to contend with lots of whining, cajoling, rebelling, eye-rolling and overall disrespect from students. I’ve been teaching since before most of them were born, yet apparently they all know more about the subject I teach than I do. I can’t figure out why they’re paying to go to school when they already know everything there is to know. Apparently they think they should hand us a check and we should hand them a diploma. ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/54 "2009-08-27T03:18:53Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Really? Because when teacher’s in this thread complain about low “summer productivity” (Spoiler alert: in the real world, you have to work throughout _the whole year!_), it sort of undermines your claim. I would be remiss as a teacher to point out that you meant “teachers,” not “teacher’s.” It would also help if you knew what you were talking about. I’m a tenure-track faculty member at a major research university. So essentially the day classes let out, and I have fewer obligations on campus, I’m required to produce research that will appear in top-tier journals or major presses. I actually teach in the summer as well. I did as a matter of fact teach middle and elementary school. First, I had to work another job in the summer - as a single guy living in a relatively inexpensive city (Houston) because the $20K I was bringing home wasn’t enough to live on. Second, teachers are required to do certification work and attend inservice trainings year round. And some of us give a damn about doing a good job, so there’s curriculum review and doing things to enhance our teaching. God forbid if there’s new state standards that you have to align your curriculum to as well. I’m not going to bitch about my job; I feel lucky to have it, and I really enjoy it 95% of the time. But I manage to respect other fields; I have no idea why others find it hard to respect mine. No idea why you felt the need to drop this steamer in the thread. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/55 "2009-08-27T03:28:30Z")
ITT: teacher hater gets schooled ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_Stream](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c2a13f/32.png) [@Carol\_Stream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_Stream)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/56 "2009-08-27T04:15:04Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > I have him for 4 of my 5 classes including the the 8:30 AM to 9:30 PM Thursday classes, except aerobics. Aerobics is a university-level class now? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/57 "2009-08-27T04:17:58Z")
Now? It has been for at least 25 years. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/58 "2009-08-27T04:29:17Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Now? It has been for at least 25 years. Aerobics classes? Low “summer productivity”? Having to dispense with your afternoon nap on really busy days? Oh my goodness gracious! I’m convinced. I take it all back. University is soooooo hard. ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_Stream](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c2a13f/32.png) [@Carol\_Stream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_Stream)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/59 "2009-08-27T04:37:39Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Aerobics classes? Low “summer productivity”? Having to dispense with your afternoon nap on really busy days? > > Oh my goodness gracious! I’m convinced. I take it all back. University is soooooo hard. Don’t forget having to get up at the ungodly hour of 7AM. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2009, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593/60 "2009-08-27T04:59:47Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Aerobics classes? Low “summer productivity”? Having to dispense with your afternoon nap on really busy days? > > Oh my goodness gracious! I’m convinced. I take it all back. University is soooooo hard. You’re still a fucking moron. > [@Carol\_Stream](#): > > Don’t forget having to get up at the ungodly hour of 7AM. :rolleyes: So are you. But that’s not even news, i guess. I’ve never quite understood the apparent moral deficiency some people attach to late rising. If person A goes to bed at 11 and gets up at 6, and person B goes to bed at 2 and gets up at 9, why is person B somehow lazier or less productive? There are times, especially when i’m not teaching, when i go to bed at 3 and don’t get up until 10 or 11. When i’m doing research and writing, i do some of my best work late at night. Would that work be somehow more valuable or interesting if it were carried out at 8.30am instead of 11.30pm? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ahead-pit-the-first-day-of-the-fall-semester/507593.md?page=4)