That’s why I didn’t back-rant you about my SC dad who spent all his time at work, paid zero attention to his family, was an abusive malignant narcissist and refused to give my mom enough money to run the house and outfit us kids for school but thought nothing of spending literally half his considerable salary (IBM VP/Sales) on himself and his hobbies. He had a closet full of bespoke suits and we shopped in thrift stores. Trust me, assholes abound in every group!
See how easy it is to get defensive about this stuff? It seems like a topic rife for judgment, even when it’s not our intent.
I wanted to add one thing for context about my work schedule. I have a severe biologically based mental illness and I have had it all my life. I don’t have severe depression always, but it can be pretty debilitating at times, starting with my hospitalization at age 19 and necessitating a medical withdrawal from college (I eventually returned.) Neither my childhood nor genetics have been kind to me so I have all kinds of psychological things going on at any given moment.
I’ve lost jobs due to depression. I’ve had long (1+ years) periods of unemployment due to depression. I’m not even sure 60 hours a week is feasible for me. I worked that much in grad school but I was really passionate and determined to get through grad school, and it was really very difficult. The only job I had that required that much time, I was so miserable it came down to either killing myself or walking out, and I walked out. (There were all kinds of things wrong with that job, not just the time.) I’m not proud of any of that, it’s pretty fucking embarrassing, actually. But it’s just an issue I have.
Part-time work is a lifesaver in this regard. It can handle the ups and downs that my chronic illnesses throw at me. If I literally do nothing for an entire day due to depression, I can recover the next day without it affecting my job performance, and I don’t feel like I’ve fallen behind, thus getting more depressed, missing more time, etc. It’s not that I’m incapable of holding down a full-time job most of the time, it’s that it’s not optimal and exposes me to greater risk of mental health complications. Part-time work also gives me the freedom to get therapeutic and psychotropic intervention as soon as I need it rather than dealing with the complications of time off during full-time work. As long as I meet my deadlines, my job is really flexible around my schedule.
So AFAIC, this is the best possible situation for me currently, and my husband recognizes that too. He is really supportive of my fiction and I’m good enough (and hard-working enough) that it’s not unreasonable to think we will eventually draw some sort of part-time income from that investment. I don’t expect to be rich and famous but even $5,000 a year would help, and that is a completely reasonable goal.
Up until this point, I have not had an easy life. I’ve had major disruptions in my career plans, including being forced to leave multiple jobs I loved, due to my husband’s graduate school needs, on top of the depression and severe PTSD. Somehow I not only made it through college With Honors, I got into one of the best graduate schools in the country for my field and nailed my work there, too. It wasn’t a progress = straight line kinda deal, tons of setbacks. I made it really just through sheer force of will. And that sort of thing required adjusting my expectations at every step. So maybe it’s not what people think about when they think of a highly successful career-driven person, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done with the limitations I’ve had to deal with. Mental illness is still highly stigmatized and I hate sort of inviting further shame onto myself by explaining how depression affects my ability to hold down a job, but it’s my reality.
I agree with wonky. I don’t know about other bosses in other workplaces, but I think my bosses do plenty of real work. They do a lot of stuff that I personally wouldn’t want to do for all the money in the world, but that doesn’t mean the work ain’t real.
The executive staff all have offices where I work and it makes perfect sense to me. They are more likely to have people randomly dropping by needing to talk about things, for one. As for ‘‘real work,’’ they bust their asses. Those are the kind of jobs you work infinite hours. Hell, my CEO is doing her job full-time on top of a part-time Ph.D. program. I have no clue how she does it. I already know I don’t want my boss’s job because I had it once (at a different organization) and it was a ton of time pressure, a ton of responsibility, and in so many other ways not for me (you have to talk to people, for one!) Those people deserve their offices.
Despite the challenges I have enumerated, I would genuinely consider going full-time for this organization. I could do so much cool shit with that time. The new CEO believes I am underutilized (and I agree), so it wouldn’t surprise me if it heads that way eventually. I’m hoping for some major professional development over the next couple of years, based on recent conversations we’ve had - getting the opportunity to write much larger grants, to become a participant in funding talks with major donors, to serve on a Grants Review Board, etc. I do my best (least depressed and anxious) work when I have clear expectations, routinely get positive feedback, and am trusted to creatively improve the system as needed, and all of those things are in place where I work. But I have no desire to push it, I’m just going to slowly create more work for myself and see how it shakes out. So, really, that drive to do more is there. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance for my life.
I wasn’t being at all critical. It’s just that I find work/life balance so elusive, and I’m so conflicted about it. I work with a lot of people who work 40 hour weeks. And they are entitled to. That’s what they get paid for. But in doing so, they leave kids in bad situations, and then it’s on the rest of us to decide what to do about it. Take recommendation letters. We have probably 75 kids who apply to schools where they need a good rec. A good rec is not a form letter: if it’s a really strong student applying to a very top program, everyone will have excellent stats and the rec and the essay are literally everything. They can’t get in if they don’t have a recommendation that will help them stand out from the other high achievers, that goes beyond the numbers to show what they will bring to an academic community. For weaker kids, the recommendation is also vital: it contextualizes the soft spots in the application and highlights real successes that might otherwise go unnoticed. A good rec isn’t sufficient, but it’s necessary, and can literally earn a poor kid with no resources hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial aid. A kid’s whole future might hang in the balance (or it might not, but you never know which cases it made the difference in).
Good recs are HARD to write. They take me 1-3 hours, and I’m about as efficient at this as I think it’s possible for a person to be. And it’s not an easy three hours: it’s mentally and emotionally draining. So about half the teachers–out of 20–on our faculty just don’t write them, or write such poor ones that it’s no better than no rec (they write form letters, or regurgitate the resume). And really, it’s charity work: it’s not their job. I do get that. But their refusal to work more than 40 hours a week, their dedication to the idea that they “work to live, not live to work” is the reason I write 40-45 of these a year, at a real cost to my sanity. But intellectually, I know that they aren’t any more obligated than some stranger on the street, and I don’t resent strangers on the street.
I don’t know what the point is to this. I resent the free spirit types in a lot of ways because if everyone contributed more, I could perhaps do less. But I can clearly see the argument that it’s on me to do less, to find that balance. But then some kid asks for a recommendation and I know he’s sunk without one, and I just can’t see myself ever saying no. I can’t imagine anything I’d do with that three hours that’s worth his future. But I’m also so tired and burned out that I suspect this isn’t sustainable.
First, because the kids may not know what a huge gift you’ve given them, thank you for giving that huge gift when you can. I, too, know the importance of a strong recommendation letter. I’ve been fortunate to have teachers and mentors who wrote them for me, both in high school and in later schooling (including one amazing university professor who remembered me after nearly 20 years and wrote the most personal recommendation. I was blown away (and she also started using my sonnets in her classroom, which was the most flattering thing that ever happened to anyone)).
An idea that has worked for me in the past: Do you ask the kids to write something for you to use in your letters? What are they trying to accomplish, how do you know them (what classes, particular assignments), times when they have earned your praise, times when they may have needed to do more to wow you, etc. That might serve two purposes: 1. If the kid doesn’t, well, you were willing, but they need to rise to meet you, and 2. something about it may serve as a jumping off point. When I’ve done recommendation letters, I’ve appreciated having something from the person that I can weave in, something that they value. Of course, if they write something terrible and useless, you don’t want to use it, but I’ve had good success when giving recommendations to ask the askee to do a little grunt work, too! For me, editing something someone else started is always easier than starting from scratch, even when I don’t keep any of the original.
They have a 35-question short answer questionaire to fill out that is accessible not just to me but to the entire faculty. It takes them about 10 hours and all juniors complete it as their AP English final exam grade. Having more information doesn’t make the process quicker–it just gives you a much better result. In fact, it makes it take longer, because when you have more context for what a kid has done, there is more to include.
I do know how to do this: I present nationally on it. I also go to every department at my school and present on how to do this. I have written templates and guidelines and provided samples. I backread and edit. I have trained up 3 colleagues to do the same–they are also very good. But at the end of the day, it takes time, and not enough people are willing to put the time in. And it’s hard not to resent that.
It really , really depends on what kind of job you are talking about and what you are including as “work”. When people talk about working more than 40 hours a week, they are generally talking about a particular type of work. They are usually talking about either doing the same sort of work for all of the hours or having time and/or location restraints regarding the extra work. They are generally not including in those hours any activities that are for their own professional development or education , and they are not including thinking or planning that occurs outside of work hours but doesn’t interfere with their personal life.
So when I say I try not to work more than 40 hours a week, it doesn't mean my brain shuts off and I stop having any more thoughts about work after 40 hours have passed. It means I'm not counting the three hours on Saturday and two on Sunday I spent thinking about how to solve a problem while I was folding the laundry and doing other household chores. It means I'm not counting the time I spent on my couch reading a book that might help me do my job better. It means I try not to be in my office after 4:30 doing the same work I started doing at 8:30 in the morning.
Teachers are kind of a special case. For the most part, the teachers I know do very different work after class lets out for the day and on weekends - they're either grading papers, or coaching a team, or directing a play, or holding parent/teacher conferences or ... And those things are not just different work than what the teacher is doing 9-3 , but there are often time/place constraints involved. Sure, maybe a teacher can grade those papers on Tuesday instead of Monday if it's more convenient - but she probably can't put off grading the papers for weeks. And practices/games/rehearsals/performances/conferences occur at set times and places. So I can see why a teacher would include that time and consider herself to be working more than 40 hours a week.
But for lots and lots of jobs, even “not lame” ones, the reason people work more than 40 hours is simply to make more money. Maybe it’s a nurse who has a regular full-time schedule of 3 twelve hour shifts , but she picks up an extra shift every week for the overtime. Or a salesman who works 60 hours a week instead of 40 because more customers means more sales means more income- but more customers also means more time.Or a lawyer who takes a job at a firm that expects 60 hours a week - but pays better than the jobs that expect only 40.
Your field sounds similar to mine in that, there’s always someone in need. The supply of people in need is endless. But I get some distance from it because I’m not dealing with individuals but the organization as a whole. I don’t leave work for other people to do, nobody else I work with can do the specific work I do, and I control my own workflow by deciding what projects to pursue and which ones to let go. And it’s rare that I have an issue so urgent it can’t wait for the following week. I’m not like someone in Residential Shelter who has to stay and do a double shift because someone else is sick and there’s a woman standing outside the door right now who just got the shit beat out of her and has no place to live. The nature of my work is toward long-term strategic goals, not individuals in crisis.
But burnout is incredibly common in fields like ours, where there is always someone in need. Because we are good people and we can’t turn our backs on someone who needs us. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but at some point, we have to accept that enough is enough. You could work nonstop and never cover all the need out there. And if you keep up at this outrageous pace relative to your coworkers, you could very likely burn out completely and not be of much use to anyone. It’s one of those situations where everything seems urgent but you have to keep the long game in mind, somehow. You’ve pretty well explained why I couldn’t go into clinical social work, though. I chose macro practice specifically because it gives me that distance. I tried clinical social work as an intern, and it made me into a complete wreck. And I have seen people go completely overboard with this. My MIL took on a client into a dual relationship (against code of ethics), inviting him into her home, treating him like a son, hanging out with him regularly, having her husband exercise with him every morning, and then he committed suicide. Let’s just say it didn’t really benefit anyone for a long time.
I still get those moments, sometimes, when I’m recounting statistics or something, or trying to document a survivor story, where the problem just seems so big and I am so small by comparison. I’ve also met people in passing or whatever who were being victimized and had a hard time not taking on responsibility for their situation. But nothing I do ever feels like enough. When it’s 20 hours, it’s not enough, when it’s 40 hours, it’s not enough, it’s just never enough. I think I have learned to accept that part of the job is never feeling like it’s enough.
+1. I hated when professors just told me to write something up about myself and they would sign it. One of the best recommendation letters I ever received was from my former President, it opened something like, ‘‘In order to understand the impact Spice had on X Organization, it is necessary to understand the situation she walked into.’’ He then goes on to describe this complete crisis point in the organization and how I helped to turn it around. It was strangely vulnerable of him because he’s describing all these problems at his own organization. I’ve consistently heard from subsequent bosses that that letter makes a huge impression on them. Sometimes I read it when I feel like a complete failure.
You’re doing good work, Manda. I think there are certain jobs, in certain contexts, where extra time is just a requirement to make the labor distribution fair to everyone. And people (meaning your coworkers) either need to accept that or find a new job. My husband would love to work 40 hours a week, but as a clinical psychologist, it’s not a a realistic goal for him. It’s just the nature of the work he chose.
Apologies if you thought I was doubting that.
I’m sorry that I was short.
LOL. You know women are having a conversation when… Effusive apologies.
Yep. I’m not dealing with individuals but the Medicare program as a whole (and to a lesser extent the rest of the health care system). The need is big. I get calls all the time from people who don’t know what I don’t do. They call me to beg me to do something for them, to fix their Medicare coverage, to help them with a bill, to figure out a provider. My mental mantra, which I will sometimes say if I think they’ll get a laugh out of it, is “You’ve reached the right circus, but the wrong monkey.”