When I went shopping with my Mom today, she wondered (as it seems that some of my colleagues also do, judging on their wondrous looks when they see me at the university) why I went to my office every day and seem to do work. 'But you don't have any obligations for your university anymore, do you? You handed in your dissertations?'. Disregarding my strange situation of still receiving a salary from the university, and thereby actually having obligations although I am supposedly 'done' (whatever done means), I had to explain that being a researcher (or trying to become one by profession, the whole purpose of attempting to get a PhD) is not just writing the obvious dissertation and teaching poor students how to program. Research involves numerous levels of bureaucratic elements of filling in forms (spend a whole morning making budget for my next conference, getting hotel etc.), giving these forms to the right people and faxing proof of student status (!) to conference managers. Moreover comes the responsibility to the community as a whole in the shape of reviewing conference/journal papers and committee work, which does not go away, even in the case that I did not have a job. Those things are unrelated to who provides the bread on your table, who furnishes your office and what country you live in. So when people wonder what I do in my office from 9 to 5 (alright, 9 to 9 yesterday and 10 to 2 today), I think again of how many things we as researchers have to do on top of all the 'fun' work. Not that I have ever doubted that these extra things are not part of the job and not that I don't like doing these (booking hotels are mostly fun when the nice hotels have rooms available, reviewing papers is always very insightful). But when you explain to others what kind of work you do, these extras are often omitted due to the focus on the exciting parts. This apparently results in confusion to what I am doing running around at the university, working in my office and typing at my laptop at night. (I sometimes wonder myself...) But as depressingly clever people say:
Life is what happens when you are busy doing something else.
I therefore decided to make sure that I enjoy doing the little bureaucratic everyday things; voluntary work is supposed to be fun and worth doing. No matter how busy ones life become it is important not to get lost in practicalities but instead see them as part of life/work and enjoy them as much as the 'real' work.
Posted by Louise at October 20, 2004 11:02 PM