When I was a kid, I got used to the idea that summers were my own. That’s thanks to the way the U.S. school system works, starting in August and ending in June of the next year. Summers were a time for play in my youth, yard work and play in my teens, a job and music in early college, physics research and music in late college, and then physics research in graduate school. The progression from play to steady employment was slow enough that I didn’t notice. By the time I became a post-doc, summers were the crunch time, all prep-work for conferences and no play. Of course, the lack of play led to stress-related health issues that I am still learning to tackle. The lesson: play is important.
As a faculty member, I am first struck by the perception that many students have about what a faculty member does during the summer. Their first instinct is to assume that you have the summer off. The second instinct is to recognize that you’re doing research (or teaching, depending on your track), but to fail to understand how draining that is. For instance, many students don’t seem to realize that to work on the LHC you have to spend time at CERN . . . away from your spouse . . . and home. It’s stressful, but necessary, and certainly not different from what hundreds of other physicists are doing at CERN this summer.
I’ve realized how non-existent my summer is, to the point where I can’t even plan for a summer side project this year. As soon as classes ended, I had a week to recover before the SMU Society of Physics Students trip to California, which I chaperoned (c.f. [1]). That drained me. It was fun – a LOT of fun, actually – but the irregular sleep schedule, plus constant driving and walking and planning . . . it took its toll. I had a few days with family, and one day with Jodi, before my latest travel: to Brookhaven National Lab for the Brookhaven Forum 2010 [2]. I’m speaking here, and while writing a talk for an invited parallel session presentation is a piece of cake at my age, it’s still time away from Jodi and home.
All of this is in the context of the next few months. In mid-June, I’ll be relocating to CERN until Aug. 1. Thanks to the generosity of my friends at CERN, I have a few places to call home for the summer (so as not to burden any one person). In addition, I’ll be starting my own effort on ATLAS with a post-doctoral researcher, also moving to CERN in June, and with a summer graduate student who will accompany me to CERN for the summer.
August will bring a few weeks of down time, including a MUCH NEEDED vacation (I haven’t even started the major summer work and yet I already know in my heart that I desperately need a vacation). It will also bring the need to prep for teaching next semester, which will be MUCH different than teaching was this past semester (pre-med students instead of engineers and physics majors/minors). I’ll be sneaking class prep work into the summer, so as to relieve the burden in August. But it’s a lot to think about.
Nobody said being faculty was easy, and it’s not. But it’s a metric shit-ton of fun, even if it’s exhausting. I just hope I survive to my vacation in August, and I hope I can get my batteries back to where they need to be in preparation for my 50 pre-meds, my post-doc, and my research students.
[1] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/goingupalleys/category/event/smu-sps-trip-to-slacsilicon-valley/
