Ferule & Fescue and those who comment on the blog note changes to sleep schedules, memory capacity, and ideas about deadlines. The first two of these are true of me as well. My schedule is all wonky. What academia often lets me do is indulge my own preferred biological sleep rhythms. I'm not exactly a night owl -- not like Paul, at least. If left to my own devices, I stay up until around 1, head to bed where it often takes me about an hour to really fall deeply asleep, and sleep until at least 10. Preferably 10:30. I have, on occasion, had to teach an 8:00 class, but I don't like it. I can get up for an early schedule, but I'd rather not. For a year or two in grad school, I never got to campus until at least noon. I had peers who would mock me for this, or look at me like a slacker. And while I certainly can have slacker tendencies, getting there at noon or later wasn't a reflection of that. I stayed on campus until 9. This particular peer was gone by 4. We were simply on different schedules.
Even now, really, I tend to work better after 4 p.m. It's often difficult for me to accept this, though. Instead of taking nights off, I often take late mornings "off." Then I work from 4-10, on and off.
What I do know is that I don't work well from home, even though I have a lovely home office. I'm too easily distracted. that's technically true on campus, too. There I have actual people to distract me, but it's easier to close my door and keep those distractions to a minimum. I should be able to do the same thing at home, but I have very little discipline, so it doesn't seem to work as well. There's a t.v., a bed, a dvd player, not to mention dishes, laundry, dusting, etc. Productive procrastination, as I call it (the second half of that list, at least).
The academic life has also, I think, contributed to a steady weight-gain. Now that can't be blamed solely on the academic life, but as I tend to spend a good chunk of my day sitting on my bum, it certainly doesn't help. I need to get to the gym, to take more walks, to do more physical activity, so it's my fault, too, but the academic life -- at least my academic life -- is pretty sedentary.
But the thing that, to me, most marks the academic life, at least my academic life, is what Sisyphus notes to F & F's post: the constant nagging guilt about work. There are no real days "off." While I may teach only 3 days a week this term, teaching is only one part of my job (those of you in academia know this well). If I'm not lesson planning, prepping, reading & commenting on student work, meeting with students, meeting with colleagues, reading for my own research, writing my own work, writing conference proposals, etc., etc., etc., I'm THINKING about lesson planning, prepping, reading, writing, meeting. It is constantly on my mind. Even when I've decided to take a bit of time off, to spend some time with my husband, to talk to friends, to go out, to take a walk, there's a part of my brain, my conscience, that is feeling guilty about the work I'm NOT doing.
Beej used to ask, "Do you have work to do today?" What he meant was, do you have time for me? Do we have time to hang out? To make plans? To have dinner? Whatever. But the question used to make me a little crazy. "Do you have work to do today?" I used to answer, "Yes. Always. I always always have work to do. But there's nothing that must be done by tomorrow." (unless there was) Because there is always something I could be doing, should be doing.
There are people, I hear, who are better at this than I am. Some are work-a-holics, working almost constantly. Non-work moments are few and far between, and they're not really desired. That's not me. But other people, I hear, are better at cordoning off 8-10 hours a day, spending that time focused on work, and are then able to take every night or every weekend off, guilt-free. I like that idea. I'm just not yet able to pull it off.
One other thing, and this is something I've been batting around with a few people lately. The academic life, at least for me so far, has been one marked by loss. I don't usually mean that quite literally, but academics often leave. So although I was in graduate school at the same place for 9 years, I went through about 4 major groups of friends. I was friends with my the people who started my MA with me. But most of them left after 2 years. Not all, happily, but most. And, for the most part, we lost touch. And so it went. Every few years a good friend or four would leave, until finally I was the one who had to leave. I think about my oldest sister who has been in the same town for almost 15 years. She has suffered losses there, real losses, but has many of the same friends she made in the first few years there. And her children have grown up with a few of the same friends. That sounds comforting to me.
Of course there are many many ways that the academy has changed me for the better. Even though many have left me and I have left many, I have met my best friends in graduate school. And I have found a calling -- I love teaching writing and rhetoric. And I have found, I hope, a home in a place I never would have imagined. But this is, I think, a long enough blog post already. So maybe a more specific post about the positive changes a little later.
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