Academic schedule flexibility masks ever-accessible unbounded work hours

Evidence

Like the aspirational laborers chronicled in this book, academics are afforded some freedom to set our own schedules—though this obviously varies based on the institution and the organizational culture. Certain phases of the year—summer and winter breaks, for instance—allow for spatial flexibility (i.e., teleworking), too. I, for one, did much of my sabbatical writing from home, and many college campuses are eerily quiet during the summer. Yet there are trade-offs for these ostensible freedoms: much like online entrepreneurs, academics are compelled to remain ever-accessible—to students, faculty colleagues, collaborators, and more. Work hours bleed into all moments of the day, and deadlines come at a frenetic pace. As the joke goes, “There’s a lot of flexibility in the academy; you can work whatever 80 hours a week you want!” There’s more than a kernel of truth here; indeed, I found myself nodding with gusto as my interviewees detailed overflowing inboxes, vacation-induced angst, and laptops as steady bedside companions. — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 618

Categorization

• SHARE: The joke ‘you can work whatever 80 hours a week you want’ is worth sending to any academic friend who will laugh-cry.
• XREF: connects to: Worker flexibility often functions as a euphemism for precarity — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 571; Women’s lower self-citation yields competence-versus-likability penalties in academia — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 621; Smart scheduling replaces stable workforces with unpredictable just-in-time temp shifts (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Smart scheduling replaces stable workforces with unpredictable just-in-time temp shifts #expands (0.85)
• Flexible gig work shifts organizational risks onto individual workers #expands (0.85) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 39
• The timetable imposes abstract clock-time as the frame for all activity #expands (0.82)
• Free time must differ from work so that work can resume effectively #complicates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 259
• Timetables impose abstract time onto bodily activity as an external frame #expands (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 259
• Technology enabled work to consume every waking moment across time zones. #expands (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 317
• Conscript discipline required isolation and rigid scheduling beyond mere punitive law #complicates (0.72) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 726
• Sharing’s semantic unboundedness masks the corporate capture of data #exemplifies (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 514