As of last Monday (September 26) we had made it about a third of the way through the Fall Semester. Out of curiosity, I decided to run some numbers, just to see how I was doing with my “Time Manipulation” Project. Over the past six weeks, I had worked 292.25 hours. Now, if I was a normal person working a 40 hour a week job, I would have only worked 240 hours during that same time frame. I averaged 48 hours a week on the job. The majority of my time went to teaching (36 percent), followed closely by administrative duties (30 percent). Twenty percent of my time was engaged in research. The rest of my time went to service (6 percent) and an awkward category called “Other” (8 percent) which is where I dump things like cleaning my office, updating my to-do list, and dealing with non-student office visitors. During these six weeks, 16 percent of my time was spent in some kind of meeting.
These numbers, however, have been influenced by the week that I only worked 17.25 hours because I was pretty damned sick: sick enough that I sent The Coach to the store at 3 in the morning. Sick enough that I took two sick days. Sick enough that all I could do was sleep and watch Netflix.
So, I ran the numbers without that week and ended up with an average that seems more representative of my time spent on the job. These numbers indicated that I spent 37 percent of my time on teaching duties and 29 percent of my time on administrative duties. All the other percentages stayed the same. The average hours worked per week also jumped up to 55.
That’s right. This lazy, fat cat professor averaged 55 hours a week.
No wonder my house is so damned dirty.