Flextime and Educational Privilege

One of the things that kept me interested so long in pursuing an academic career was the "flexibility." What other job allows you to work the hours you want (ex. midnight to 2am) and still go for an impromptu beer with friends at 4pm on a Tuesday?

But I started reconsidering this idea of "time off" a while back. The complete sham of academia's flexibility was made abundantly clear to me this past Thanksgiving break when I asked friends, colleagues, and coworkers how their break was. My friends and coworkers at my hourly job all had wonderful, relaxing, enjoyable breaks. All of them. All my friends and academic colleagues lamented the fact that they "didn't get any work done" and all felt guilty about taking time off for family, turkey, football, drinking, etc. Now, I understand the guilt thing. I've lived it for the last 6 years. But this year, I didn't. And I had a hell of a nice break. Also, many of you know that I regularly takes weekends off to drive several states away. Now that I'm on the other side, having drank the 8-5/M-F koolaid, I want more.

And working outside the academic world give me more! Like so much more! It's called educational privilege. I have enough education that I can likely find a job that will give me "flexibility." Even if I didn't have a MA (and soon have a PhD [fingers crossed]) if I can score a job in a big organization, I can get so much vacation/floating holiday/sick time it's crazy. I've also learned from my self-employed father that if I strike out on my own, I can spend as much time in Florida as I want. I think because the last time I labored in a "real world" job fulltime was waitressing before grad school, I still think of work as a world of punchcards, shift trading headaches, and lost pay during time off. Not so my highly educated friends!

Now, as a poster to wrk4us wrote several weeks ago (21Feb2010), you might have to put in the time and do the standard 8-5 slog for a bit. But once you're at the company/organization/government department for a while (12 months maybe more, maybe less), and you've convinced them that you have learned the organization, you are competently finishing your assigned tasks, and you are a member of the work team/family/HRdribble then they'll likely agree to a flexible schedule. At my current alt-acad job, I have coworkers who come in at 7.30 and leave at 4. I have some that are gone every other Friday. Others who take long lunches and work till 5.30. Others who tele-commute. And some who do the 8-5. I work with less than 50 other people at this job. There is one meeting a week that all department heads and important people have to go to. One meeting. Other than that, people seem to come and go as life outside of work dictates. How many classes a week are you required to attend/teach/TA? Just saying.

If you decide to go the corporate route, here's some websites, another wrk4us poster recommended (on 21Feb2010):

http://www.workingmother.com/BestCompanies/node/1671/list
The "see full list" button is blue and underneath the Working Mother 100 Best Companies 2009 header.

http://www.flexpaths.com/connect/search-for-jobs
This is a sketchier website, but perhaps I'm turned off by its faux-sleekness. Still, it really does give you job listings if you select an industry and search. (I didn't specify location or keywords.) The touchyfeely blah blah that is the rest of the site didn't do much for me, but I just skimmed through it quickly.

On the one hand, I do feel salty about taking advantage of my educational privilege and using it, but on the other hand, I also feel salty about participating in the capitalist machine. Might as well do it somewhat on my own terms.