Junior government and politics major
When considering my ideal profession, I don’t have to look far. Our academic overlords, commonly known as professors, have a pretty sweet setup — or at least those with tenured or tenure-track positions. In addition to unparalleled job security or the opportunity to secure it in a few years, academics are among the minority of professionals that seem to actually enjoy what they do at work.
It makes perfect sense. In their research, academics choose to delve into topics that animate them. Personally, I’m more drawn to the humanities and pouring over oodles and oodles of interesting books, and fleshing out Big Important Ideas™ sounds like a kind of professional utopia. And, if you were intensely interested in a topic, planning out lectures and facilitating discussions wouldn’t be such a struggle.
Taking a quick glance at this university’s professors’ course loads and office hours, it’s remarkable how little time they are actually required to spend with students. Most professors teach a meager two courses a semester, and each course usually lasts a combined two-and-a-half hours a week, assuming that the course isn’t split between a professor lecturing and a teaching assistant managing the discussion sections. Add the two courses together, and combine that figure with a (probably high) estimate of two hours a week for office hours, and you arrive at a seven-hour time commitment to students. On top of that, some professors manage to knock out all of their teaching in two days, and many aren’t present on the campus all five days of the regular work week.
Of course, any professor would attest to working way more than seven hours in a given week. The best devote significant time and energy to planning out lessons, grading papers, conducting research and writing letters of recommendation.
In sum, the multitude of responsibilities professors have requires them to work well beyond the hours they are with students. And while this workload may approach or even surpass the time commitments of other professions, the flexibility of the job allows professors manageable schedules, the ability to spread out their work throughout the week and ample opportunity to work from home. Reading an engrossing book (for research or class preparation) while rocking polka-dot pajamas and smoking a cigar doesn’t sound like the worst way to get paid — and it’s a huge step up from 8 to 5 Fridays.
By referencing The Diamondback’s fantastic salary guide, it’s possible to get an estimate of the average salaries of professors in a given department or the salary of an individual professor (isn’t transparency wonderful?). Some do pretty well, although there are large earning disparities among fields; for instance, the average economist does much better than the average art historian. Of course, tenured and tenure-track professors earn substantially more than adjuncts and lecturers as well.
Tenure is a highly coveted status, and tenure-track positions are extremely difficult to attain. It is, after all, a dream job.
Charlie Bulman is a junior government and politics and history major. He can be reached at cbulmandbk@gmail.com.
