Comments on: College professor amongst least stressful jobs

By: Liv

Liv — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:41:06 +0000

I’m not a prof but I did start teaching recently at a post-secondary institution and now I understand why teaching can be very stressful. I think it might get better once you have more experience but the pressures can be high. It’s a different kind of pressure though from working in a corporate job (i work in an ad agency by day). not to say one is more stressful than another but they are different types of pressure.

One of the hardest things I think is the constant motivation and energy you have to give to students when you’re lecturing. it’s also hard to see when some students dont’ really want to try no matter what you do.

By: Trev

Trev — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:45:50 +0000

Academia never leaves you…until you leave academia.

Having both worked for (and resigned from) the federal government, and taught for a large private school, I would attribute the stress of a professor to the bureaucracy of the institution, more so than the job itself. Being responsible for the content of your own work, while not necessarily having complete control of content selection, would certainly be stressful.

I like Catherine’s comment though. Stress is growth!

“Get busy living, or get busy dying” – Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption (from within the most shackling of institutions)

By: The Necromancer

The Necromancer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:06:26 +0000

Perhaps the most stressful part of being an academic is that you are completely responsible for the content of your work. It is you and only you. This means it’s different from other jobs, where you can walk away on Friday afternoon and forget about it. Academia never leaves you. If that isn’t stress, I don’t know what is…

By: Beth

Beth — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:56:24 +0000

My experience has been that the teaching is the most stressful part of the job… it’s the research (and especially the constant applying for research grants), because that’s what profs get rewarded for. Which is why so many profs recycle their notes and don’t put much effort into their teaching – for many profs, it’s part of the job they have to do, but they don’t get rewarded for doing it well.

By: Catherine Novak

Catherine Novak — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:47:53 +0000

Raul (and Beth)
There is certainly a perception that a tenured prof has it made, and there are some in the field who believe the press. As a former student, I sure knew who thought that the job was “stress free” – the ones who had recycled their notes for the previous 10 years, and who didn’t seem to care. I was much happier in classes where the profs “brought their game”. I expect that they, like you, felt their job was stressful. Growth is stressful! No stress, no growth.

Having said that, would you really want your work to be stress-free?

By: Beth

Beth — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:52:38 +0000

Yeah, I saw that story in the news and thought “What BS!” Having to apply for grants, which are extremely difficult to get even with excellent research ideas and a great research track record, a SEVEN YEAR probationary period (i.e., “tenure track”) after a decade+ of education, very few jobs compared to the number of candidates (meaning you can very well have to move somewhere you don’t really want to live if you are so lucky as to get a job)… and this is all on top of the long, long hours you mention.

Also, I have no idea where the author of that article got the idea that professors get summers off, but summers are the time when you get to focus on your research, so that’s often when you do the *most* work, not less work!