{"id":1181,"date":"2015-07-20T22:16:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T22:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2015-07-20T22:16:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T22:16:50","slug":"1181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/2015\/07\/20\/1181\/","title":{"rendered":"Work is work and it shouldn’t be expected on the weekends"},"content":{"rendered":"

written on December 27, 2013 and saved for publication until tenure<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A month or so ago, the STOC’14 PC chair took an informal poll of when we wanted the PC meeting: Friday & Saturday, Saturday & Sunday, Sunday & Monday. What the hell?\u00a0 Why not any two day combinations that don’t include a weekend day?\u00a0 So it doesn’t get in the way of work?\u00a0 What on Earth do you think a PC meeting is if not work?\u00a0 So it doesn’t get in the way of teaching?\u00a0 I am pretty sure all our department heads want us to go to conferences and take part in program committees and will happily accommodate a cancelled class or two or a sub by a graduate student or colleague.<\/p>\n

My response to the PC chair was: “I would greatly prefer Fri-Sat or Sun-Mon so it doesn’t take the whole weekend away from me.”\u00a0 In the background, my partner works in Portland during the week, and so we live apart during the week, and the weekend is the only time we have together.\u00a0 Also, committing to work a Saturday\/Sunday combination means 12 straight full days of work (on top of the cross country flight the program committee means) since taking a weekday off to compensate for the weekend is very difficult to arrange — guilt kicks in and I would inevitably work.\u00a0 On a very serious note, down time is key to “work life balance” also known as one’s mental health.\u00a0 We shouldn’t be defaulting to working on the weekend.\u00a0 Our conferences shouldn’t be on a weekend either.\u00a0 They should be on weekdays.\u00a0 Weekends are for rest and weekdays are for working.\u00a0 Anyone read about the labor movement?\u00a0 In speaking to friends with kids, particularly dual-career couples, travelling over the weekend is not cool.<\/p>\n

You know who doesn’t expect you to work on the weekend?\u00a0 NSF.\u00a0 Panels are on WEEKDAYS.\u00a0 You know who else?\u00a0 Europeans.\u00a0 Dagstuhls are run Monday to Friday.\u00a0 ESA is Monday to Wednesday.\u00a0 ICALP is Monday to Friday.<\/p>\n

So you know what?\u00a0 If you want to retain more people in our field, and you want to seriously push work-life balance, you shouldn’t plan work events on weekends.\u00a0 Keep them to weekdays.<\/p>\n

Sheesh.<\/p>\n

Oh, the STOC PC meeting was Saturday\/Sunday.\u00a0 THANKS.<\/p>\n

continued January 18, 2014:<\/em><\/p>\n

Continued annoyance in regards to the STOC PC.\u00a0 We have been asked, late on a Friday afternoon to pick 2 papers out of a stack of 40 to provide extra reviews.\u00a0 By Sunday at 3PM.\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 I know we are all expected to work ALL THE TIME and are supposed to LIKE THAT.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 I don’t.\u00a0 I am tired of this expectation and I would like to protect some time to be free of work commitments.\u00a0 Choosing papers for STOC is not so important that some task needs to be completed in a 2 day span over a weekend.<\/p>\n

continued February 6, 2014:<\/em><\/p>\n

There has been another emergency “feedback needed within 48 hours” emailed out on a Friday evening.\u00a0 This<\/a> is timely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

written on December 27, 2013 and saved for publication until tenure A month or so ago, the STOC’14 PC chair took an informal poll of when we wanted the PC meeting: Friday & Saturday, Saturday & Sunday, Sunday & Monday. What the hell?\u00a0 Why not any two day combinations that don’t include a weekend day?\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2690,187578,106184,106190],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conference","tag-post-tenure-posts","tag-rant","tag-tcs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}