Invisible* - Clay Aiken

I was greeted this morning by an e-mail from the director of the Teaching and Learning Center which led me to this article entitled "Invisible Hours". Basically, it's regarding all the extra unseen hours a lecturer has to put in. Here are some excerpts:-

Much of my real work takes place outside the classroom and the campus, and is performed during what my first department head referred to as "invisible" time. If a faculty member falls in a forest, or grades papers alone until midnight, and no one sees or hears her, does that accountable time still exist? Does she? ...

What, exactly, are we doing when no one's watching? We're reading new editions and preparing to use them in our courses. The booming used-book business has forced publishers to compensate by issuing new editions at a rapid rate -- in some instances, yearly. With a new edition or an old one, it takes 10 or more hours to prepare for a seminar.

We're also reading and evaluating student work. It can take an hour or more to grade a single paper; a semester's worth of my students' papers is the equivalent of War and Peace (a rather bad translation of War and Peace). ...

When, then, does the invisible time we need to do our jobs actually come into play?

The answer is during all available "free" slots -- any weekdays hours without a scheduled class (I gave up those daily lunches in the campus bistro long ago), late afternoons, late nights, early mornings, Sundays, summer days not already devoted to in-class time, and most major holidays.

I've graded papers while the Thanksgiving turkey was in the oven, prepped Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth at 2 a.m. in a conference hotel, and read Samuel Beckett's Endgame at Little League practice.

The writer estimates a total of 60 hours a week is spent when she takes into account the "invisible hours".

To be honest, after just one week, i'll be happy if my hours a week are anywhere near the ballpark of 60!!!! There's just so much to read, to research, to investigate, to read, to prepare, to rehearse (yes, as one of me mates put it, it's a performance each ime you step into a class), to read, to think... and did i mention to read????

I spent a big part of last Saturday going online and looking for materials (which includes going to youtube, hehehe) to illustrate me lessons. Last nite, as the super boring Bible teacher rambled on and on, my mind was thinking of the things i can say to me students to inspire and encourage them. I even blog about things i'm learning at work (someone shoot me when i start blogging about the definition of "Family" in Family Law and the elements of the crime of theft...).

So to those who envy me because on paper, i'll prolly only have less than 5 hours of lectures a week and 40 days of vacation a year, dun. A 60 hour week will prolly mean i had been slacking off!!!

But still, i'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to it. And at the end of the day, i hope to be able to say what the writer of the abovementioned article said:-

And most of those days, it seemed worth it. This is, after all, the life I wished for (although I've come to wish for just a little bit less of it).

*The first single from the debut album of Clay Aiken - in my view, it doesnt do justice to his talent!