But seriously, can we, as members of society, ever take breaks? I get this feeling that, for many people, life is just an endless cycle of deadlines. (Well...I actually don't feel like that applies to me necessarily, but sometimes I do feel like taking a break.) If it isn't cycles of writing papers or grading, it's the necessity to pay bills, pay the rent, pay the mortgage...to go shopping so that the fridge is stocked, to sleep so that we don't break down, to change clothes so that we don't get treated badly by other clean, well-dressed people in the world. Wow, talk about demanding.
At least when I worked in an office I felt like I had weekends...although in hindsight, there are numerous occupations where you are on the clock 24-7, where there is really no weekend, where you are on-call even after you drive home...oh my, work (and the feeling of having to make money just to make ends meet) is oppressive.
I wonder, though, how this might differ specifically for people in academia. We're not really on anyone's clock, except for maybe the tenure clock. If we don't get our work done, the only people who suffer are...us (we? ourselves?). If we do badly, we're just letting ourselves down. Some people in academia probably don't even get paid that much. Working conditions may be less than ideal. There may be no health insurance. Maybe no job security. But still, the occupation of "teacher" (or even better, "professor") still remains a somewhat high-status occupation in the United States. So, are people in academic subject to this cycle of deadlines differently?
Why is it that we feel like we can't even take a break once in a while? (Of course there is the response that some people really like what they do for a living/job, and thus there is no need for breaks. Or there is the all-consuming "once I get tenure" mantra... Hmm, these questions are too complicated for my tiny brain right at this moment...
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