Mark D. White

Mark D. White

Over at Prawfsblawg, Elizabeth Dale, who teaches history and law at the University of Florida, has an extremely thought-provoking post about sabbaticals for full-time professors, wondering if the original purpose–scholarly rejuvenation and renewal–has been replaced by "catching up" with work one wasn't able to complete during the normal academic terms and breaks.

From the end of her post (after she compares her sabbatical time with her normal working experience):

If sabbaticals supposed to be a time of rest and rejuvination, I blew this one.  I joke (much to the annoyance of my colleagues who are not on leave) that I am going to need a sabbatical to recover from my sabbatical. But truth be told, apart from reading a lot of mysteries (which I would probably have done if I was working normally) and occasonally meeting people for lunch, I have not exactly been frivoling away my time. Partly that's because you can't exactly afford to frivol when you are on half pay, but partly its because I've been so busy working to catch up I haven't had the time or energy to take a month off to see the sights or smell the daisies. That having been said, I don't want to complain too much–I'm working 7-8 hour days, not 10-12 hour days. That is a break, even if it's hardly time lazing in the sun.

But that suggests the other side of the problem. If I'm  working that much, and falling behind, during a normal year, then there's either something wrong with me, or something wrong with a normal year.

I'm inclined to think that there are problems with what are seen as normal academic expectations. We'll need to return to that in a future post (this one is too long as it is).  But my take away for today is that my sense is that even for tenured faculty, the demands of the rest of the time are such that sabbaticals are a time of trying to stay on track or play catch up, rather than a time of R&R, academic renewal and intellectual growth.  Or, to put it another way, distortions in ournormal working conditions are, to significant extent, undermining the original purpose of the sabbatical.

There is also some interesting discussion brewing in the comments section regarding sabbatical procedures over time and across different universities–well worth a look.

UPDATE: Professor Dale has a follow-up post here, with additional valuable insights.