A sabbatical year

In the Philippines, being a professor isn’t the highest paying job. However, a select few enjoy a benefit that many more glamorous and highly paid professionals do not have: the sabbatical leave.

In my institution, those who have achieved the rank of associate professor and full professor can take a year off every seven years – with pay.

The rationale is very simple. To remain an expert one has to read to catch up on a fast-increasing body of information. Then one has to think about this new information. If the opportunity arises, it is helpful to seek other scholars in other institutions, to exchange ideas.

I have a few weeks left before I end my sabbatical year.

What I can report will make some types of managers happy. It will make those types of managers, whom I call “the bean counters,” not too happy

The good managers and the bean counters will be happy to note that in the course of my sabbatical, I finished writing a book which is now in publication. They will be happy to note furthermore, that I did the final revisions of a book chapter that will be published abroad. They will be pleased that I attended several conferences where I presented papers or served as a resource person. I continued leading a major research project, advised several thesis students and sat on the defense of several theses. All these are quantifiable proofs of my productivity.

Lazy? Who are they calling lazy?

What the bean counters will not be too pleased with is the other side of my sabbatical: I just hung around a lot and chilled.

I had lunches with family, friends and acquaintances where the conversations were only academic if they made me look charming or loveable. (Not that my colleagues and loved ones cared about my silly attempts to look good.) I got lots of big and little tasks done. I went away for two weeks to hang around in the University of Kyoto to catch up on my email, good beef, temples and the latest academic gossip among the Philippine Studies people.

Then, I decided that doing nothing was an absolute must. But this was a task which I almost did not achieve given today’s intrusive, always-accessible-online, world. It took me a lot of discipline in order to be idle.

As this “doing nothing phase” coincided with a knee injury, it included not even going to my gym classes. It did mean reading 6 novels in 10 days. It meant catching up with two favorite TV serials and being argumentative on Facebook. Eating became a priority during this period, so that I finally learned to cook one of my favorite dishes. My children are now reassured of my undying love because they received their daily dose of nagging. (Daily. It HAS to be daily.)

A few days ago I finally got bored. I noticed how it takes me so long to do the smallest number of tasks like taking a bath or cleaning my aquarium or writing one email. Ideas which I thought I understood clearly like, “one’s circumstances determine how one feels the passage of time” became complex and interesting again.

I thought maybe Einstein’s theory that time can bend must have come to him when he was doing nothing. As for Marx’s contention that everything is a unity of opposites, well, I was really, really bored and that realization made me really, really happy. The changes brought about in the private sphere by the new information and communication technologies? The full reality came to me when I nearly threw my mobile phone into the toilet bowl because it dared to tell me I had 3 new emails for the day.

This lovely laze put my mind in a most gentle haze. I saw reality through a different lens. I saw things in a way that made me understand Picasso and Dali as I have never quite understood them before. Hmm… maybe a new area of exploration about concepts of time embodied in various art movements. Hmmm.. maybe a new research question about the emergence of kick-ass women detectives who get hot and romantic in English literature. Hmmm…oops..better get back to my novel before son number 2 needs his daily dose of nagging.

Have I ever told you about my analysis of mothers, nagging and patriarchy? It came to me when I found the time to nag.

Counter-productive

The good managers I have worked with would be happy for both types of outcome.

Those I call bean counters would “count” only the time spent lecturing, academic writing, and reading academic books. At least that’s the only thing they care about for us to report and seem to think that the more we report of this kind of stuff, the better for the university This trend is happening not just to my university nor is it confined to Philippine academia.

So as I grouch in the next few paragraphs, I would ask the reader to consider me the spokesperson for countless colleagues.

My sense is that the academe, like many other institutions, is becoming more commercialized.

This is why “productivity” now needs to be measured by increasingly quantitative indicators like, “how many research publications have you got for this year”? In short, the powers that be want to know whether I am earning my salary or sabbatical pay to the last peso. They want to be assured that I am cranking out those academic publications because these raise my university’s academic standing which in turn generates more money in in terms of  increased student enrollment and increased research grants. They want to know that I am teaching the right number of students to the satisfaction of the students. This, too, after all, adds to the bottom line.

In other words, universities are increasingly run like corporations where the game is to produce more and more for less and less money, thus increasing the profit margin.

But I wonder how many publications a year Einstein had before he came up with his theory of relativity or how many Darwin had before he published his work on the origin of species.

I am not against all managerial systems, of course. I understand that some amount of accounting needs to be done because the Filipino people do pay my salary. But I am spending increasing amounts of time attending to these planning, assessment and monitoring frameworks and requirements which are supposed to measure and increase my productivity. The net effect is that I am producing less because I have less time to actually produce.

To be fair, I have met good managers who understand this and who therefore are able to evaluate and monitor without resorting to so much red tape. But even the good managers are having a hard time resisting the culture of quantifiable productivity. 

Productivity comes from an interesting life

It takes time to be creative. It is time that varies for each individual because the processes of creativity are not uniform nor linear.

It means leading an interesting life and attending to the mutinae that make up a life attuned to the realities you want to research. It means reading everything so that a research idea comes from something you read in a detective novel that was related to something you read about postmodernism.

Good managers in and out of academia know that in order not to kill productivity, in order to encourage innovation, workers must be allowed to goof off. Creativity by its very nature can look like 6 publications a year or a truly bored professor wondering whether it’s time to do some nagging.

If anyone in my university makes me fill up a report about my sabbatical, I am submitting this. Then I will hope some equally mischievous someone will file it away among the other reports and allow me to come back without further hassle. That will leave both of us with more time to read our detective stories. – Rappler.com