Something I won't try again

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling really burned out on my training. I told my coach, and she strongly recommended (do it! or else ...! ) taking at least three days (four would be better) off from training. Any training. Any exercise of any kind.

Panic! I have not gone without any exercise for three days in I don't know how long. I have become convinced that my mental health depends on it. I can take a day off here an there (no, not every week, but maybe every two or three weeks), and I do easy days (yes, I mean easy: a leisurely 45 minute swim, or a long hike or a unhurried bike ride) every week. But I don't regularly take days off.

Why not? Because when I do I feel crappy. By the end of the day I am sluggish, often depressed, and yet somehow restless. It is not a good thing.

I really believe that my body has become addicted to the endorphins that come with vigorous exertion, the so-called "runner's high." But I am also willing to admit that maybe this inability to avoid exercise is a remnant of a distorted body image, the fear of fat inculcated by a lifetime of paternal commentary on women's bodies, maternal monitoring of food intake, and general cultural parading of emaciated female physiques as ideals of attractive womanhood.

Gender studies or not, I am not immune to it. Shelf-loads of books on "the beauty myth" and body dysmorphia will not outweigh the guilt of not maintaining the leanest appearance I can manage. I might try to convince myself I am doing it for health, or for athletic achievement, but deep down I know that all this striving for control of the shape of our bodies is irreversibly tinged with self-loathing.

By "we" I mean all the women like me who work out to be better athletes, who regularly train to compete, who avow not to be prey to the frivolity of skinny thighs. But to some extent, almost none of us can escape the gaze of a culture that cultivates the most corrosive contempt for those whose exceeds the prescribed confines of the feminine form. We contrive the most subtle forms of surveillance to monitor our bodies and those of the women to whom we compare ourselves.

Even some of the women runners and triathletes whom I most admire do not escape this fixation. It seeps out of their blogs in the forms of humorous asides, such as the cheeky question of whether one would rather gain 60 pounds or put one's hand in a blender and press on (guess which option was chosen). Or it peeks out of genuine compliments of other women's flat abdominal landscapes, and evident lack of body fat.

I am not pointing fingers. God knows I am as vulnerable as anyone to the shame of the muffin top. I want to believe that, like Elizabeth Gilbert during her Italian escapade, I could just revel in the pleasures of Roman cuisine and just find larger pants when I need them. But could I?? Honestly, I doubt it. I would eat, no doubt. I am not one to forgo my gelato. But you can be sure I would not let the sun set without going for a run.

Why the scorn??

I have been stewing over this for the past week, and finally I think I am ready to write about it.

Last Monday, in the midst of a conversation about the future of higher education in a time of economic crisis, one of my colleagues posted a link to a review of a book that is getting a lot of press: Higher Education? How Colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids -

and what we can do about it, by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus.

I followed the link, read the review, and then looked for more info about this book, because I found it so disconcerting. Though I have not yet had a chance to examine it first hand (it is not published yet), it seems to be yet another tirade about how college professors are just academic parasites who use tenure to leech energy from the thriving body of private enterprise while providing little benefit to their students, their families and the unwitting taxpayers. Once again teachers are portrayed as inept, elitist, self-entitled freeloaders who can't be bothered to pay attention to undergraduates or to produce research results of any value to society. Apparently, we care for nothing but sabbaticals in Tuscany, three-day weekends, and obscure diatribes in continental philosophy. Oh, and expensive French cheeses!

What the heck...?? Why the scorn? Why do so many people like to preach about the value of education, but are instantly ready to denigrate those who provide it? Why does the experience of maybe a tiny minority of privileged faculty members at elite institutions (and even they, I believe, do not have it nearly as easy as we think, as the phrase "publish or perish" comes increasingly close to being a literal description of life in a research one university) color the judgment of the vast majority of faculty who have none of those perks? Not to mention the fact that most faculty I have ever met are in fact hard working, dedicated teachers who care deeply about students, who spend time well beyond the nine-to-five working day to prepare lectures, grade assignments, meet with students, organize co-curricular events, and so on.

It is true: the academic life has some great benefits. I love my job, or at least a great part of it. I love teaching about a subject that I find intrinsically captivating and also important to the well being of the world (grandiose, I know, but that's how I feel). I love spending my time finding ever better ways of engaging students, of conveying complex, nuanced ideas, of challenging young minds to think critically and make their own judgments about what they read and what we discuss. I love reading their reactions in papers and exams, and I love meeting with advisees to discuss their present and their future.

I also very much enjoy the flexibility of my schedule: yes, I can go work at home for part of my days, if I don't have office hours or appointments with students, or committee meetings, or co-curricular events. But I also end up working for at least part of most weekends, on evenings, and even on holidays, as I carry around stacks of papers to grade, or delve through sources for a research project.

In the summer, when I don't teach regular courses, I can enjoy an even more enviable routine: I can avoid the office for days, and do my work in a library, a coffee shop or even my backyard. But the work still needs to get done, and in the end, if I add up the days and hours when I am not working, I bet I take fewer days off than the average employee of a similar pay grade.

And speaking of pay: don't get into academia for the big bucks! True: if you manage to secure a tenure-track job, and eventually tenure, you probably will get good benefits and relative amount of job security (especially compared to the abysmal situation of may sectors of the economy today!). But don't be fooled: there are no golden parachutes, or outlandish perks, there is not even coverage for eyeglasses! And if you prove to be incompetent (a poor teacher, a lousy colleague) you can find yourself out of a job as programs are reduced in size. Tenure is no bullet-proof armor against unemployment: its purpose is to allow faculty to pursue research questions objectively, even if the results turn out to be unpopular with their deans and administrators. It is a crucial guarantee of academic freedom, not an unconditional promise of lifelong employment.

In the end, being a professor is a good way to make a living while contributing to society and finding a sense of purpose. But it is also true that it requires years of training, when not only you are not earning anything more than survival wages, but you might even be accumulating debt while the rest of your graduating cohort has gotten a head start on the income ladder. Unlike a law or medical degree, every additional year of graduate study in a Ph.D. program in the humanities and social sciences (sciences are a different matter, as they hold the option of working in the private sector for much higher salaries) does not increase one's earning potential. If anything, beyond a certain point you start getting negative rates of returns. May of us who got Ph.D.s and are now teaching could be more lucratively employed had we forgone graduate study in favor of law school or an MBA.

So, don't pile such scorn on the academic profession. We are no martyrs, but most of us do care deeply about our work, and we see well prepared, thoughtful graduates as the most important "product" of our efforts. We don't get to take vacations at any point during the school year, we can't help but let our work invade evenings and weekends, but, yes, in the summers our schedules are more relaxed and our weekends might stretch into three days. How many corporate managers and executives, with much larger paychecks than what we will ever see, take two-hour lunches, or do business on the golf course, or regularly take a week off in January to go to St. Barth's, in February to go skiing, in March, because the kids are on spring break, in April, because it's Easter and so on and so forth?

Of course, the vast majority of working people in the US and other industrialized countries get neither the flexibility of an academic life nor the perks of corporate management. They face soul-crushing work loads, precarious employment, poor (if any) benefits and meager paid vacations. But the solution to this gap is not to strip academic jobs of their benefits. Rather, we ought to ensure that more workers at all levels of society have not only living wages, but reasonable working hours, meaningful work, solid benefits, and time to enjoy their lives away from it. And, as a professor, I consider it part of my job to provide students with the skills and knowledge to build a society in which that will be true. We could all be more effective if set aside the scorn and truly support those who are engaged in the work of educating the next generations.

... and sometime hard work pays off!

Here is to my friend Tarra, who just finished her first sub-five-hour half Ironman this past Saturday at Steelhead. You truly rock, girl! What an impressive performance! Especially given the rough start: rain, lightning, everything soaked, no warm up. But this shows that when you have put in the work--and Tarra definitely had definitely put in long and consistent hours of training, disciplined nutrition and patient focus on technique--the vagaries of weather and circumstance can be overcome.

On my end, in the meantime, things have been quite relaxed. Last week it was a recovery week, and I did not have long, strenuous workouts. Did a two-hour bike on Saturday, followed by a thirty minute run, and then my long run on Sunday was only 60 minutes. I am not trying to sound dismissive of the distances. Early in the season this would have been a big workout, but at this point, it was an easy weekend.

And this less demanding schedule left a bit more room for social engagements: Friday's beach trip with Maria, Saturday a movie with friends, and Sunday a fantastic dinner sponsored by our local "slow food" chapter and held at a nearby organic farm. What a privilege to share in the freshly picked bounty of our surrounding countryside: a cornucopia of veggies and fruit, a feast of humanely raised meat and locally caught fish all spread over a leisurely three hour dinner. And three bottles of wine between four people made the whole evening even more festive (thank you Jacinda and Rob!).

Ok, now it's Monday, and the late revelries did not help me get up for a lake swim this morning. Will try to make up with a 45' pool workout and then time trial this evening (yikes! not really looking forward to that). For now, I better get back to Foucault and friends. Let's work out the brain first, then we'll take care of the body. Au revoir!