That’s a really good question: What am I doing here? Everyone wants to know—including me.
It’s the spring of 2011, the first day of the new semester, and the hallways in my department are abuzz with the usual level of excitement and anxiety. But I don’t need to be here at all: I’m on sabbatical! (I’m not a big fan of the exclamation mark, but if sabbatical doesn’t deserve one, then nothing does.)
I knew I’d be in my department every other week or so to get books, use the copier, and collect my mail. I had also set up a Saturday afternoon reading group for a handful of select students on some short books related to my research. I hadn’t planned on doing any serious traveling, but I was surprised that the first place I headed during my sabbatical was to the campus.
I genuinely enjoy the people I work with, but that wasn’t the only reason I was back so soon. I was just missing the action. The start of a new semester is not exactly the rapture, but I couldn’t help but feel left behind.
That feeling would quickly (and not surprisingly) fade, as my attention turned to the book I had been working on for the better part of a year already. I was looking forward to eight solid months of uninterrupted writing (including both my spring sabbatical and the summer months).
Or so I hoped.
Early in my leave, I suspected that focus might be an issue. For one thing, I couldn’t resist thinking about upcoming courses and tweaking my syllabi for the fall semester. Or maybe I should jot down some ideas for a Chronicle piece? (Yes, dear reader, this essay started off as a break from my book.) And how is it that I had never learned the chords to “Girl from North Country” (my favorite Dylan song)? I’d better get my guitar.
It’s amazing what can go through your mind when the number of plates you’re spinning falls to a manageable number.
Yet it wasn’t the temptation of leisure that I feared; it was the sense of guilt and frustration I would undoubtedly feel whenever I wandered too far from the task at hand.
At the close of the previous semester, a friend and sabbatical survivor offered a great piece of advice: “Don’t spend your time agonizing over the difference between what you are doing and what you could be doing.”
That said, not all digressions are created equal. I’ve learned that having more than one project going is a big help. Having something on deck and in the hole is the surest way around writer’s block. (There’s a reason Mark Twain was more productive than Walt Whitman.) Allowing time for pleasure reading is also a good idea. You need to give your mind room to roam with new and different stimuli. Plus, there’s a big difference between your mind on student papers and your mind on Trollope.
But by far, the best way to make the most of a sabbatical is to be adequately prepared for it. Self-control and caffeine can only get you so far.
That you should choose an interesting and worthwhile project goes without saying. But a sabbatical should also be well timed. For me, the spring semester always seems hardest to get through, so I had decided years ago that I would choose it for my escape. I’d also come to think it a mistake to take your first sabbatical too close to getting tenure. I had spent so much time on research and writing in the run-up to my promotion, that in the aftermath all I really wanted to do was focus on teaching and reconnect with friends. So the semester after I got tenure would not have been a good time for a shore leave.
I ended up postponing my leave for a year, and haven’t regretted it. I had been working on my book (The Case Against Democracy, forthcoming from Praeger) before I won tenure, but afterward I got a bit distracted from the writing because I was spending a lot of time directing our honors program. I hadn’t started any new chapters in a while.
A sabbatical can be the start of something big, but as a chronic non-finisher, I was interested in using the time to see my book to completion.
A sabbatical is a terrible thing to waste, but what you need from the experience might not be obvious at the outset. It can (and should?) change you in ways that you can’t anticipate. Be open to that. My research didn’t require any archival visits, but I did somewhat impulsively decide that I needed to relocate—from New Haven to Brooklyn. It was a much-needed change of scenery, but it wouldn’t have happened without the time and the mental space that the sabbatical gave me.
In terms of my social life during my leave, I had to get used to two things: everyone turning down my invitations (for good reason, they had to go to work) and my having to accept everyone else’s (because I had no good excuse not to). People so reflexively refuse your invites that you almost feel wrong in extending them. Conversely, a flexible schedule provides no cover for you. On sabbatical, if you’re looking to avoid hosting the next dinner party, seeing that ridiculous new movie, or helping your neighbor paint his house, you’re going to have to be stubborn in declining or get creative in your excuses.
In any event, most people on sabbatical are too occupied with reading, writing, and catching up on life to feel anything close to loneliness, but it can be somewhat isolating. Few if any of your friends or family members have the cushy schedule that you do. (Forget that at great peril.) If nothing else, the family pet/s will appreciate your added attention.
Perhaps my most significant revelations relate to writing. I may or may not be a writer, but I’ve come to accept that the act of putting words on the page doesn’t come to me without great effort. Even after I moved my writing from my desk to the bed—thanks for the tip, Siddhartha Mukherjee—on most days, it didn’t come easily. And sometimes it didn’t come at all.
In class I once equated the joy of writing with the pleasures of sex. (“If it doesn’t feel good, you need to stop, change positions, or use more lube.”) It certainly got the students’ attention, but it was awful advice. Better I should have invoked Dorothy Parker—"I hate writing. I love having written."—and made assignments less about looking for inspiration and more about learning the steady discipline required of writers.
Now that it’s fall and I’m back to teaching, I’ll have to assume more responsibility for my research productivity. A day of not writing isn’t the fault of a too-heavy teaching load, too-frequent office visitors, or too-tedious committees. It’s all on me.
It’s a shame that more people can’t experience a sabbatical. At Google’s corporate offices, every Friday is play day, in which employees are free to spend their time on independent experiments and projects. It seems to be working pretty well for them.
Instead, the recent economic downturn has renewed and heightened attacks on the professoriate and its “privileges,” like a sabbatical. In addition to being unapologetic (and unwitting) leftists, we’re also underworked and overpaid, we are told. Tenure is the typical target, of course, but summers and sabbaticals are also part of the mix.
Another former colleague of mine liked to remind his colleagues (and our dean) that the Latin root of sabbatical is sabbatum, meaning rest. The notion that we need to provide documentation or even a rationale for something called a “sabbatical” is rather nonsensical.
But for most of us, sabbatical is nowhere near a vacation; nor do we exactly want one. It’s the time when we get to move the bulk of our energy from the classroom to the library. And if there’s any rest involved, it’s only because full-time teaching can be so exhausting.
My sabbatical has, without question, reminded me of how much I love teaching. And I have no doubt that I’m a better teacher for having taken time away from the classroom.
The problem with sabbaticals is not that professors get them; it’s that most everyone else doesn’t.
