has written a really depressing post about working in academia.
I feel lucky that at my university we can take study leave without receiving a cut in pay ... hope the Vice Chancellor does not read Bitch PhD's post and get ideas. (Somehow though I don't think he is into blogging.)
Yet she describes a similar situation to ours in terms of being out of pocket for attendance at conferences - having to shell out the money your self and then wait ages for reimbursement.
Although these days, in our department, we have to pay for ourselves full stop. The only way we can make sure we don't get out of pocket is by taking on additional, but small, funded research projects. If they are small, the money can be paid into a 'discretionary' account and then we can draw on that cash to pay for conferences etc.
In this way, in order to attend conferences we have to take on additional work; i.e. additional to the additional work of writing a paper for, and then attending the conference.
But hey we love our work dont we? (Otherwise we would not be up till 10 on a Saturday night doing stuff like an autoethnographic blog.)
About Me
- Joolz
- Sheffield, South Yorks, United Kingdom
- I am an academic interested in New Literacies, Digital Lifestyles, Informal Online Learning.
5 comments:
Oh! What a great post from BitchPhD! I was counting up last night how much money I'd had to spend on my recent conferences - even with other people paying airfares and accommodation, there's still the massive costs of: taxis, conference registrations, conference dinners, food in general, casual drinks with colleagues. Conferences are costly even if they are "free".
And I would loooooove to spend the entire 6 months of my sabbatical visiting colleagues and attending conferences all around the world, but I have a very small budget and can afford one international conference and that is it. I am very grateful I have the chance to do it, but most of my colleagues go off and spend their entire sabbaticals overseas. I don't know how they manage.
So do you have to have a pay cut of some sort too?
No, no pay cut! Do you? I'd never be able to afford a sabbatical if I had to take a pay cut. Maybe the salaries are higher in the US?
No, we don't get a pay cut.
maybe they do get paid more. Trois tetes has a friend in the states who works at The Medical University of South Carolina in micro biology.He gets paid much more than I do, but then maybe he is in the right department and maybe he is promoted quite high ... dunno.
But I would not take a sabbatical if it meant a pay cut, no way!!
Let's get to the most important part of Kate's comment first:
No make-up shops!!!!!!!??????????
Ouch! I absolutely MUST have my eyeliner and mascara or I can't function. It's only been now in my older age that I can sometimes manage to go to buy my groceries without make-up on, but even then I would leave my cart to run and hide if I saw somebody I knew.
I am envious of all your travelling! I think it just costs so much more from Australia so its harder to organise and fund. I did go to an amazing feminist conference in Bologna once, a cyberspace conference in Newcastle, UK, and later this year it will be *drum roll* Miami in the US!! Yay!! But there have been about 5 years between each of them!
Post a Comment