We return now to our stress free jobs!

Stress free!  Yes, that is what I copied from an  article in CareerCast  listing the 10 most stress free jobs.  As you can imagine, the most interesting read are the comments   Lots of professors released a whole lot of stress on the author.

I like the one comment where a new professor was told by his advisor, "You can work your 100 hours a week whenever you want!"

The public and most students' perception of professors leans toward the side of movies. They don't see professors conducting research at 2 a.m., writing grants handicapped with their fingers crossed and surviving a absolutely fascinating four hour faculty committee meeting.  ZZZZzzzzz  These are all activities that are squeezed in between preparing for class, grading papers and working with students.  They are our behind the scenes tasks hidden away.

The general public and students certainly don't see adjuncts pulling course materials out of the trunk of their car which serves as their office.  They also don't see lecturers monitoring enrollment to learn if they will be hired for another year or not.  They don't see the community college professor teaching five to six classes to under prepared students that have to be at college level at the end of the course.  And lastly, they don't see a tenured track professor handing in his or her portfolio to the tenure committee.

The authors admit that they looked at tenured professors, not lecturers, tenure track, and certainly not adjuncts.   They also took their survey from universities, not community colleges. .Which means their results came  from about 25% of the population that teach at a university.   And, lets face it, compared to the other 75% tenured professors do have it good.

From the comments, the authors did say that they would quantify better who they were talking about, tenured professors at universities, when they say the life of a professor is stress free.  So what does this article teach us?  That we need to get undergrads in research so when they get a job they don't do studies without proper research and reporting.