That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites- A Professor's Rant

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss what its like to be a professor. 

My name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. Okay, I have to admit, the topic for this one is one that doesn't anchor me, but it makes me realize there's a pretty big misperception about what professors actually do and how they spend their time. So for those of you that are curious about that, I have to admit when I was an undergrad, I had no clue, even though I was in classes with professors every single day. So just a couple of quick Q&As about what happens. I don't get the summer off. High school teachers get the summer off. They have July and August off in Canada.

The times differ a bit depending on where you are, but they do get two months off. Most of the high school teachers I know use some of that time for planning for the next year, but I guess some of them don't. But I don't get the summer off when the summer semester starts on May 1st in Canada and goes to the end of August. And I know in the States, depending on the university, it's quite different and globally, it's quite different, but I don't have four months off. I literally don't. I get four weeks of vacation per year. I take two at Christmas and two in the summer. Um, and the rest of the time I'm working. Now, what do we do in the summer? Well, we do research. All right. That's when we run studies, write papers, write grants. And that leads to answering my second question, which is when I tell people I'm a professor at

the university, the very first question I get nine times out of 10 is, what do you teach? And a lot of people assume that professors are just glorified teachers. First of all, teachers are glorified just in themselves because teaching, and I used to teach high school, is one of the hardest things I ever had to do. And I'm terrified of the thought of teaching elementary school. So I don't mean that, but they just assume we're another form of a teacher. The reality is with my current contract at the University of Victoria, teaching is 5% of my workload.

I spend about 75% of my time doing research. So supporting graduate students, teaching graduate students in the lab, writing studies. And I spend 20% of my time in administrative duties, being on committees, evaluating grant proposals, evaluating papers that are being submitted for publication. And I teach 5% of the time.

I teach one class a year. So there you go. Just a quick rant for this bite. It was someone that asked me this just literally an hour ago, and I kind of went, oh, I've heard this too many times. So professors do not get the summer off, and we do a lot more than just teach classes. Anyway, that's another neuroscience bite. Probably not that interesting, but some of you will like the little tidbits and trivia in there.

And at least next time you bump into a professor, probably don't ask them what they teach and don't assume that they have the summer off. Anyway, there's the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. You can follow me on Twitter at thatneuroscienceguy, and it's a great way to send us ideas for bites and episodes, and of course, the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening, and please subscribe if you haven't yet. My name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.