Like many faculty members, Kerry O’Grady, a senior lecturer of business communications at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, gets tired of hearing from friends and family that it must be so nice to have her summers off. “If you’re doing your job the way that you’re supposed to, honestly, you have no time off,” O’Grady said. “Period.”
O’Grady is on a two-year contract to work from September to May each year. But last summer, instead of enjoying a break, she reviewed scholarly articles, read up on the latest pedagogy, found new case studies, created new presentation slides, and wrote student recommendations for fall internships.
Because O’Grady is in a nontenured position, she feels “a lot of pressure to deliver,” she said, “and that requires hours.”
“Am I forced to sit down at my computer every day over the summer by my boss? No,” O’Grady laughed. “Do I feel compelled to? Absolutely, if I want to keep my job.”
