What, me work?

Andrew from Virginia asks: 

How many hours does one usually work a week at various stages in a physics career (from grad school to post doc work to tenure)?

This is a very hard question to answer (which doesn't keep people from asking it frequently!):  the answer depends more on you and what your definition of work is than it depends on what stage you are in during your carreer.  There is no doubt that when you're in physics you spend much more than 40 hours a week doing something someone would call "work":  but on the other hand, you don't think of it as work so much as doing something you want to do:  from figuring out how to pull some signal out of background in your detector, to figuring out how to build the detector or make the measurement in the first place! 

Given my kids' school and lesson schedules I can honestly say that I am not physically at the laboratory where I am employed for even 40 hours a week:  but I also "work" once my kids go to bed sometimes, and there are occasional meetings on weekends that I end up attending even though I'd rather be jumping in the leaves with my kids (she writes, looking outside at the fall colors).  But because I have this kind of schedule, I don't have any qualms about taking time off during the week to volunteer in my son's class, or celebrate Columbus Day even though it wasn't a lab holiday. 

The advice I always give whenever I talk to groups of students is that a job should not be something you do so that you can pay the bills and then have fun on the weekends: life is too short to have a job you don't enjoy. If you can find something you enjoy doing and get paid to do it, then go for it, and you won't think about how many hours a week you are "working". 

Comments

[Andrew]

Thanks for the answers, I really appreciate the help. I agree that a job should be something you enjoy, not just something you do to pay the bills; that's why I'm going back to physics. Right now I've got a job as an analyst that pays well, has great benefits, and only has a 42.5 hour work week. My friends tell me I'm crazy for wanting to switch back when I could make more money with less difficulty in my current field, but I think ultimately my time is more important than money, and I have to spend so much time at work no matter what that I wouldn't want to spend it on anything I didn't find really meaningful.