The Sabbatical: What’s It All About Anyways?
sabbatical
1640s, “of or suitable for the Sabbath,” from Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos “of the Sabbath” (see Sabbath). Noun meaning “a year’s absence granted to researchers” (originally one year in seven, to university professors) is from 1934, short for sabbatical year, etc., first recorded 1886 (the thing itself is attested from 1880, at Harvard), related to sabbatical year (1590s) in Mosaic law, the seventh year, in which land was to remain untilled and debtors and slaves released. [Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/sabbatical]
Unlike most people who work in higher education, I am employed full-time as a faculty member at an institution with a generous policy for faculty sabbaticals and research leaves. To be perfectly clear to non-academics, this does not mean that we have the year “off.” We absolutely still work; sometimes even harder than we do when we are teaching! Academic sabbaticals generally translate to time off from our teaching duties. Most of us still do academic advising and some amount of institutional or professional service, such as serving on committees that generate an absurd amount of email. If we have been thoughtful about our time in advance, then we somehow manage to reduce this service load in anticipation of the sabbatical. Not everyone is equally successful in doing this. So, basically, sabbaticals in academia translate to no classroom teaching, no grading, no office hours, fewer meetings, more time to think, more time to engage in what Cal Newport calls “deep work.” We may not be on vacation, but, let’s admit it, this is a pretty sweet deal.
As I begin my current yearlong sabbatical, I have found myself reflecting on the purpose of a sabbatical. Most of my mentors, colleagues, and friends use their sabbatical to accomplish extraordinary feats of scholarship, either in the form of research or writing. When I was at a previous institution and had a year of teaching leave due to an external fellowship, I took multiple research trips, drafted an article, wrote book reviews, and, as it turned out, landed a position at another institution. My one semester pre-tenure leave at this new institution — which is where I continue to work — was spent finishing an article and attending to debilitating pain (which turned out to be a combination of bulging discs and a chronic condition…symptoms that appeared the exact week of my fortieth birthday…coincidence? I think not.). The work I accomplished on this leave helped successfully propel me through the tenure process. Now, three years later, I look ahead to a year of sabbatical, and I find myself drawn to the older meaning of a sabbatical in the excerpt above: sabbatical not as a time of focused productivity, but rather as a time of rest.
Let me pause here to talk about the life of a professor. If you’re under the impression that being a college professor is actually like anything you’ve ever seen in any movie about college life — i.e., tweed jacket with frayed elbow patches, spacious if dusty offices decorated with leather armchairs and Persian rugs, leisurely conversations about the meaning of life while sipping espresso or Scotch, etc., etc. — just, let it go. We work hard. We are busy. We cram more into a 24-hour period than should be possible. We forget to use the bathroom, to eat lunch, to pick our kids up from school. In short, our jobs are just like a whole lot of other jobs out there. If I were The Boss of the World, I would ensure that *all* jobs came with sabbaticals as a basic human right. I’m not TBOTW, though, so, my powers are limited. Sorry.
Life as a professor is exhausting. It’s not just the advising, the meetings, the course planning, the grading, the meetings, the teaching, the “ad hoc psychotherapy for distraught students,” the research, the writing, the revising, the meetings…did I mention the meetings? The bottom line is, we get paid to think. That’s right: to think. Tell me, have you ever tried to take a break from thinking? Have you ever said, “I’m not going to think about this for a while”? I bet one of two things happened: either you thought about it, or you threw yourself into a zillion other tasks that occupied your mental energy so that you couldn’t think about it. Not very refreshing, eh? So, we think. And we think. And then we think some more. While we shower. While we make our kids’ meals. While we walk the dogs. While we sit in meetings about other things. While we sit in traffic. While we sit in the movies. While we do pretty much anything else, we have the potential to think, and so we do. If we had to clock our thinking hours, we’d get a lot of overtime. This is probably why we are salaried employees.
The thinking is exhausting. Yet, this seems to be the thing we are meant to do even more of on our sabbaticals. The expectation is that we can research, and read, and write, and revise, all without interruption. We can do the deep work. We can enjoy long stretches of creativity and we can produce the scholarship we long to produce. This, after all, is what being a scholar is all about.
I’m not feeling it.
Not a bit.
I look at this year ahead of me, and I want a year in which the overworked land that is my academic brain is left untilled. Fallow. I don’t want to pump more out of it. I want to let it be. To rest. To restore. To replenish. To reflect. To “re-“ all the things.
I am very grateful for my job and the lifestyle it brings. Nevertheless, I need a break. So, I’m giving myself permission to make this a year of sacred living. This year will be my Sabbath. I will be resting. I will be replenishing. I will be reflecting. I will be taking care of my body and my spirit. And, in doing so, I will be restoring my mind as well. I have made a few academic commitments that will ensure I keep a toe in the research and writing zone. For the most part, I am allowing myself to explore. I am following passions and letting myself feel inspired and curious. I am letting that curiosity, that passion, take me down new paths. I’m not sure what the final outcome will be. I am confident, though, that no matter where I end up, it will be good.
So mote it be.
