2,201 Hours

When I left Yankee to teach at Conval, I took a fifty percent pay cut. That was all right -- I figured I was trading money for time. (Teachers laugh here.)

While I was at the magazine, I kept my personal life separate from my professional life. I went to work at nine and came home at five p.m. sharp. So, over the course of a typical year, I put in 40 hours a week for 50 weeks or so -- call it 2,000 hours in all.

The rhythms of a teacher's life are different, more syncopated. We're required to be at school from 7:30-3:00 each day, but we take work home every night. In an easy week, I might put in as few as 50 hours. A tough week,  I'll work 60 hours or more, including the weekend. There are three week-long vacations in December, February and April, and a ten-week break over the summer. Call it 39 weeks at 55 hours per week -- 2,045 hours

That doesn't count extracurricular stuff. If I'm directing a play, there's an additional six hours of rehearsal per week for seven weeks, then another 24 hours during the eighth week, when we do tech and dress rehearsals  and the three performances. That's another 66 hours, which puts me at  2,111 hours for those 39 weeks. But oh, that summer vacation!

Except, of course, very few teachers can afford to do nothing all summer. Most work -- often with their hands, I've noticed. We also have to accumulate at least 75 hours of professional development -- classes, workshops, independent or committee work -- every three years to maintain our certification. Last summer I spent six weeks at Yale studying Chaucer. It was great, but it added another 90 hours to my work year, for a grand total of 2,201 hours. That's the equivalent of five weeks longer than my average work year at Yankee.