I can hear the collective sigh of relief from the students and faculty at the end of final exams! In fact, our building, the Fitzpatrick Center, where students fill every seat in the atrium during final exams, transforms from a tense and stressful place to a calm and relaxed place as exams end. Students smile again and I literally feel the change walking into the building. I too am happy to be in “summer mode”. Vacation is a bit strong since I still have meetings for a large part of every day, at least so far, and there are still many administrative tasks to accomplish and deadlines to meet. Nonetheless, my stress drops too and I spend more time on research and other creative pursuits. So how about when you graduate?
Unless you are fortunate enough to work in academia, you won’t have a summer vacation. Wall Street recognized four quarters in the year and all of them have earnings reports! Now, contrary to perceptions, to be an excellent faculty member requires at least as many working hours as most jobs in the real world – ask anyone who is going for tenure or maintaining research, teaching and service responsibilities after getting tenure. Still, the summer is a natural time to rejuvenate the creative part of our efforts and allows a faculty member to step back and refresh the mind. Research, writing, and presenting all require a different part of the brain than the day to day operational tasks that most jobs are full of.
So what is my point? Well, in the real world, you won’t have the natural “summer break” that you have enjoyed as a student. This is because, as a student, you can think in terms of semesters and you can push hard until the summer gets here and then get some breathing room. When you get your first real job, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can do the same thing! In fact I see three things that students get confused about related to this:
- Pushing so hard that you become ineffective because you forget there is no summer break to catch up and rejuvenate
- Expecting things like promotions or raises or new responsibilities to occur on a semester-to-semester time frame
- Feeling like once a project is finished (i.e., just like a class or a degree), you have “succeeded” when actually the next challenge is already waiting for you
So what is the solution? Well, for the most part, just be aware of the change in environment and time scale when you begin your work. Also, I think you can do three things to reinforce the changes and mitigate any negative consequences:
- Since “there is no summer vacation in the real world” make one! OK, you won’t be able to take the summer off or really change your job responsibilities significantly during the summer but you can certainly take a vacation. Get in touch with your creative side every year by taking some time off – vacations are the standard way but maybe you prefer long weekends – that allows you to forget about the day to day issues.
- Know your limits. For most of you making the effort to read this, burn-out is a bigger danger to your career than slacking off! And when burn-out sets in it can take months to recover. Since you go from one quarter to the next in the real world, find a pace that is sustainable and stick to it. Make time every week to rejuvenate your mind and spirit for work.
- Manage your expectations. Don’t expect a company to provide some new exciting challenge or promotion or salary increase every “semester”. By all means, know your value and do your homework by understanding what is reasonable in your industry. But don’t expect that something great will happen on a semester-to-semester basis. And don’t use one or two exceptions you hear about from your friends when it does happen that fast for them to set your expectations. (They are probably exaggerating anyway!)
I don’t know who the original author of this quote is, but I think it sums up what I am trying to say:
“Always remember, life is a marathon, not a sprint”
"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass 
Is there, by chance, an allotted spring break vacation in the real world?
Jokes aside, I enjoy the content of this blog – please keep it up.
I’ll be joining the MEM program this fall. I am curious, what are the bloggers, authors, professors, news sources, etc. that you are an avid fan of for information in various areas? Could you recommend a few books that you particularly enjoy? I read your post on Ariely’s Predictably Irrational – I’ve added that to my reading list.
Best,
Reza Parang
Very funny! Especially no Spring Break given the partying that university spring breaks are famous for in Florida or Mexico!
I really like the technology columns in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. I like most of what Jack Welch writes on Management (especailly in the last few years where he seems to be more balanced but really anything). Any books on Emotional Intelligence (but we will study that in class in the MEM if you are coming to Duke) and the books Outlier, Open Innovation, How Breakthroughs Happen, Never Eat Alone, and Coach K’s books on Leadership. Jim Collins book Built to Last and the new one he is about to publish about why companies fail are also good ones.
Dr. Glass, you certainly hit the nail on the head with this one.
Once I started working, I found it a bit daunting that there was no “end” – no clear unit of time that I could use to play catch up with my mental health. Unless you count retirement as a sort of delayed Spring Break, going from a world of semesters and school years to the continuous stress of the “Real World” can be pretty intimidating.
One way to combat the “burn out” you referred to, and this may not be true for all jobs, is to simply relax when you go home. There’s no more staying up until 3 am in the atrium trying to finish a presentation, no more countless hours of studying for CJ’s Finance exams. I’ve found that the continuous nature of working, when compared to the punctuated nature of school, makes it much easier to forget about deadlines when you go home. It’s like a mini vacation you get to take every day. Taking your work home with you, either literally or mentally, can become utterly exhausting after a while.
Or, if that fails, you can just do what I’m doing next week and take off for a cruise to the Bahamas. Spring Breaks don’t have to end after college.
Nice work with the blog, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for your tidbits of wisdom. I hope you have a good summer and get plenty of relaxation in preparation for next year’s batch of MEM’ers.
-Doug Mandart, MEM ’08
Great advice. Having your evenings be rejuvination time is a very good approach. And good point about spring break. You CAN do a spring break with a company since it fits within your alotted vacation time (unlike the entire summer off that you have while in school). But don’t put those spring break pictures up on Facebook without considering what your employer will think! 🙂