Administrators are people, too!

I was talking to my friend, a high school teacher, recently. We hadn't talked in quite a long time, and I was catching him up on things. I mentioned that, even though college staff doesn't get spring break off the way students and faculty do, a lot of us take vacation then. And even though I just recently spent a lovely week in Utah, I was still kind of feeling burned out and looking forward to my three-day Easter weekend.

"When exactly does the burnout stop?" my friend asked somewhat rhetorically. I think in corporate jobs, there's really never any chance to catch up with yourself. Maybe the holidays, but they bring a whole separate set of exhausting demands. But when you work at a school, no matter what the job description, the promise of summer keeps its spell on you.

Administrators may come to the office all summer, but we relax a little while everyone's away. We don't wear as many suits, and sometimes we take long lunches or go on vacation for weeks at a time. The phone doesn't ring as much, the halls are eerily quiet and, best of all, there are tons of parking spaces near our offices. Just like everyone else on campus, we're waiting out the schoolyear with an eye on summer vacation.

I like being an educational office drone. Even the illusion of summer vacation is better than what you get at a corporate job.