“I’m busy” is a euphemism July 22, 2014
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, family, grad school, personal, work.Tags: children, dissertation, family, part-time, schedule, work, work-life balance
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I’ve read a couple articles about how we all get caught up in being so busy. A lot of them talk about how we need to escape the busyness spiral. Xykademiqz expressed frustration with people who are always busy.
I guess I’m coming at it from a different angle.
I’ve come to realize that the phrase “I’m busy” is just a polite way of saying, “My priorities are different from yours.” That is, the requested action is more important to the person asking than the person who is supposed to perform the action. Particularly relevant to my personal situation, it’s also a way to avoid saying, “I need time to work on my thesis.”
Because I’m starting to find that pretty much nobody cares if you need time to work on that.
“Aren’t you done with that yet?”
“You sure have a lot of time off.”
“I’m sure you can do that some other time.”
“Can’t you put it off for just one day?”
Except I’ve been asked to put it off more days than I even have available to push it off from. As much as I hate telling people I’m busy, I hate even more that people won’t respect my schedule. Part of the issue is that I am technically only part time at my job. If you’ve ever had to work part time at a job without a very explicit schedule, you can forget that. People want things done on their schedule, and when you’re gone you’re taking “time off.” Apparently raising two kids and a PhD is “time off.” I’m jealous of those people who actually get to take vacations on their time off.
A lot of times the outright rejection of working on a dissertation isn’t verbalized. Kids, in particular, really don’t get that you have other things to do besides take care of their needs night and day. Not that I can blame them as I sure wouldn’t mind if my mom showed up to clean my house once in a while. (I know, Mom…you’re busy, too.)
Admittedly, doing all of this is a choice. It’s just unfortunate that a lot of people don’t respect that choice. It’s particularly frustrating when people want you to do things that they’re capable of doing but are “too busy” to do themselves. It seems that rather than get into a verbal sparring match with them about how they disagree with my priorities, it’s just easier to say, “I’m busy.”
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