51Âþ»­

Anyone who has never been a teacher or a lecturer seems to hold at least a flicker of desire to work as one, and usually for one big reason: the holidays.

The generally accepted model of thought about working in academia can be expressed like this - downside: marking; upside: holidays.

And what an upside. Think about it: all those weeks off! And that's without all the bank holidays and Easter breaks and everything else. Yes, teaching, they say, is an easy life, a pretty sweet deal. Pack up in June and relax, lie back and enjoy yourself until September.

This is the commonly held view. But at 51Âþ»­ Leicester (51Âþ»­) this is comprehensively not the case. Talk to any academic working at 51Âþ»­ and the myth is punctured faster than a balloon in a pin factory.

A quick survey of summer plans sent to lecturers working across the university prompted a huge number of varied responses about their upcoming 'breaks'.

Dr Matthew Jones, Lecturer in Cinema and Television History here at 51Âþ»­, like a number of his colleagues, clocked up thousands of air miles attending academic conferences in his specialist area.

He said: "Alongside juggling the pent-up demands of on-going research projects and upcoming publication deadlines, I've also been busy fulfilling the promises I made to present at conferences in Paris, Glasgow, London, Leicester and Utrecht.

"But even travelling between conferences I was busy: I've also been preparing for a major public engagement project that will see my work on historical cinema-going staged as an immersive theatre performance. I ambitiously decided to recreate a historically accurate night at the cinema in the 1960s using students to perform the types of activities that one would encounter.

"The planning for this has meant many a phone call on trains between conferences trying to track down obscure cinema adverts or the details of publicity stunts, much to the bemusement -and occasional irritation - of my fellow passengers."

This work didn't leave Dr Jones with a huge amount of time for holidays but he did get to see the sun during a field trip he took with students to San Diego for the city's annual Comic Con: a festival celebrating comics, TV and other entertainment. It may have been as much pleasure as work, but it was still quite definitely work.

Dr Jones said: "Talking through the students' experiences each evening and seeing them grapple with the relationship between what they had learned in the classroom and what they had seen in California reminded me why I spend so much of my summer dashing from city to city.

"Research has much greater value, both to the scholarly community and to wider society, when it engages directly with its broader contexts and audiences. Summer offers us the time to get out from behind our desks for a few months each year and to invite others to share in our work."

International conferences are an undeniable highlight to the academic year and can land a lecturer in far-flung and exotic locations, but the work is still work and can hardly be considered "downtime". When actually at home, most academics try and spend time with their family but find it hard to ignore course-related work and research.

Alistair Duffy, Professor of Electromagnetics, said that this work was what filled the majority of the summer break.

He said: "Jetting off to conference might sound exceptional but most of the summer is filled with the usual work. I supervise MSc students, supervise research students, support undergraduate and postgraduates heading for resits and then mark those resits. There's a lot of updating your course material and attending meetings. It is a lot of work and it so rarely acknowledged by people outside the profession: I've had nearly a quarter of a century of people asking me what I could possibly do with all this time off over the summer."

Dr James Brown, Lecturer at the Leicester School of Architecture was one of the first academics to respond to 51Âþ»­'s initial query, saying his summer had been characteristically busy.

He said: "With three co-editors I wrote, issued and reviewed around 30 chapter proposals for a speculative book about gender and architecture. On top of that, as series editor of the academic journal Charrette, I received, proofed and typeset articles for a forthcoming issue. Outside this I wrote three speculative conference abstracts and attended a conference in London to deliver a paper that will become a chapter in a sole authored book."

Though almost all academics found themselves busy with variations of administrative work like this, many found the break a good time to forge ahead with research projects.

Following on from an extremely successful piece of research into the link between internet addiction and forgetfulness Dr Lee Hadlington, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology spent his summer break collecting new data looking more specifically at the effects of high online use among Smartphone users. He also developed plans for a book on the subject, after being offered a publishing contract and continued his work into the psychology of cybercrime.

Meanwhile, Professor Leigh Landy, Director of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre spent some time working on a composition which had been commissioned from organisers of a Chinese music festival held in Beijing and which will be played during the event in October. And Senior Film Lecturer Laraine Porter took charge in organising the British Silent Film Festival, taking place at Phoenix Square between September 10 and 13 and featuring a rare early Hitchcock film and some British premieres.

And through it all, there has been a huge amount of writing, with books being crafted, drafted and readied for publication.

Dr Kenneth Morrison, Reader in Modern Southeast European History, finished writing a book on hotels famously associated with war, most prominently the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. Nicola Valentine, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing polished off two novellas and a collection of short stories, along with a feature film script (being produced later this year) and the early work on a new novel. Dr Francesca Franco, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Creative Technologies finished work on a book on the history of generative art, ready for publication next spring.

Holography Professor Martin Richardson worked "late into the night" to hit his submission deadlines for a new book on holograms, again being published early next year (in between filling in and submitting numerous funding applications for further research). At the same time he was also replying to hundreds of emails and interviewing potential PhD candidates. And before this he had been involved in the small matter of organising an international conference on holography in Russia.

He said: "As the summer months approached it was clear this one was going to be particularly busy. After months of planning a conference I had organized in St Petersburg, Russia -The International Symposium on Display Holography, held at ITMO University - was finally complete. I was the organizer and co-chair with responsibilities ranging from the catering to speaker presentations, participants wellbeing, accommodation and international communications.

"Thankfully it was all a great success."

It's not just the staff taking a busman's holiday through summer. Louise Buckingham, Academic Team Manager at 51Âþ»­'s Centre for Learning and Study Support (CLaSS) Library and Learning Services said it was the same for many students.

She said: "From my experience as a student, lecturer and parent of a graduate, I know students don't stop thinking about their study during the vacation, so this 'oasis of summer time' can be very productive for either reflecting on feedback, grappling with complex ideas or wanting the get ahead and be prepared for the next level.

"Added to this, the context of non-traditional academic year programmes, work placements of professional courses, students' juggling part time work, study and family commitments, and the early arrival of international students all create demand for our self-selecting services out of term time.

"We see students attending our face-to-face workshop weeks and Get Ahead workshops in July and September."

And many academics have spent their summers supporting students in their work - especially PhD students. Dr Melanie Petch, Senior Lecturer in Writing Development said the experience brought back memories of her own education.

She said: "My work over the summer has taken me back to the experience of doing a PhD - one that nearly broke me into little pieces. I was naïve, lonely, and hurt that the romanticised vision of the contemplative soon-to-be academic wasn't resonating with my lived experience.

"The student who spits stones every time they try to put a word on the page is rarely about writing, but more about the fear that prevents spirited and authentic expression." Dr Petch also engaged in a piece of work with postgraduate researchers to use their PhD experiences to help support current students.

At 51Âþ»­, the modern academic role is a quite clearly a year-round job, a blend of teaching, researching and administrating. While it might possibly take more than a feature like this to dispel the myth that academics lead an easy life, couched in swathes of free time and long holidays and give academics the acknowledgement their labours deserve. But at 51Âþ»­ it is quite apparent that when the term ends, the teaching staff rarely heed the bell.