fifteen years in: the first vacation without guilt
It's giving safety. Or burnout.
As of September, I will have been in my job for fifteen years. Fifteen years! It doesn’t feel like there are many milestones left to accomplish. So, it’s been a surprise to me that I’ve unlocked another:
My first ever vacation without a single ounce of guilt.
I have a long history of academic-vacation-related rage, that I will spare you the details of by instead pointing out that academia is notorious for being a career option that really fucking sucks at providing opportunities to take your vacation time. In academia, taking vacation feels like preparing for battle.
At my workplace, faculty members have six weeks of paid vacation time, but I can count on one hand the number of people I know who reliably take all six weeks. I know maybe two academics who manage to take all six weeks without still attending some meetings and/or responding to emails.
I think I’ve gotten pretty skilled at taking vacations, but it’s been a slow and iterative work-in-progress for all of those fifteen years. First, I had to practice taking all six weeks. I remind myself that someone had to engage in collective bargaining to secure this right to vacation, and I will respect their hard work by taking it. I then had to deal with the pressure to check and reply to emails. Address the very intense peer pressure to attend graduate student committee meetings and defences (that’s complicated and deserves its own post to do the complication justice). Deal with my time-scarcity mindset that summer is the only time to accomplish research. Listen to my colleagues complain that they “can’t” take vacation for over a decade (You can. You can also choose not to, but it is in your control).
But somehow everything has clicked this year: Last Thursday was my first day of four weeks off (two more to come in the second half of August). I gleefully slapped up that out-of-office autoreply and for the first time….. There was no guilt. There was no urge to check my email. I had no thoughts that I could just do a little bit of research to catch up while I’m off. Fleetingly, it occurred to me yesterday that I could pick away at my Fall syllabus, and I was easily able to laugh at my brain and say, “that’s just ridiculous, you’re on vacation!” As if I don’t have so many other things I could be doing with my time.
Have you ever experienced a vacation without feeling guilty about it? Bliss doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Some tips for actually taking a vacation.
Because - as I’ve mentioned - I’m on vacation this post is not getting prettified. It’s not eloquent and it’s been written in about ten minutes. There is little organization here, but nonetheless here are some strategies I’ve learned for taking my vacation:
Remind yourself that yes, you do deserve time off. You do not have to earn your time off - you deserve time off by virtue of being a human being. Human beings live on horticultural time and cannot work 24/7/365 without a break. Moreover, because of teaching schedules, there is generally a small (and very predictable) window of time in which academics can take vacation. Don’t overthink it.
Challenge the (dysfunctional) thought that you can’t take a vacation. Because it’s simply not true. You are likely legally entitled to some vacation and you can manage to figure out how to fit it into your life.
Connect your vacation to your values. Remember that when we connect our choices to our core values, we are stacking the deck in our favour so that values-consistent behaviours (in this case, taking time off) will happen. This year, my vacation is closely tied to my 2025 focus on rebuilding my life and addressing specific health needs. I genuinely think if I tried to make it through the next academic year without a break, I’d probably end up on medical leave again. Why do you need time off? What are you going to spend your time off doing? Get as specific as you can.
Find the version of vacation that works for you. There are so many ways to take a vacation! I know people who work only 3-4 days/week for months, dripping their vacation out to last as long as possible. I need to take long chunks of time off at once. Some people must travel, while others prefer a staycation. Some people keep their kids home with them, and others send them off to daycare as usual. There is no right or wrong way to take a vacation, just ways that are workable and unworkable for you.
Warn everyone with as much notice as possible. Key to taking a vacation free from interruptions is to prepare the people who are interconnected with you for said vacation. For example, I usually give my lab several months of notice of when I will be taking my annual time off. This allows my graduate students lots of time to factor my time off into their research plans. It gives me and my research assistants time to plan for any work that will be happening in my absence.
When joining committees, practice “informed consent” about your availability. This is a new strategy for me over the last year, and it doesn’t relate only to my vacation. I am a person with limited availability due to family and health obligations. This doesn’t always align with others, and I’ve realized it can cause a lot of frustration if expectations are not communicated. This means that when joining committees, including graduate student advisory committees, I am clear about my availability when asked. This includes explicitly conveying that I will not be attending graduate student committee meetings or defences during my vacation. I try to be transparent that I will not be offended if my limited availability leads someone to decide I am not the committee member for them.
Remind yourself that no one should be surprised you are taking time off in the summer. Because, as already mentioned, academics don’t have a lot of choice about when they take vacation. Most institutions have no back up plan for an absent instructor, so summer is when you’re taking time off. I find reminding myself that summer vacation is an incredibly predictable occurrence helps me combat my stress and feelings of alarm at having to set boundaries around time off. And, if someone wants you to participate in something they are asking you about, they would schedule it for a time when you can make it.
Practice and prepare what you will say when asked to sacrifice your vacation. Because you will be asked. I can get so stressed about setting boundaries for my vacation, and my nervous system goes into overdrive. As a result, I often violate those boundaries in the short term to alleviate this discomfort. Knowing ahead of time what I will say helps, and the more I practiced it this year, the easier it got. (And remember, we’re socialized in academia to have time scarcity and not take time off, so we need to be gentle about setting those boundaries).
Craft a clear autoreply. For me, this includes being very clear that I will not be replying to emails and offering answers to some questions I commonly receive in the summer (such as indicating whether I will be reviewing graduate student applications for 2026-2027) and providing an alternative contact person(s).
Plan to archive all of your emails when you return. Total. Game. Changer. My auto-reply clearly states that if someone needs me, they will have to resend the email after I return from vacation. While I do skim my email upon my return because some emails are automated and won’t be sent again (such as reminders of collegial process deadlines or emails from the ethics board about my research studies), for the most part, it’s Select All → Archive. (Archive means those emails are searchable later if I do find I need one of them.) This year, I also requested that people not cc me on emails while I’m off.
Use semester- and monthly-planning for the rest of the year. Six weeks off happen because I accomplish what I need to during the rest of the year. I manage that with clear semester and monthly planning. (This has taken years of practice, but worth it).
Keep a running list for your work-related thoughts. They’re going to happen. My brain loves to come up with great research ideas as soon as I slow down. Use a piece of paper, a Notion page, email yourself, find a napkin - jot them down and revisit your list when you’re back from vacation.
Surround yourself with like-minded time-takers-off-ers. I have a network of friends who love and thrive in their time off. They have hobbies and travel and we get together for coffee and celebrate all the stuff we do that has nothing to do with academics. Social behaviour is contagious!
This is a reminder that there are, at best, eight weeks of summer left for those of us in the northern hemisphere: If you haven’t planned any time off, now is your time to fix that.
In vacation solidarity,
P.S. I accidentally have an extra rainbow (large sized) Passion Planner that I would love to share with someone. (Not a sponsored post, I just love Passion Planner and through a shipping error have too many). I really need some 2025-2026 blog post ideas, so reply and give me a few and I’ll pick someone who replies to send this gorgeous thing out to. 💚 (I’ll say this a few times over the rest of the summer!)