Alum: Take Time From the Grind

To the Editor:

The other day an Oberlin classmate of mine called me in my New Jersey office from the west coast well after “normal” business hours. He opened the conversation with a comment that, despite our superior education, we were still working long hours twenty-five years after our graduation. You might believe that we spend long hours in the office because of our passion for our work or you might conclude that we were among the subjects in Robert Reich’s latest book The Future of Success. Either way, we’re still working hard.
Building on his information base as the former Secretary of Labor and his own experience in trying to achieve a comfortable balance between his work life and his family life, Reich manages to paint a pretty discouraging picture of the future of work. He suggests that several social, economic, political and technological factors have come together to make, “lives more frenzied, less secure, more economically divergent, more socially stratified.”
On average, college graduates earn 70 to 80 percent more than those with only a high school diploma. And it is college graduates who are working the longer hours and seem to be the ones struggling the most to find time for activities outside of their work. It is becoming more and more difficult to find people willing to commit time for volunteer activities, whether it is a long-term commitment or even a one-time event. Even if you are able to resist the pressure to move to a bigger house or a more expensive car or some other external display of your success, it will become more difficult to resist acceding to the other norms of success in the U.S., including long working hours and being reachable almost constantly with a variety of electronic gadgets.
Many of us started out with a passion for our work, but holding onto that passion in the complex environment of a large organization is no simple task. Maintaining your personal integrity is no simple task. And finding time for nurturing important relationships and interests is no simple task.
My Oberlin classmate called my office again yesterday, well after “normal” business hours, but no one answered the phone. I didn’t answer my cell phone either, and I didn’t check e-mail from home last evening. I left work earlier than usual to spend a couple of hours out in the spring air watching a bunch of kids who run for the sheer joy of it in their first home track meet of the season. Today I think I’ll take my sandwich and go sit on a park bench at lunchtime and listen to the birds. Small things, really, but reminders of what is truly important and a small blow for simplicity and balance.

–Leanne C. Wagner 
OC ’76