It is Cambridge University classicist Mary Beard. Here is a taste of an article about her workload at The Guardian:
Must be a tiring life. It evidently is. On Saturday night, she asked other academics to share how many hours a week they work, adding: “My current estimate is over 100. I am a mug. But what is the norm in real life?”
“Over 100” hours of work each week? Is she serious? She insists she is, yes.
Isn’t that quite close to the limit of what’s physically possible? Probably.
Or slightly above the limit of what’s believable, perhaps? Well, some of the many, many replies certainly took that view. There are only 168 hours in a week, after all. If Beard sleeps a bare minimum of six hours a night, and works through every single weekend, that leaves about three and a half hours a day for everything that isn’t work.
All washing, dressing, eating, Twitter, socialising, going to the toilet, tidying, watching TV, shopping, exercise and hobbies, in three and a half hours, while chronically underslept? I guess so. “I have calculated carefully for the last few weeks,” Beard says. “Start work at 6, basically work through till about 11, with dinner break (no lunch).” Altogether, she reckons she works 14-15 hours every single day.
Read the entire piece here.
