The last time
I was asked to write about how I spent my summer was in middle school. I wrote
about the friends I made at summer camp, canoe trips, and spending time at my
parents’ country home. This summer, I also hope to spend time with friends,
visit my parents’ country home, and do some kayaking on the Huron River. But I
also have to evaluate tenure portfolios, advise graduate students, lead a summer
workshop, run a Judaic Studies Center, and write a book. Did I mention the
kids?
So, like many
of you, I find it maddening when friends and family assume I’m on summer
vacation just because I’m not teaching. I have to admit, though, that it
doesn’t help my case when I decide to blow off work on a gorgeous Wednesday and
go for a bike ride instead. I generally try to keep to a 9-5 (ish) weekday work
schedule, but I do deviate from it to take advantage of a nice day. When I do,
I try to make up for the lost time by working through a Sunday or into an
evening when I don’t have much else to do. There are two dangers of having such
a flexible schedule: one is that I don’t get any work done; the other is that I
waste away the summer sitting in front of a computer. I am equally capable of
falling into both traps.
For many
years, I spent much of my summers travelling. I would work in archives or
libraries in Russia and Israel, or do oral history and linguistic fieldwork in
Ukraine. For the last two summers, though, I have mostly stayed put. I have
tens of thousands of pages of archival materials in electronic copies on my
laptop. Thanks to international agreements that have facilitated archival
duplication, I can do research in provincial Ukrainian archives while sitting
with the dog on my back deck in Ann Arbor. I don’t even need to make a run to
campus to check a fact, since so much of the university’s library collections
are available through Hathitrust or Google Books. When I notice a document is
missing on my hard drive, I can even instantaneously Facebook Message the
research assistant I am working with in Ukraine. Hours later a PDF pops up on
my screen with the missing evidence.
But when I
open Facebook, I also see pictures of friends and colleagues on the beaches of
Tel Aviv, the bridges of Budapest, and the canals of St. Petersburg. I
momentarily regret that I am here sitting in the offices of Ann Arbor.
Technological advances that let me do so much work from my own office or even
from my back porch have probably helped make my summers more productive and
have left more time for visiting family, or enjoying the fresh air of a
Michigan summer. Still, I sometimes miss the stale air and musty smells of the
basement archives and stately libraries in which I used to summer.
Jeffrey Veidlinger is Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor
of History and Judaic Studies and Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic
Studies at the University of Michigan.
