I went in to my office at Snow a few Saturdays ago and want to report what I found. The problem is that a report of what was going on around our sometimes sleepy campus in Ephraim could sound self-serving or self-congratulatory. I intend neither.

I didn't have to go in on Saturday, but sometimes it's good to be able to play catch-up when the place isn't quite so busy. It is also a time that I can pick up "Car Talk" on KUER radio and listen to a favorite call-in program for those of us who can't speak exactly the same language as our auto mechanic. In the language of the day, we're automotive linguistically challenged people.One call that morning was from a listener who identified himself as an English professor at a prestigious college. This was all the bait that Tom and Ray Magliozzi, a.k.a. Click and Clack, the tappet brothers, needed to poke a bit of good-natured fun at the caller who really wanted to hear how to correct a steering problem and not about public perceptions of college professors.

The prof played along and told the brothers that college teaching wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He said that somedays it's hard to get to the golf course by 3 in the afternoon and that taking a year off as a sabbatical wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either.

Although the exchange was lighthearted, I suspect that it played into the hands of some unfair judgments and stereotypes.

If after I had heard this exchange on Saturday morning I had wanted to ask a colleague or two about it, I would not have to have gone far. I noticed that morning as I came in that the president's car was in its usual place, so I could have asked him. Next to his car in the usual place was the car of an education professor notorious for late hours at school. He has been accused of leaving his car permanently parked in front of the administration building and then walking home, but the truth is that he probably keeps his sleeping bag rolled up behind his office refrigerator.

In the office next to mine a colleague was correcting some French papers. She said she needed some uninterrupted time when she dove into a set of papers, so I didn't ask her what she thought about the public perceptions of college teachers.

In the writing lab I noticed that the writing lab director and an English as a second language instructor were working on a computer program together. They commented that it's hard to get on a computer in the lab during the week. They were trying to make the lab a better resource for international students.

Across the hall the forensics coach was helping some students with some last-minute stuff to get ready for some meet that they were traveling to next week. In the office next to him a teacher was framing some signed documents. It is part of a hobby and also part of lessons he uses in communications courses.

I wandered over by the music building to see how the yard sale was going. A faculty member was doing her bit to see that there were new curtains for the recital room of the music building. The yard sale was a fund-raiser. True to the English teacher in her, the yard sale had a theme, "Its Curtains for the Music Building." In the music building, my son was rattling windows with a pickup band that was getting ready for the battle of the bands planned by the students for the following week.

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It would be self-serving to multiply examples and to take the next step and suggest that some faculty might even work at home. When an English professor reads a novel at home that she plans to teach, she is working at home just as if she were correcting papers.

All in all, these Saturday workers seemed to be having fun. Any good-natured complaining seemed to be of the kind that is expected when someone is working at a time he really doesn't have to work.

It occurred to me that most had trouble separating work from play. Perhaps teaching is not a way to make a living after all but a way to make a life. When sociologists start talking about lifestyles, teaching should be included. It's not a job; it's a lifestyle.

A second impression was that the work ethic in Utah education is pretty good. People seem to take teaching seriously. The place isn't overadministered, teachers are free to work their rear ends off, and students generally seem to respect the investment in time and effort that is made in their behalf. And beside that, people who teach do it because they like to learn. I suppose that's why English professors listen to "Car Talk" and why other English professors even call in knowing that an English teacher trying to repair a car is good ammunition for a joke.

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