5 ms·

>He worked on this study while on sabbatical at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. While on sabbatical? Wow! That's dedication.

• goodcanadian 9y ago
  Ummm . . . I think you misunderstand the meaning of "sabbatical." It doesn't mean vacation. It means freedom from teaching and administrative duties to give you time to go to another institution, learn new things, and work on interesting problems. This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect an academic on sabbatical to be doing.
  • flukus 9y ago
    I wonder why we don't see this in the corporate world more? When we need a change of pace we have to quit one company and start at another one, you'd think it would be in the companies best interest to have people go elsewhere to get their fix and then come back with their old knowledge plus any relevant new knowledge.
    • microtherion 9y ago
      Apple used to have sabbaticals until 1997 or so (6 paid weeks off every 5 years). Anecdotally, I heard that many employees used the leisure time to look for new jobs, but that may have been due to the turmoils Apple was undergoing in the 1990s.
      • y7 9y ago
        6 paid weeks off is hardly a sabbatical. For many jobs in the EU you get that many vacation days anyway each year.
      • ajuc 9y ago
        That's about as much as people in EU get per year :)
  • hyperbovine 9y ago
    All true, though academics seem to wind up on sabbatical in the south of France with suspicious regularity.
  • amelius 9y ago
    In other words, sabbatical == getting sh*t done.