academic life

Work-life Balance

I have been seeing and hearing more from my friends, acquaintances, and even total strangers about “work-life balance.” It has really been setting me off. Sometimes I have very strong opinions about relatively minor things. At least, they seem like minor things to other people. “Work-life balance” is exactly one of these things. I am bothered because the choice of words in the phrase is fundamentally incorrect, but I’m even more bothered because of what this improper word choice reveals about our culture.