‘I Don't Even Have Time to Exist’: The Everyday Life of University Teachers

At first look, the educational everyday life seems to be a portrait that repeats itself over and over again, but when observed in depth, it appears as a reality full of richness and complexity (Jackson 2010; Eisner 1998). The paper studies how teachers deal with difficulties in everyday university life. A qualitative approach was used, with interviews to professors, temporals and permanents, and participant observation in universities, public and private, in Brazil and Colombia. Three alternatives were proposed to understand how they deal with difficulties: efforts, relationships and perspectives. Efforts refer to the intensity of activities, the responsibilities they must assume and the changes they must face in their work. The relationships, which stand out, are with those who share their life, their day-to-day life: children, partners, parents, friends or colleagues. Finally, the perspectives on their labors stand out, highlighting a strong emotional charge experienced by teachers as members of a community. The complexity of their activities, added to their intensity, makes them permanently look for alternatives to deal with difficulties, leading them to establish their teaching work as the core of their lives and, from there, to assume efforts, establish relationships and build perspectives on their daily lives.