Professors and Typology of Time: Phenomenological Studying of the Experience of Time among Faculty Members of University of Guilan

Abstract
University as the central place of thinking in the society has had more anxiety with respect to time and temporality in encountering with emergence of industrial revolution and mechanical (clock) time and eventually the current technological revolution. The purpose of this article is the studying of experience of time among faculty members of university of Gilan in Iran. The methodological approach is qualitative by using phenomenological method according to Van Manen’s analysis view. The studied population is all of employed faculty members of university of Guilan. The purposeful sampling and snowball sampling have been simultaneity used for choosing samples. In the following, data gathering technique is semi structured interview which concluded after doing deep interviews with 25 persons and attaining theoretical saturation. According to data, faculty members experience 7 types of time in the academic life that include qualitative time, acceleration time, structural time, compressed time, educational time, research time and studying time. These times exist simultaneity and contradictorily with each other, but represent opposition between acceptance and refusal of dominant time regime in the university. This opposition expresses asynchrony that leads to more convergence in spite of more resistance. 
Keywords: Academic Life, Acceleration Time, Educational Time, Research Time, Structural Time.
 
1. Introduction
Time is an interdisciplinary matter that has been object of different disciplines including philosophy, literature studies, religion studies, sociology, psychology, management, political science, physics and etc. Time is not only a necessary aspect of change but also stability, since latter is nothing but an awareness that something has remained stable whilst its surrounding environment, even the components within, have changed (Adam 1990:9). Society forces the person to develop a biographic time. This biographic time is marked by individual’s ‘status passage’(Glaser and Strauss 1971) through the various positions and identities available in society (Lewis and Weigart 1981:89) In actuality, all individuals live simultaneously in more than one world (Wagner 1983:72) According Berger and Luckman (1991), the experience of life-world, creating different various universes and the meaning of time could be construed with various knowledge’s including: pre-theoretical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, explicit theories and theoretical tradition. In this research the meaning of time is studied through phenomenology in life world of university. In the other words, the social world is multilayered, and one of the important tasks of a phenomenological sociology is to conduct a careful analysis of these different strata (Zahavi 2019:108). Also, university as a modern institution has its own experiences of time. Exactly, as a life world it has spaces and horizons to present to human subjectivity. In fact, as conscious beings we always inhabit the life-world (Moran 2000:182).
The human experience of world generally and Homo Academes particularly have been affected by ICTs. In other words, communication technologies have made the distance from a concrete idea to an abstract idea temporally and spatially. According to scientific perspectives the different disciplines have had various experiences of adoption or resistance. Facility members are the metaphor and symbol of these transformations. Their understanding and cognition represent the experience of scientific life in Iran. University of Guilan has 10 facilities, one academic campus(Pardis) and 2 researches centers (The Caspian Sea Basin Research Center and The Guilanology Research Center) with more than 600 faculty members who work in the teaching and researching areas. The main question is: How Faculty members experience time in the scientific life?
 
2. Method and Materials
In this study the interpretive phenomenology has been used by focusing on the Max Van Manen’s approach for analyzing data. According Van Manen, it does not make much sense to ask how large the sample of interviewees, participants, or subjects should be or how a sample should be composed and proportioned in terms of gender, ethnicity, or other selective considerations (Van Manen 2014:353). But with considering that the studying is done in the domain of sociology and social science, purposeful, snowball and maximum variation sampling have been used simultaneously, therefore the studied population were purposefully selected regarding faculty, department, science ranking, faculty title, and gender in order to have maximal variation. Consequently the selection of the studied population was concluded after attaining similar meanings and theoretical saturation in the 25 interviews. The participants’ disciplines were sociology, political science, bio system mechanics, psychology, mathematics, chemistry engineering, management, Persian language and literature, sport physiology, research and art, urban planning, biochemistry, linguistics, jurisprudence, Arabic language and literature, geography, electrical engineering, comparative literature and sport science.
The semi-structured technique was used for collecting data. The time and place of interviews were determined by sending emails and calling in order that participants could express their stories as much as possible in their favorite time and environment so that creditable data could be gathered. Finally, in phenomenological research, credibility is more important than reliability.
 
3. Discussion
18 man and 7 woman, 10 assistant professors, 13 associate professors and 2 professors from 7 faculties and 20 departments participated. In terms of composition, 5 persons are under 45 years, 13 persons are from 46 to 55 years and 5 persons are above 55 years. After them activation, findings were categorized into 2 subthemes of structural time including educational, research and organizational times and of non-structural time including qualitative, compressed, acceleration and studying times.
 
4. Structural time
Organizational time: this temporal framework influences on how people schedule their time in the organization. According to participants’ views, organizational time is that part of time that faculty member does requested activities from university based on its temporal rhythm and framework.
Educational time: This kind of time is not subject to individual’s volition who may be increase or decrease it, rather only could manage it in term of university. But the important matter is many educational hours that faculty members should appropriate their time to it. The important point is its structural framework and this kind of time must be scheduled.
Research Time: this kind of time is one of dominant spend time in the academic life. It is spend in different ways. Some of it is devoted to research activities in term of students’ treatises. In fact, this kind of time is somehow an objective time that is not under individual’s domination but rather should be appropriated according to the calendar of university.
 
5. Non-structural time
Acceleration time: Regarding to workloads and external expectations, the concern of faculty member is to do workloads in his limited time. In fact, they attempt to use their time optimally. This kind of scheduling is not only doing organizational tasks in the scope of organizational time but includes the transmission of their tasks to home. In other words, the faculty members’ space is subjected to little time and their workloads, then space loses its existential meaning.
Qualitative time: this kind of time could be derived from the temporal reactions of faculty members regarding to dominant temporal structure in the university. The meaning of this kind could be founded in a typical resistance and attempting to not submitting. This temporal framework addresses individual’s inner world in confronting to university. Thus, he/she tries to somehow understand his/herself with world and rethinks about his/her experiences in confronting to university.
Compressed time: It can be defined as a team that individual is forced to overlook some of his/her works regarding too little temporal budge in order to attain desired targets. This means weather works should be done incompletely or priotriy to secure his/her position in scientific life. This compressed could be seen in signifying academic life as time shortage. Put in differently, academic life is synonymous of time shortage.
Studying time: In the scientific life, studying is undeniable in anyway. The important matter is that studying times are not invariable. This means that there is not   the given times for studying during a day. This kind of time is subjected to scientific life as well as family life. However, it could be derived that studying time is construed as a moral principle regarding to profession. It means faculty members study in any temporal condition.
 
6. Conclusion
The manning of time is different based on gender, scientific title and special discipline as studying time is less notable in sight of woman faculty members because of double role namely motherhood and wifehood as well as in sight of assistant professors because of role expectations at start of employing. Furth more, time compressed is less notable for professors, because they can juggle with time based on their academic experiences. However, acceleration time is prevalent between all of faculty members regarding to gender, scientific title and discipline and all of them have an acceleration sensation, but the significant point is noteworthiness of qualitative time between faculty members of department of literature and humanities in comparative to other faculties.
According to phenomenological typology of time, in fact academic time could be named a synchronous asynchrony of adoption and resistance. Adoption is parallel to domination of modern temporal order on human subjectivity. This kind of order attempts to formulate human life policies generally and homo academes particularly. The tangible form of this kind of adoption exist in the acceleration and organizational times. In contrast, homo academes attempt to impose his/her concerns, desires and volition on the world and time in term of temporal resistance, namely through deviation from existing structure of university as one of symbols of modern structure to ascertain his/her own being-in-the world. But the core contradiction of asynchrony is that more resistance simultaneously leads to more adoption.