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A Professor’s Teaching Day, and What the Briefcase Has to Carry Through It

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Between the first lift of a professor’s bag in the morning and the last set-down at night, the bag is touched at every hour of the day. It is carried, opened, dropped on a desk, parked on a lecture hall floor and loaded with whatever the day produced. A bag that suits that routine is not a matter of taste alone.

The day below is a composite. It is built from published accounts of academic working life and from the specifications of the briefcases Marcellino NY lists, not from one real person’s diary, and every claim about the world is tied to a source. Where a source covers handbags or shoulder bags rather than briefcases specifically, the text says so.

7:40, the commute

The first test of the day is weight, and it begins before anyone reaches campus. The American Chiropractic Association states that “ACA recommends that one’s bag weigh no more than 10 percent of one’s body weight.” A physiotherapy clinic gives a looser range for the same family of bags, saying handbags, shoulder bags and laptop bags “should not weigh more than 10-15 percent of your body weight.” The two figures differ, and neither comes from research on briefcases in particular, so they are best read as rules of thumb.

The reason behind them is posture. A doctor quoted in Time explains that with a heavy bag on one shoulder “you’re holding your spine in a curved way,” which can lead to pain in the back, neck and shoulders. Her advice is plain: “It’s far better to carry two bags—one on each shoulder. Split it up.” The chiropractors add a cheaper fix, alternating shoulders from day to day.

A second expert, quoted in an NBC News report on bags and backs, makes the muscular case: “Wearing a bag on one side can cause or reinforce muscle imbalances in the shoulders and spine.” Her packing advice is practical, and it applies to any bag with a main compartment: “Rearranging the bag by putting heavy items closer to the body and at the bottom of the bag can help.” She also warns about size, since “the larger the bag, the more likely you are to fill it.”

Strap design matters as much as total weight. The same physiotherapy guide says “The shoulder straps should be wide, adjustable, and padded if possible.” Marcellino NY briefcase listings give the strap as an adjustable shoulder strap with a 20-inch drop and a one-inch width, which is adjustable. Padding is not mentioned in the listing details reviewed for this post, which is worth asking about for anyone who walks a long way from parking or a train. The trade-offs between a briefcase and a messenger bag are laid out in Briefcase vs. Messenger Bag vs. Laptop Bag.

9:00, the lecture hall

The lecture is where a bag is judged by what it holds. A new professor writing about her own teaching bag keeps the tech simple: “We all need a few tech tools to do our jobs, but I keep it pretty simple by bringing my laptop and an HDMI converter for teaching.” She is just as plain about the rest of the load: “Staying alive is my basic teaching day goal. It takes an embarrassing amount of stuff–”

Marcellino NY lists many of its briefcases at 16 by 12 by 4 inches, with a standard set of inside pockets and a back newspaper pocket. The listing does not say whether those are outside or inside measurements, so a buyer with a large laptop should check the interior against the machine with the maker before ordering. A laptop, a charger, a converter and a folder fit more easily in a case with pockets than in an open bag.

Then the bag goes on the floor beside the lectern. A waxed bridle hide is made for hard use, and one retailer describes a finish that is “quite scratch resistant, and will patina wonderfully over time into a rich colour”, though scuffs happen. They can usually be dealt with, as the guide to fixing scratches, scuffs and water spots explains.

Appearance counts in a classroom too, and opinions on it vary. In one long-running forum thread about faculty bags, a commenter says “There is no backpack that will not, as you say, scream student or at least scream young and unprofessional.” Others in the same thread defend good backpacks, so the claim is one view among several. Whether a bag reads as professional depends on the department, the campus and the person.

12:15, office hours

Office hours fill the bag with other people’s work. Papers come in, books go out, and a student’s draft has to survive the afternoon without a crease. A reference definition of the form explains why the briefcase suits the job: “A narrow hard-sided box-shaped bag or case used mainly for carrying papers and equipped with a handle.”

A letter-size page measures 8.5 by 11 inches, so a case whose interior is close to 16 by 12 inches leaves room for pages to lie flat. That is an inference from the listed size, not a measurement, and the question of interior dimensions applies here too. The legal-size version of the question is answered in the guide to legal-size files in a briefcase.

The briefcase has its own history here. The same reference notes that briefcases “became status symbols for those associated with white-collar professions such as business and law in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.” The form’s later story is told in The Briefcase Didn’t Die. It Retired.

2:30, committee and a stack of papers

By mid-afternoon the bag has taken on weight it did not have in the morning. An academic describing her bag in an Inside Higher Ed series puts the arrangement bluntly: “I pretty much leave my life in it, ready to be grabbed and hauled out the door.” The series, a 2014 post on the University of Venus blog, treats the bag as a window on how its owner works, observing that “how we work is often linked to how we live our lives.”

Published accounts of what academics carry bear this out. Five scholars in different countries described their bags for the University of Venus series, and the lists run to a notebook, a thin folder of current work, pens, a charger, an e-reader, a laptop or tablet, plastic folders for papers and lecture notes, a USB stick and reading glasses. One contributor made a deliberate cut: “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t carrying too much so I forced myself to get a smaller bag.”

Another keeps the load split in exactly the way the clinicians recommend. Her main bag carries the laptop, folders and notebook, and a separate book bag carries a water bottle, an umbrella and lunch. The same series also notes how work and life blur for academics: “In 21st century higher ed and, with intellectual work in general, there are times when it can be difficult to distinguish work from non-work.” A bag becomes the place where that blur gets packed, which is the argument for keeping it small enough to empty.

A bag used that way collects clutter, and clutter is weight. The simplest habit is also the least glamorous: empty it once a week, put back only what the next day needs, and let the heavy reading stay on the desk. The weight guidance above is the reason. Ten percent of body weight goes quickly when it includes a laptop, two hardbacks and a stack of marking.

Pockets help sort the load. A newspaper pocket at the back suits whatever is read on the train, and inside pockets keep pens, chargers and keys from migrating into the main compartment. Neither is exciting, but the arrangement is what keeps a bag usable on the fortieth day of the term as well as the first.

One third-party video, titled College Professor Everyday Carry and posted by a channel called UX Matt, shows what a professor puts in a briefcase. It is not a Marcellino NY production, and it has not been watched for this post, so nothing above relies on it.

5:45, the way home

The last test is the evening commute, and sometimes it rains. Bridle leather is not waterproof, and the tannery behind Marcellino NY’s English bridle leather says that its leather “does not have a waterproof finish.” What matters is the drying afterwards, which is covered in What Rain Actually Does to a Bridle Leather Briefcase.

A bag used this way for a term or a decade picks up marks, and they accumulate in predictable places: the corners, the base, the handle. Patina Is a Record, Not a Flaw makes the argument that this is the point of leather in the first place, and the arithmetic in What a Leather Briefcase Costs Per Year of Use shows what that looks like over time.

What the day asks of a bag

Read back across the day, the requirements are specific. None of them is a style preference.

  • It has to be light enough to carry every day. The guidance above clusters around 10 percent of body weight, and that includes the empty bag.
  • It needs a wide, adjustable strap. Handle-only carrying is for short distances.
  • It needs to hold a laptop and flat paper. Check the interior, not just the listed size.
  • It has to survive floors, rain and daily handling. Waxed, vegetable-tanned leather does this and shows the wear honestly.
  • It should be easy to empty and re-pack. Pockets and a clear layout beat extra space.

Marcellino NY briefcases are made to order, and the product pages list build lead times of up to six months, so a purchase for the start of a term is a decision for the term before. The ready-to-ship shelf is the quicker route, and the full range is in the Marcellino NY briefcases category. A 16 by 12 inch model such as the Habermas 2074 is one example of the size discussed here.

Before ordering, it is worth walking the day once on paper: what goes in at 7:40, what comes out at 5:45, and what stays on the desk. The bag that fits that list is usually the right one, and the answer is different for every professor who tries it.

Sources

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