I’m writing this blog post while my toddler watches a cartoon in the background, and I feel drained by the constant need to multitask. This morning, I peeled clementines for her while leading a Zoom meeting, trying to keep my hands out of frame and appease her without needing to mute my audio. I’m currently five years post-PhD graduation, and have worked remotely ever since: through my husband’s process of immigrating to the U.S., COVID-19, and parenthood. I think often about the lessons I’ve learned since finishing my doctorate about work-life balance. Because my life was so much less complicated during graduate school, I had the luxury of “winging it” when it came to work-life balance, and I didn’t achieve it very effectively. Now that I have to actively grapple for work-life balance as I change diapers while returning phone calls, I have a much different appreciation for what I could have done differently during graduate school.
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Return of the Mummy: The trials and triumphs of a life post-maternity leave by Jennifer Z. Paxton
There are frequent conversations focused on the impact that having children can have on a woman’s career progression, especially in academia. That is not what this blog post is about. On the other hand, there is also much positive discussion claiming that women can ‘have it all’ and that children should not, and are not, a barrier to women ‘making it’ in their career. This is also not what this blog post is about. Instead, this post is about me and my own personal battles with motherhood, my career and my own sometimes destructive mind. Some of this may be applicable to others and some of it may not, but I hope at the very least that it helps to open the doors of communication for anyone who ever felt like I did and to let them know that things can, and do, get better.
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Voices of Academia 