Print This PostWith the start of the new academic year, I’m starting to get a sense of what the rest of my time as a PhD student is going to look like. In the latest in my blog series on parenthood and academia, I’ll be celebrating what has gone well since my return to work – as well as commiserating the nightmares that I should have expected, but somehow didn’t.
I now have six weeks of work under my belt, post- returning from maternity leave. As I mentioned in my last post, I took nine months of leave, which seemed to hit a reasonable balance in terms of adequate time with a newborn (if there is such a thing) and minimal disruption to my studies and finances. When I returned to work six weeks ago, I can genuinely say it was as if I had never been away. Or, more accurately, as if I had been away on holiday for three weeks and nothing had changed, other than me being considerably more tired than when I left (which, in fairness, tends to be the case when I go on holiday). Perhaps part of this is due to my maintaining a (possibly borderline unhealthy) connection to my work life while I was off: I met up with colleagues semi-regularly for coffee, worked on some papers that I hadn’t quite managed to finish, even dragging a sleeping baby into the office on a couple of occasions. In reality though, quite a few things had changed, including the usual personnel changes in our department, my temporary relocation to a new office, and (arguably more of a biggie) my primary supervisor moving to a different institution.
I abhor change, I really do, but I managed to overcome the trauma of sitting at a new desk and get to work.
I was extremely grateful for 2023 Emily’s foresight and organisation when I came across a post-mat leave to-do list, as well as a summary of work that I had completed to date.
In the lead-up to parental leave, I had been desperately trying to complete my systematic review, however decided that it was better to do something well than do it in a rush. As disappointing as that was at the time, it was nice to have a familiar task to get back to. Day one in the office, I updated my searches and discovered there would likely be a couple more papers for inclusion. I decided it would be a good idea to refamiliarize myself with the papers I had included back in 2023 – a rabbit hole I perhaps should have avoided. Scouring through the papers I started to question all of my previous decisions, wondering what on earth I had been thinking when applying my inclusion criteria, and how on earth my thematic analysis had drawn the conclusions it had. As insane as it sounds, I decided to abandon the themes I had developed and start from scratch, effectively forcing myself to redo a month of work. Despite the fact that I hadn’t even given a cursory glance to my review in that 9 months, it must have been ticking along in the background, my thinking on it somehow maturing over time. Weirdly, I feel better for it.
For the first few weeks, I felt like I had really hit the ground running. I was maximising the hours I had, and I felt confident with my output. Obviously, that meant it was time for me to hit a snag. I dropped my 10-month-old off to our childcare provider one Thursday morning and discovered – to my absolute horror – that they were due to be closed the following week. Let’s just say that this came as something of a surprise. Admittedly, I’m not my most resilient self at the moment, so headed directly for existential crisis, panicking about how on earth I was going to get any work done or reschedule the meetings I had planned – despite the fact that my supervisors were apparently entirely unperturbed. I despaired about the situation to a couple of friends – both of whom said that their first week back at work following maternity leave had been scuppered when their babies picked up bugs at nursery, meaning they had to take the majority of the week off. Obviously, I’ve heard parents lamenting the frequency with which their children get sick at school or nursery, yet somehow I didn’t think that would apply to me. It looks like, for one reason or another, suddenly having to change plans is going to be par for the course from now on.
In the end things were fine. A couple of friends stepped in to help out for a few hours here and there, all of us ended up being sick for most of the week anyway so productivity would never have been particularly high, and meetings I couldn’t make were easily rescheduled. It wasn’t the end of the world, and actually I still managed to get enough work done, albeit in bits and pieces. It was a good lesson for me though, as someone who needs to be working at full capacity, all the time, that it’s okay to take it slow and work with what I have. And as someone who enjoys structure and film boundaries, forcing me to show a little bit of flexibility.
Managing my work alongside my responsibilities at home won’t always be plain sailing, but hopefully I can develop that flexibility to weather the little storms when they come.
Emily Spencer
Author
Emily Spencer is a PhD Student at University College London looking at improving how GPs communicate with people with dementia and their family carers about their future care. Emily previous had a 5 year career break to pursue a career as a musician, and has previously undertaken research on improving the care people with dementia receive from their GP practice, as well as end-of-life and palliative care provision in the community. Emily is also a new mum and will be writing about her experiences navigating motherhood and a research career.
Adam Smith
Dementia Researcher
Dr Jodi Watt
Dr Yvonne Couch