Working to an unpredictable deadline

30 July 2010

By Elizabeth Dodson

These are strange times for me.  I’m sat at home frantically trying to tie up multiple loose ends to various projects and proposals because I have a more personal deadline that everything needs to fit around.

For the second (and most likely last) time in my research career, I’m expecting a baby – and at 38 weeks pregnant, it really could be anytime now.  Every day I must evaluate and prioritise what I need to get done to ensure that my maternity leave has minimum impact on my colleagues – and as each week has passed by, I’ve had to make decisions on how far I’m prepared to travel and for how long.  This radius has rapidly reduced from meetings abroad to no more than an hour from home.

It is at this time that I am particularly thankful for the flexibility that a research career affords me.  Whereas friends who work traditional 9-5 jobs have mainly given up work at least 6 weeks before their due-date, I’ve been able to continue because I can work my hours when I’m most able and where necessary from home.  As long as I continue to meet my responsibilities, keeping up with deadlines and maintaining the same level of quality, then I have the freedom to manage my own time.  Working for longer into pregnancy might not sound great to everyone, but it means I will actually get to spend my maternity leave with the new baby rather than sitting around in the weeks before, feeling fat and rotting my brain with daytime tv!

Of course there are also downsides...  The first is that it will actually be very difficult to switch off from work once I start maternity leave.  I have everything I need to continue at home, and there are so many work based temptations!  I could just get that paper finished, and perhaps apply for that fellowship, and then there’s that grant that no-one else will have time to do a proposal for etc etc etc.  Maybe it’s not so much a downside as a freedom of choice, but secretly I think I am a little jealous of the new mothers who manage to switch off entirely from the working world, at least for a while.  Having said that, last time I went on maternity leave, I spent the time upping my professional credentials, including getting Chartered Psychologist status - which has been well worth having.

The second downside is much more clearly a negative.  Research careers are notoriously insecure, which makes it less certain that there will always be a job to go back to.  Projects I am working on now will have finished before I am due to return, so there is a great deal of uncertainty about what opportunities will be available to me next year.  This links into downside number one, in that I feel a certain (personally created) pressure, to spend at least some of my maternity leave trying to secure my continued employment.  Going back to silver linings, at least the fact that I can apply for funding etc gives me a little more control over my likely working future compared to many women who will be taking leave during this financial downturn. 

So it’s all swings and roundabouts in the playground of life!  I’d be very interested to hear how other researchers feel that pregnancy and parenthood have impacted on their careers, and vice versa...