Academia is my job, not my whole life

I had just gotten home from the hospital and was standing in the shower. I was thinking of what a nightmare the previous night had been. And that, even so, this paled into comparison to what friends of ours were (and are) finding their way through.

I didn’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t want us to do this anymore.

I got out of the shower, dried off and got dressed. I went straight to my partner and said, “We should leave our jobs and move back to Queensland. Soon.”

***

Our toddler had gastro. He had two small vomits and was then fine. Forty-eight hours later I started vomiting. And I did not stop for nine hours. I was so dehydrated after seven hours that I could barely lift my head to vomit. But we did not call an ambulance.

What if my partner got just as sick? Who would we leave our child with? It was midnight and we felt we had no one.

Eventually a home GP came and he called for an ambulance straight away. He gave my partner medication and told me he would be fine but I needed to go. He was right.

This is not the first time that I have been hit hard with a virus/infection/disease and delayed seeking urgent medical attention because of concern about care for our child. 

***

My partner and I were on a one-way road to burning out. He was working full-time, trying to finish his PhD at night (that he had put on hold when we had our son to increase our financial security), and spend time with his child. I was working part-time, the primary care provider for our child, and working on additional projects in the evening to keep my independent research going. We barely had time for just each other.

If a cruel act of life took one of us, I would be ashamed as to how we were living before. It’s not particularly useful or healthy to live as if you will die tomorrow, despite what ‘inspirational’ Instagram posts would have you believe. But the events of this year had death playing on my mind. As much as we love our work there is much more to our lives; work was receiving a disproportionate amount of our time and attention.

So, we uprooted our lives to live closer to (biological and chosen) family. We are spending the last four months of this year staying with our parents and house sitting for friends. While we saved hard to not have to do paid work during this time, we are also privileged to have parents who can afford to have us stay with them.

My partner is now completing his thesis under much less stressful circumstances and I am currently caring for our child (while dabbling in some passion projects, usually when he is in bed).

***

My approach to being an academic has also changed this year. 

A PhD is like an academic apprenticeship. It is poorly paid (if you receive a scholarship) but skills you as a researcher in your area of choice. You are technically a student but treated almost like a staff member. You get a sense of the culture and unspoken rules of academia, but you are not quite in the thralls of it yet, giving you—well, for me anyway—some perspective.

I could see the type of academic that is valued and that, as an early career researcher, I was expected to aspire to. This academic holds a competitive fellowship with a national government funding body. They have a specific area of expertise that they are well known for and rarely branch beyond it. They work long hours. Their ‘success’ is measured by the number of publications they have. They hold their cards close to their chest and choose competition over collaboration.

(If you are this academic, I do not mean to suggest that there is something wrong with you. I am, however, challenging the notion that all academics should aspire to this.)

There are countless threads on Twitter where people promote this as the academic ideal. Even ones discussing self-care are usually thinly veiled promotions of the same themes. This is my favourite take on it:

I was on the path to being this academic. I spent months--including most of the Christmas holidays--applying for what is perhaps the most lucrative fellowship in my field. There are about eight months between submitting your application and receiving your result. A lot can change in this time. I was relieved not to receive it. 

I was tired of researching and talking about endometriosis. It is not exactly fun to research something you live with, especially as a woman in the context of a male-centred medical system. People often assume I came to do my PhD on endometriosis because I have it. If anything, this was a reason for me not to do it. But I knew it was important to do, would attract the necessary funding, and it addressed my ultimate research interest: what does Medicine do when it doesn’t know what to do? (Spoiler: they attribute the 'problem' to women.)

I love learning the fabric of a new field; I do not want to limit myself to just one. I do not define my work by the number of publications I have. I want to make a meaningful and sustainable impact on the world. I want to do my job and feel passionate about it, but then put it to the side when I want and need to.

I do not want to be a competitive independent academic. I want to be a dangerous one. A thoughtful one. One who chooses collaboration over competition. Who does not overwork themselves or commend others for doing so. I want to be a gentle one:

***

I’m excited to have found a new field to address my research interests and fabulous people to do it with, starting in the New Year. (I will share more on this soon.) But most of all, I’m excited to be with my loved ones, to get back into my love of swimming, and to have washing dry and crisp in an hour thanks to the Brisbane sunshine. Because “happiness isn’t some goal that we’re working towards…it’s just in the daily living of life.”

Author: Dr Kate Young