What study leave is like when home and work responsibilities clash!

At the beginning of this year I spent a frantic week applying for a doctoral sabbatical grant from the National Research Foundation here in South Africa. These grants are designed to buy you out of your teaching/academic work for a period of time so that you can focus on and finish your PhD. I heard nothing for months, but I pinned a lot of my hopes and plans on the answer being ‘yes.’ Finally, at the end of May the answer came and it was, thank ye gods, a ‘yes.’ I started my long-awaited break from work in June, and had 3 months to savour and use wisely. For the first week I just revelled in not having to put ‘work’ clothes on, and the pleasure of ‘commuting’ around the corner and through the kitchen to my desk instead of halfway across Cape Town. It was, in a word, bliss to work at home in slippers and tracksuit pants and be able to get up to make tea in my own kitchen. To have silence all around me all day. To be able to think, and write and do so at a less frantic pace, not having to snatch bits and pieces of time where I could. But, while it started off well, sadly it did not continue in this vein. And it was largely my fault.

Three weeks into my leave, my boys went on mid-year school holidays for 3 weeks. I worked, but at half-pace and my quiet was gone. It was frustrating and difficult. Grannies came to visit, which was lovely as they live far away and the timing of visits has to be carefully orchestrated. I kept working, but still only at half-pace, getting increasingly worried about how little progress I was making in relation to my work-plan. Eventually the kids went back to school and the grannies went home and quiet reigned again and I picked up the pace. But then, for another set of reasons I won’t go into here, the bathroom needed to be renovated, having been left for far too long and gotten into a state it could not remain in. So four weeks of polite but noisy and messy building work ensued, as renovations almost never go according to plan and ours were no exception. The renovations ended a week before my study leave ended. Just like that, 3 months had passed and I was a month behind my schedule for finishing the first full draft. I had a few undignified tantrums, and whined, I am sorry to say, like a small thwarted child. I didn’t want to come back to work. I wanted to rewind and do it all again. I wanted to make different choices about how I let other people use my precious time, about how I used it. I cannot blame my kids or husband or leaky shower or the grannies for my lack of progress. I let all the interruptions happen. I told everyone I was fine, I was coping, not to worry, it’ll all get done. I took on big and small tasks I could probably have let someone else do, or just left for later. I didn’t protect my time. I didn’t feel like I had the right to do that.

In truth I felt guilty about my leave. Colleagues who have been in a similar position to me – working, parents, struggling to keep all the balls in the air – did not get time off to work on their theses. I was not even eligible for this leave because of the way my role is structured and I only got it because I had the funding to pay for a replacement. I felt like I was getting something I did not deserve, or at least I felt guilty that I got it when deserving others had not. So, there was that. I also truly believed that I could be and do everything and still get the work done – I didn’t protect my time because most of it never really feels like mine and because I often do cope, sometimes just barely, but still. I just feel like I have to get on and do the best I can, you know? I wonder how many women in particular struggle with part-time PhD studies because of precisely this: they don’t protect their time and ask for time off – demand time off – from other things because they don’t feel like they can or should or could. Perhaps I didn’t even want to. There is something quite seductive about being a superwoman type who does it all, but maybe that’s another post…

The thing is, though, that this ‘doing it all’ is an illusion, and you can only do bits of it well. Other things have to and will slide. And that’s okay. There are things that can wait. You do deserve time to think and work and write, and you can and should protect that time, even from kids and partners. It really is okay to have this one thing in your life (at least) be about putting you and your work first. If you are fortunate enough to get your own slice of blissful leave, do not do what I did. Make a plan, tell all the people who need you about the plan and ask them to support you. Tell your mum you love her and ask if she can visit later in the year, and say NO to the builders. The shower leaking is the worst of your worries, as is the washing up.

Dr. Sherran Clarence (@PhDgirlSA) is an Honorary Research Associate at Rhodes University; and Managing Editor of Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, and Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. This story was published on October 8, 2013, on Dr. Clarence's blog, 'How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more)' (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.