Job group: Post-doctoral research associate

Work: Full time

Caring responsibilities: 1 child – 2 years old

Theme: Caring responsibilities, work-life

I am a post-doc in the Tobin lab working on muscarinic acetylcholine receptor biology with a focus on dementia. I did my undergraduate in Queen’s University Belfast, where I’m from, before moving for my PhD in preclinical stroke research in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Health here in Glasgow. I briefly worked in the Walden lab as a research assistant and lab manager in 2020 while I was finishing up my thesis but unfortunately the pandemic hit so I didn’t spend much of my time physically in the lab or getting to know many people within the school during that role, so one of the reasons I joined the Athena Swan committee was to get to know more people in the school.

I started in the Tobin group, which is my first post-doc, straight off the back of a period of maternity leave in May 2021. This meant there were a lot of adjustments occurring for me at the same time: a new role, in a new lab, in a new area of research, but also my first experience of having to balance lab-life with my new role as a mother. It certainly felt overwhelming at first, with my brain feeling “mushy” from 9 months of baby-talk and a severe lack of sleep, and my daughter picking up bugs from nursery on a near weekly basis, but with time and the support of my lab group I felt like I found my feet and settled into a good routine. One thing offered by the school which I found incredibly helpful during this time was the lovely breastfeeding and menopause room provided in the Sir James Black building. Provision of this room made me feel supported and comfortable to continue feeding my daughter breastmilk for as long as I wanted. The university also granted me a part-time parking permit which has been a lifeline for managing childcare responsibilities more recently when my partner began travelling more often for work and I was going to have to add an hour each way to my daily commute to get my daughter to and from nursery via public transport.

Time-management is key to making my work-life and home-life marry. I plan my days meticulously to be as efficient as possible because I find that I must be stricter with myself now in terms of when I leave the lab. During my PhD I often found myself still in the lab or office at 8pm but with a child to collect and feed this really isn’t a spontaneous option anymore, it needs advanced planning. I try to maximise what I achieve when I can actually be present in the lab and try to avoid putting things off until the next day. This is because I can’t always guarantee I’ll be available the next day as you don’t know when illness will strike with a young child (or when they will bring home a bug that floors you too!).  I have also found that I need to prioritise my time more strictly and say no a little more often if I can’t see a clear benefit of a particular seminar, workshop, conference, experiment etc to my overall career and project goals. That being said, I’ve still managed to attend nine conferences in my 1.5 years of this post already!

I think, because my child is quite young, it still feels like I’m struggling to get the balance right between work and home, especially because looking after a toddler can be so challenging that weekends or holidays often don’t feel like time off. For that reason, I’m very grateful to be doing a job that I really love as, although my days are long and tiring, at least I enjoy the ride!

First published: 7 November 2022

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