While They Are At Camp…

This one is for all the academics (especially female grad students) out there—

Dear friends from the academy,

Summer is often thought of as the “cram time” for academics’ “real work” (i.e. scholarship/publishing). Without the distraction of teaching and service, we — at least theoretically — are supposed to be able to focus fully on our research and writing.

Ok, seriously? Whoever had that idea was not a mother.

Summer was not designed for a “Mama PhD” to be working. Lucky for me, I have two weeks of my kids in camp. I need to cram as much as I humanly can into these two weeks. Because after that I intend to take full advantage of tenure for the month of July. And I refuse to feel guilty about that. Because I worked more than enough 18-hour days in the past 9 months to make up for it.

That’s the flip side: for all the politics and the publish-or-perish pressure, we also have tenure which gives us unparalleled freedom and flexibility. So, I will not complain.

But I will say this: if you happen to be writing your first book right now, or anytime soon, try to keep in mind something that nobody ever alerted me to (and something that never, ever even crossed my mind when I was writing mine) — mentally prepare yourself that you might just have to go back to it someday. If you are fortunate enough to get asked to do a second edition, you’ll have the terrible misfortune of actually have to revise your book… yet again. Oh dear God, please help me through the next two weeks!

Much love from your friend in the struggle,

hbj