Busy with white papers and Smurfilicious adventures, but couldn't help but notice recent waves around the blogosphere (notable posts by DrugMonkey, Odyssey, and Thoreau) that surrounded this Nature News article.
Here is a bit of a medley post from the comments I left a few places. From the comment at DM's place:
Odyssey said: "Dumb and lazy will kill your career. Having children will not."
I will agree with Odyssey here, but with a qualifier. Having children will not destroy your career, but it will likely alter it -- temporarily or permanently -- unless you have someone to completely shoulder the burden at home. But do you really want to have a family and never be around to enjoy it?
Anyway, regarding altering one's career: I have kids and am at an R1 public school, the state's flagship, and according to all metrics I am doing pretty well. If I hadn't had children, would I have been at MIT or Stanford (top places in my field)? Maybe, but maybe not. There is nothing that guarantees reaching the upper echelons of academia; for every laser-focused workaholic who got there by forgoing all else, there are hordes of people who sacrificed just as much or more and didn't get there. All I know for sure is that I wasn't going to have a family and not be there to raise them.
To me, and I dare say to most scientists with families, family is what brings sanity and balance back into one's life. For me, it was never a question of either-or; I would not be anywhere near happy without my family or without my career. They are both great passions, if you will, and the only way for me to feel successful is to combine and enjoy both of them. Anything else -- even the highest imaginable professional standing without the personal life -- would feel like a failure.
(This is NOT a judgement of people without kids. This is my view of my own personal choices.)
It is fine if you are willing to sacrifice everything for your career, but just be aware that career is a harsh and fickle mistress and your everything may still not be enough. Odyssey nicely points out that luck is a factor in reaching awesome professional heights. There are never guarantees, no matter how smart, ambitious, driven, focused, and ready to jump under the bus for your science you are. If you make it, don't delude yourself that it's all just your merit and awesome planning. You also lucked out, so go buy some lottery tickets already. (Some of us would say: your career is like a highly nonlinear classical system -- change initial conditions just a little bit, the system's evolution changes dramatically.) I know several very sad people who are middle-aged and lonely, who worked like maniacs during their youth and completely let their personal life fall by the wayside, are divorced and without children, which they say wish they had had. And their science is still mediocre.
Thoreau discusses the Slave-Driver Superstar (works 24/7 and expect the same from underlings) with the Perfect Balancer Superstar (PBS for short) -- you know, those people who are nauseatingly perfect at everything they do and they do 3x more of everything than a mere mortal. He makes a very astute observation: I privately suspect that these people have far more in common with Quinones-Hinojosa [the 24/7 guy] than the folks constantly talking about “balance” realize. In other words, he believes that PBSs are actually much closer to the slave drivers than us slightly (or not so slightly) unbalanced mortals, and it's not just that they both occupy the tails (albeit different ones) of the normal distribution. I completely agree, based on my experience working with one closely (from my comment):
I actually know a couple of “perfectly balanced” colleagues. One of them a frequent collaborator. I can tell you that in the case of this person the balance is just a manifestation of extreme control-freakishness and perfectionism. Their schedule is perfectly partitioned and there is absolutely no room for deviation. Yes, the schedule is 8 or 9 hours of work, however many hours of activities with kids, church, whatever, but the point is that they are in control of every single minute. I think they get high on control, it’s very very important to them. (This extends to this person's relationship with food, I find.) This does not make for very good collaborators, I will tell you that — it takes me several weeks to be graced with 10 min of this person’s time (because their schedule is so jam-packed for weeks and no changes are allowed). And don’t get me started with turnaround time for returning comments on joint papers.
The thing with work-life balance (for the commonly unbalanced specimens among us) is this: how often do you feel happy? I mean, we are all stressed out, grants get rejected, students and colleagues annoy us, our spouses and kids can sure make our blood boil, but how often do you stop and feel the warm breeze of pure unadulterated joy? If it never happens, your choices suck for you. My family and my work both bring me headaches but also tremendous joy (kids are awesome in the joy-bringing department), and I wouldn't have it any other way. Although I would not object to higher funding rates and a bit more sleep...
6 comments:
I find - and, of course, maybe it's just me - that I produce my best research when everything is really great in my personal life. When I know that I can come home and have a loving partner whose company I enjoy, that makes me more relaxed and comfortable to do good research. And at the same time, when everything goes well at work, I'm a better partner. So for me, there could never be a choice between career and personal life. If either one is not functioning, the other will immediately suffer.
Thanks, I really enjoyed this post. I'm making some career/life decisions right now and this helped me to put a few things in perspective.
I don't think it would kill me to be closer to the PBS. Though in the short time periods when I am perfectly organized, I *do* get comments back to coauthors in a very timely fashion. My solo work gets shunted in those cases (or, more likely, a slacker coauthor flakes so the non-slacker gets that scheduled time). You can be perfectly organized and still be respectful of other people's time-- most of my graduate professors were. Though many prolific people are very good at getting their coauthors to shoulder the majority of the work-burden... I'm still trying to figure out how to not be the one doing the majority of the work for second-authorship. That's probably why most of my stuff is single-author.
I'm happiest when I'm nicely organized and following the schedule I've laid out for myself. Somehow I've lost that path and I'm trying to get back to it. I have a work problem, and I'm happiest when I'm getting things done. So I'm going to try to fix the work problem, and I'm going to be happy when I do, because I've been happy in the past and need to get over this slump I find myself in. http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/faculty/valian/docs/1985solvingAWorkProb.pdf
My friend did tarot for fun and there is this one card for balance that said something along the lines of perfect balance is an illusion. Finding balance in ones life is like trying to stand on a swords tip. Even if you achieve it, you can only stand there briefly. I always liked that image, it reminds me that while balance is important to strive for the goal is not necessarily to achieve it.
I think your final paragraph is spot on. What matters most is that you are happy. And if you aren't, no one cares as much as you do, so no one is going to fix it but you. Change your choices if you have to.
I tend naturally towards the hyper-organized side of things. It has its advantages- I can get A LOT done in a 40 hour work week!- but I also try to make myself let go of that a bit at home and allow some spontaneity. Luckily for me, I married a fellow organizer. So we don't drive each other nuts. Too much.
People have been having kids and balancing it with "work" all along. I don't see the hoopla. Yes it's hard and time consuming at a level many don't imagine before having kids. But for most academics it is a choice and it provides many fulfillments along with all of that. It's kids, not chemotherapy or multiple sclerosis. Of course you can have a career.
AFter that this post is very personal. It's your blog and you can do what you want of course. But I feel like so many academics say "the only way for me to feel successful is to combine and enjoy both of them", that it does put a pressure on people who can't or won't have kids. Like they are not successful enough or must have big voids.
Of course children are even more fickle or cruel mistresses than careers but noone wants to talk about that. The heroin addict giving a $10 blow job was someone's child. Breivik was someone's child. We all like to think of having kids as a positive thing but it's not always so.
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