The Home Work Divide

For most of my career, home and work were two separate spheres. Being married, I was determined not to let work intrude on home life. I don’t bring my work home with me, be it exams to grade, papers to read, or the emotional baggage that might come from a stressful day. When I’m home, I focus on life outside of work. It’s as if I’ve erected a wall between the two, except that there are small holes in the wall. Stuff does get through. Not much, but it’s not airtight. Most professors do not do this, but it works for me.

Not bringing physical materials home, not checking work e-mail in the evening, not connecting to my office desktop computer via VPN; these all help maintain the barrier. But the mind is not so easily tamed. I might still be thinking of a research problem, an exam question, a conversation with a student, what I need to do tomorrow; these are not so easy to block out. I do try to actively think about other things, and I’m successful for the most part – except for the times when I had lots of administrative responsibilities. Sometimes there are emergencies, and sometimes you have to respond quickly enough so that something doesn’t become an emergency (in the mind of someone else). Maybe that’s why I avoid significant administrative roles when I can.

There are advantages to the separation. Better family life, I think, first and foremost. I feel it keeps my life balanced, since living one’s life consists of many aspects, and I’ve avoided having my identity wrapped up in my career – I think this is psychologically helpful in both the long and short-term. It’s also made me much more efficient when I am at work. I don’t browse the internet for non-work-related things – an easy distraction to fall into. I must finish my class prep the day before my 8am class next morning if I don’t want to do a poor job when I’m with my students. I’m a bit drowsy and not always at my best in the early morning. (Why do I teach at 8am? I hate looking for parking.) I think this has built self-discipline and good habits.

Now Covid-19 has changed the calculus.

Thankfully I’m on sabbatical, and I am a computational chemist, so I’ve not had to make large-scale adjustment like many of my colleagues. I can do my research from home. My laptop screen is smaller, and I have to scp (secure-copy) files back and forth because I’m running the GUI (graphical user interface) locally, but I run production jobs on my high-performance computing cluster via VPN. I can also connect to my work Desktop if I need files related to teaching or service. There’s a tiny hassle going back and forth; I don’t have my large white boards in my office and research lab; and there can be different kinds of noise, interruptions, or distractions at home.

I was not very productive the first week working from home. Finding the right space (I don’t have a home office and never needed one) and just getting used to the strange idea of doing work in my home environment took a little getting used to. Things got better the next week and research was chugging away. Meetings are less efficient via videoconference, but not terrible. Again, I’m on sabbatical so I have few meetings. There’s lots more e-mail, chunks of which I can ignore, again because of sabbatical. I am making it a point to stay connected to my academic advisees and have written them a couple of e-mails since campus “closed down” and all of us dispersed. It’s registration time and I’m enjoying interacting with my students a bit more this past week, and there’ll be more next week!

I’ve had the luxury of thinking about how to structure my classes should similar shutdowns take place, while not teaching classes this semester. While I will be making my classes a little more robust to this sort of interruption, I very much hope that we will be back to in-person classes in the Fall. That’s why I chose to be at a liberal arts college, and it’s an important factor of why students chose to come to my institution. I’m also looking forward to dividing my life again between home and work. Maybe it’s because that’s what I’ve been used to for so many years, and change is difficult. My home-work divide might be rather old-school, but I think it has value. Most of my students when they go out into the workforce will not have that luxury. I’m glad I can work from home if needed. Many other jobs do not have that luxury either.

One good thing from all of this: it’s reminded me to be thankful for the choices I have!