Women in Science
Balancing home and work life
© Women in ScienceInterview excerpt: Lois thinks that she is currently managing to be ‘good enough’ at her clinical work, the medical students and her family responsibilities. She tries to ‘pro-actively manage’ and ‘internally audit’ this on a regular basis.
In general how do you feel about your work-life balance now?
I think, when you think that you’ve got it almost right something happens and you realise that you haven’t, and it’s something that I think I try to pro-actively manage and sort of internally audit on a regular basis. And I think at the moment it’s quite good, but I think I also struggle with, although the balance can feel about right, sometimes I feel that the compromise is not excellent. So I don’t feel I do enough clinical work to feel like I’m the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I feel that the only way that I could feel like that again would be to do more clinical work, and if I do more clinical work then I won’t be being the mother that I want to be. And so it’s about finding the balance of being good enough in each of the areas that you feel is comfortable.
Mm.
But that’s a very fine balance and very often there are times when I don’t feel a good enough clinician and I don’t feel a good enough mother, and I don’t feel like I’m delivering what I should be delivering at the medical school and when all those, when three things, you know when things go wrong in all, all those areas at the same time then that’s very challenging.
Mm.
‘Cos that feeling of doing nothing well, doing none of it well, it is, it’s very uncomfortable. But the majority of the time I think the balance is about right.