Tanya Cheetham
I am a Research Assistant in the Cornall Lab and I am primarily responsible for managing the day to day running of the lab. I was born in Australia and did my undergraduate B.Sci Hons degree at the University of Melbourne. After finishing my degree, I worked for a couple of years as a research assistant for Prof Tony Purcell before applying for jobs in the UK.
I was fortunate enough to get a job with Prof Richard Cornall almost straight away and after waiting for all the necessary Visas I was able to move to the UK.
For most of my working career I have worked full time. My first daughter was born in 2013 and when my maternity leave finished I initially came back to work full time but I found that my commute, combined with an off-site nursery drop off was not really working for either myself or my daughter. After a discussion with Richard we agreed that I would trial working a slightly shorter day, working 6.5 hours a day, rather than 7.5 hours. This would hopefully shorten my commute by allowing me to leave a little bit earlier and get ahead of the traffic. This worked well and I maintained this pattern until the birth of my second daughter in 2015. On returning to work from my second maternity leave I had decided that doing my commute 5 days a week was not going to be compatible with a happy work/life balance, I then discussed the possibility of only coming back to work 3 days a week. Thankfully, Richard was willing to trial this and ever since I have been working 3 days a week, either Monday to Wednesday or Wednesday to Friday.
The first thing that made it work so well was Richard’s willingness to listen to my concerns and give flexible working a try. My colleagues have also been really supportive, as there are some weeks when working 3 days is just not enough time to get everything done that I would like, so occasionally they have to step in and do some jobs that I would normally take care of. We were also able to move our lab meetings and other scheduled meetings to fit in with my work days.
I think the main benefits for me have been that I get to spend more time with my daughters, and they get to maintain the friendships that they made while attending our local Pre-School while I was on maternity leave the second time. I also think that I enjoy and appreciate work more now that I only work 3 days a week.
One of the difficulties I encountered was the fact that at the time the University nurseries didn’t offer places for 4 days a week. I’m not sure I would have necessarily chosen to work 3 days a week if 4 days of University nursery childcare was an option. Another of the difficulties has been that I have had to prioritise the parts of my job that keep the lab running smoothly. This however means that some weeks I spend a lot of my time doing the ‘boring’ parts of my job with little chance to do some of the techniques that I really enjoy.
It’s really important to find a balance that not only works but also makes you feel happy. I also think it helps if you approach it with open mind and are willing to incorporate a degree of flexibility into your home life as well. Important meetings or seminars won’t always be on the days that you work, so while I don’t think you should make your life difficult by trying to attend everything, it helps if your home life is slightly flexible too so that occasionally you might be able to attend events that might improve your career, or even to just get some extra enjoyment out of work.
Written November 2018