Back to School

It’s August. And it occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t even bothered to check the registrar’s website to see when classes start at the university. Although I’m not teaching this fall (yay!), I’ll need to go to campus periodically for department and committee meetings, nonsense with various student organizations, etc. Currently what’s on my agenda for what would have been my first day of class is an OB app’t, growth ultrasound, and, possibly, the first of about a zillion non-stress tests.


In the past 10 years since I graduated, I’ve had two semesters “off” from teaching. One was maternity leave after LG was born, during which time I was still directing multiple honors theses and showing up for meetings with LG in tow (she’d get passed around the building from the secretary to various colleagues, including my dean [yes, that’s life at a teeny tiny college!]). I didn’t quite know what to do with myself otherwise; LG screamed pretty much around the clock until 7 months (reflux and various digestive disturbances) and I had a lot of trouble staying home with her, after about 8 weeks. I wasn’t productive with my own writing, but I really wasn’t resting in the way that one might expect from someone who just had a c-section. The other was the “pre-tenure” leave junior folks in my department have written in to their contracts; the idea there is if we’re expected to publish a book-length thing, we need sustained time in order to write it. During that semester, in my third year here, I got a ton written (three or four articles, a bunch of poems, etc), despite needing to show up for weekly committee meetings and, yes, directing several undergraduate theses.

This is a long way of getting to the point that I’m trying to imagine what this year is going to look like for me. How much work I’ll get done. How much resting I’ll be able to do, especially pre-baby. How often I’ll be expected to show up for various campus events. I’m in the process of scheduling a major department event for late September, on the cusp of 32 weeks, when my OB has already warned me that this pregnancy becomes my full-time job (2-3 appointments per week!). I’m wondering if I’ll be able to see it through, or if I’ll need to pass it off to someone else (one of those things that will require picking up guest speakers from an airport, taking them out for meals, and generally shepherding them around between their various obligations). The reason I’ll be off this fall is technically a grant that bought me out of my classes so I can get this book manuscript completed; I’ve got to prioritize that, certainly, even if I’ve got my laptop with me during my NSTs! The plan is that I get the writing wrapped up by early November so I can, hopefully, spend a few weeks nesting and doing all those late pregnancy things, assuming, of course, I don’t go into labor early (which my OB highly doubts, given LG was an induction and labor never went anywhere). And then…who knows. Although I haven’t visited HR, my understanding is that I get minimum 6 weeks short term disability and 6 weeks parental leave, which should take me through late Feb/early March, which means I’m officially not teaching spring term (we’re not really set up to share classes/substitute for each other long term) but will “owe” my department the rest of the semester with some kind of service function. I’d like to be able to take a legitimate maternity leave, when I completely ignore everything that’s happening down the road. While I’m pretty loyal to my department, this whole tenure situation has me much less inclined to do anything that doesn’t benefit me personally (needless to say, if I don’t get tenure, I won’t be doing anything beyond what my chair and I agree is my service responsibility). I don’t want to put this baby in daycare if I’m not on campus regularly (which I shouldn’t be), though I wouldn’t mind bringing him with me (when that’s workable) or getting an occasional babysitter.

I want to get this book written. And I really want to stay home with this boy, for as long as I reasonably can. I just hope he’s a bit calmer in temperament than his older sister… 9 teaching days left for the remainder of 2011…

For those of you who are academic types, how well did you manage to keep work life separate from home life during maternity/parental leave?

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And on an entirely unrelated note, I just spent $57 on a service call to fix our garbage disposal. The problem? Apparently LG disposed of a penny along with her dinner one night. I think I’m keeping the change.