Category Archives: Work/life balance

In which we fall

Posted on November 6, 2022 by Jennifer Rohn

Fireworks crackle in the darkness: yesterday’s Bonfire Night stretching to fill the entire weekend. The torrential rains have given way to an almost full moon, glowing cold-silver in the eastern sky. November is always a positive month, with the cosiness … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Joshua, Research, Staring into the abyss, Students, Teaching, The profession of science, Work/life balance | 2 Comments

In which I see the light

Posted on February 14, 2022 by Jennifer Rohn

I’m happy, and I don’t know why. Usually I dread this time of year, the period between demobbing the Christmas tree and the daffodil-studded benevolence of mid-March. It stretches on endlessly, the dreary coldness, the frosts interspersed with rain that … Continue reading →

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In which pandemic storm clouds gather – again

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Jennifer Rohn

A number of months have slipped past since I last wrote here, two seasons under the bridge as my ramped-up academic life has consumed most of my free time. Then, it was the height of optimistic summer; now, the year … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, Epidemics, Teaching, The profession of science, Work/life balance | 1 Comment

In which normal life flickers just ’round the corner

Posted on April 10, 2021 by Jennifer Rohn

Today on a neighbourhood walk with my son, blustery and cold with a few flecks of rain, we passed a window that still had a faded child-drawn rainbow and the advice to “stay safe”. It struck me as rather quaint, … Continue reading →

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In which we near end-game

Posted on February 23, 2021 by Jennifer Rohn

January and February are always my least favorite months, but I can’t remember a winter when I longed for spring as desperately as this one. It’s the pandemic, of course, which has sucked the world dry of what little joy … Continue reading →

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In which we face the rain

Posted on October 4, 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

How quickly strangeness becomes familiarity. As autumn hunkers down, and the COVID infection rates continue to rise (nearly 13,000 cases reported yesterday in the UK), I see things around me that I never could have imagined before 2020. A trip … Continue reading →

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In which business is not quite as usual: the post-first-wave lab resumes

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

Business as usual is the sort of mentality that’s probably only certain in retrospect. At the moment, the jury is still very much out. My lab reopened its doors a few weeks ago. This is, of course, a wonderful thing. … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Careers, Domestic bliss, Epidemics, Gardening, Joshua, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | Comments Off on In which business is not quite as usual: the post-first-wave lab resumes

In which we venture out

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

We are poised on the edge. As the world teeters between spring and summer, cloaked in lush green and bursting into flower, there is a sense that our pandemic lockdown is coming to an end. Not all at once, of … Continue reading →

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In which we lock down

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

There is nothing I can write about life on lockdown that has not already been written. Doing so risks the scorn of the likes of Times journalist Matthew Parris, who on Saturday opined: I’m encountering what for me is an … Continue reading →

Posted in Domestic bliss, Gardening, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | 6 Comments

In which the pandemic unfolds: a postcard from The Big One?

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

Epidemics are works in progress. At any given moment in time, you can’t know how they will end. They are a curve on a graph of ultimately unknown trajectory; when you are just a dot on a growing curve, you … Continue reading →

Posted in Epidemics, Nostalgia, Scientific thinking, Staring into the abyss, Work/life balance | 1 Comment