{"id":1883,"date":"2018-02-19T17:25:09","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T17:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2018-02-19T17:25:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T17:25:09","slug":"do-i-have-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2018\/02\/19\/do-i-have-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I have the time?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rachael Orben PhD., Research Associate in the Seabird Oceanography Lab and GEMM Lab<\/h4>\n

So, there is something called work-life balance. I am still trying to find mine.<\/p>\n

As an undergraduate it was easy. I sailed a lot and my grades suffered. In hindsight that was the best choice I could have made. \u00a0I learned to sail, spent time on the water and in the end, I think I turned out ok. Following that I spent ~7 years working as a field technician in remote, stunningly beautiful places, with lots of seabirds. I would sum these years up as having very little life balance with lots of experience.<\/p>\n

From there I started grad school. At age 29, I relearned how to live in a town and bought my first car. I spent 5.5 years in grad school, but 14 months of this time were spent in the field (not all for my PhD research). During the last phase of my PhD I was often too mentally exhausted on the weekends to even consider trying to write or to analyze data. \u00a0I tracked my working hours with RescueTime<\/a> and I found that after a weekend at play my Monday at work was often very focused and productive. Then through the week my productivity would drop.<\/p>\n

That seemed promising. Playing more equaled more efficient work hours. The tales are true.<\/p>\n

And then I started post doc life.\u00a0 A new town, more rain, and more projects that come with deadlines. For the most part, my attempts for a work-life balance went out the window as I adjusted to the new locale. I still do field work and within that experience I can catch my academic breath \u2013 while working just as hard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Evening on High Bluffs, St. George AK<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One can read ad nauseam<\/em> about struggles academic scientists have balancing work and life. There is lots of sage advice out there (e.g.\u00a0here<\/a>) and dismay with a system that asks so much of a person (here<\/a>). As I continue on this career path I know that demands on my time will only become more and more frequent. There is a part of me that likes the idea of curling up on a rainy Saturday morning and crunching out some data analysis even though in the long run this probably isn\u2019t a good approach.\u00a0And maybe that is the problem \u2013 I love most of what I do!<\/p>\n

For now, I am still learning. What do I focus on? What do I spend my time on? How do I meet deadlines without a dose of panic? How do I restrain my growing to-do list?<\/p>\n

**In order to make sure that I didn\u2019t over or under achieve on this blog post I asked the internet \u2018how long should a blog post be?\u2019\u00a0 It turns out the answers are varied.\u00a0 But somewhere between 700 and 1,600 words is a good target. I made it to 488.\u00a0 Today there is a dog that wants a walk, a talk to be written, a manuscript to revise, dinner to cook\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Walking along the Oregon Coast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rachael Orben PhD., Research Associate in the Seabird Oceanography Lab and GEMM Lab So, there is something called work-life balance. I am still trying to find mine. As an undergraduate it was easy. I sailed a lot and my grades suffered. In hindsight that was the best choice I could have made. \u00a0I learned … Continue reading Do I have the time?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1883"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1886,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}