Dust Yourself Off Posted on June 22, 2008 Luis H. Zayas (bio) suggests that family space can offer both respite from and support for academic labor.

To someone early in their career as a researcher, I would recommend that they not get discouraged. There will be enough of that. You will get discouraged by the scores you get back, the comments, and you really have to get up and dust yourself off and try again

But the best thing also is then to balance that with when the reviews come in, read them, and put them away for a few days, perhaps a week. Go enjoy yourself with your family, and then come back to it and begin to try answering the concerns that a reviewer has.

And the academic life and the life of a researcher is a life of the mind in many ways, and so the advantage is that one can work from home. One can be attentive to one's family, and there are ways of balancing that so that one continues to be successful and productive while still being caring for one's spouse and partner and children and family.

Those are available to us and it is something that each of us will find a different balance in. It also depends on how we work. When my two, well, the first two children and the third came along, I had my study in the same room as their playroom, and so I could block them out as I worked on the computer. And I could stop occasionally and break up fights, untie knots, fix toys, and kiss boo-boos, then get back to my work.

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