Starting a family during grad school can be tough.<\/p>\n
There are lots of reasons\u00a0not\u00a0<\/i>to go to grad school while raising a family\u2014lack of time, money, and job security, for starters. But having a baby in grad school comes with a surprising number of benefits, too. Here are eight ways you can adeptly balance grad school with kids.<\/p>\n <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n In grad school, it can feel as though everyone is always working. While there are very few places you have to be at particular times, you\u2019ll always have a lot to do. After all, funding for graduate school is often time-limited, and you\u2019ll have significant academic requirements and teaching commitments during your graduate school years. Lots of universities have\u00a0amazing libraries<\/a>\u2014many of which are open 24\/7\u2014and you may worry that any absence from your library carrel on a Tuesday night at 11 p.m. will negatively affect your productivity.<\/p>\n We are here to tell you that you do not need to stay up into the wee hours of the night to have a successful, productive graduate school career. You can, without apology, take advantage of the flexibility that grad school affords, and plan a schedule that works for you\u2014and for your (growing!) family. As a graduate student, you likely have inked-in commitments for just a few hours a week: classes and talks to attend, teaching time, and office hours. The rest of your time is yours to allocate as you see fit. Perhaps with the exception of any future sabbaticals, you\u2019ll rarely (if ever) have this much flexibility in your career again. Even if you were able to work around the clock, you wouldn\u2019t necessarily produce more. After a certain number of hours, you\u2019d get diminishing returns. As a parent, you couldn\u2019t invest unlimited time even if you wanted to, but take heart\u2014parents quickly learn to be efficient workers.<\/p>\n There are many ways you can allocate your time. Some grad students keep their academic life to a 9-to-5 work day, ensuring that those hours are as productive as possible. Others plan their days around their family needs\u2014for instance, taking time out in the middle of the day for a parent-and-child music hour, and then staying up post-bedtime to finish working. You should do what works best for you, and have faith that you\u2019ll learn to make the most of every working (and every family) moment. In short, you might not be a better student in spite of parenthood\u2014you might learn how to be a top-notch scholar\u00a0because\u00a0<\/i>of it. Some universities offer child care assistance subsidies.\u00a0Cornell<\/a>, for instance, offers\u00a0student child care grants<\/a>. A number of schools have onsite child care centers, as well. You can make the most of having nearby, high-quality child care\u2014this is not available everywhere! On-campus centers may even allow you to stop by in the middle of the day to see your child (particularly if you are a nursing mother). While graduate school offers more flexibility than any full-time job we\u2019re aware of, it does come with obligations. You\u2019ll need to make arrangements to attend major academic conferences, office hours, and the occasional workshop-led-by-a-famous-scholar-in-your-field. Not only will your attendance at these events serve their intended purpose\u2014i.e., you\u2019ll learn new things and network\u2014but it will also help you\u00a0feel\u00a0<\/i>just as much a part of scholarly enterprise as you ever were. Being a scholar entails doing nuanced interpretive work. (The more you learn, the more you realize you have yet to understand.) That said, some graduate students find themselves in the unenviable position of getting bogged down by details\u2014to the extent that they sometimes can\u2019t see a broader argument. In large ways and small, parenthood is all about seeing the big picture through lots (and lots) of details. (For instance, irritability, a runny nose, and a poor night\u2019s sleep may anticipate illness\u2014and many parents can identify that from even one of those symptoms, all while packing lunches and changing diapers and completing the day-to-day tasks that keep a household running.)<\/p>\n Parenthood also entails making decisions\u2014both large and small\u2014all the time. (Maybe you would opt to keep your child home from school before the fever hits because you know it\u2019s coming. More significantly, you could choose a child care facility after distilling a large number of data points\u2014over the course of an hour-long visit.) In many cases, you\u2019re making choices that may affect your child and family significantly\u2014and you may be doing so with incomplete information and on very little sleep. Parents have to be decisive all the time, and that same decisiveness will benefit the articles, book reviews, syllabi, and ultimate dissertation you will write. As a parent, you become more competent each day. Whereas at first it might seem overwhelming to take your child to the supermarket\u2014wrangling a diaper bag, change of clothes, and bottles along with an infant and\u00a0all\u00a0<\/i>of your groceries\u2014that formerly mundane activity becomes routine once again. You learn new skills, become more competent, and strengthen your confidence. You may at some point contend with an ER visit, a stressful overseas flight, or any number of challenges associated with having a baby. In learning how to manage these stresses, you\u2019ll demonstrate to yourself how much you are capable of. Your growing competence should be a source of confidence. Channel that in your work! Completing a dissertation is an immensely difficult endeavor. But, as with parenthood, others have done it before you, others will do it after you\u2014and you can do it too. If one of the drawbacks of starting a family during graduate school is that you endure the challenges of early childhood while balancing so much else\u2014well, that\u2019s also one of the benefits. Taking care of a baby is really hard work … no matter when you do it. If you put off starting a family, you may find it increasingly difficult to do so until you become more established in your career. After all, it\u2019s difficult to be on the job market, with all its pressures and uncertainties, while taking care of a baby (and worrying about where you\u2019ll end up living and whether you\u2019ll have continuous health insurance coverage). Once you land a job as a junior-level faculty member, you\u2019ll be very busy finishing your first book, teaching a full course load (likely for the first time), and building your CV for tenure consideration. Only once you have tenure might your schedule ease up.<\/p>\n This is not to say that you can\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t start a family at any time. On the contrary, you should do what feels right to you, whenever it feels right to you\u2014and know that you can always make it work. That said, if you decide to start a family during graduate school, then it\u2019s possible that by the time you go on the job market and launch your career, your child(ren) will be old enough, and self-sufficient enough, to allow you to sleep through the night and get work done in their presence. Graduate school may just be the perfect time for you to start a family. Since your kids are definitely going to see you working, tell them about it! They\u2019ll pick up on how hard you work toward your goals and file that away as a model for themselves. Your kids will end up learning a lot about a really interesting topic, and they may acquire your love of learning in the process. Being in a campus environment also affords many opportunities to attend exhibition openings and other interesting events. Your kids will be surrounded by stimulating information and resources\u2014lucky them! Starting a family during grad school can be tough. There are lots of reasons\u00a0not\u00a0to go to grad school while raising a family\u2014lack of time, money, and job security, for starters. But having a baby in grad school comes with a surprising number of benefits, too. Here are eight ways you can adeptly balance grad school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advice","8":"category-life-of-a-grad-student"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/05\/how-to-balance-grad-school-with-kids.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Take advantage of your flexible schedule<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n2. Build your time-management skills by using every minute efficiently<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n3. Make the most of the resources your university offers<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n4. Attend academic events when necessary<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n5. Apply newly acquired decisiveness to your craft<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n6. Channel your parental confidence<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n7. Look forward to your kids being older and more self-sufficient as you build your career<\/h2>\n
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n8. Talk about your work with your kids<\/h2>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"