It’s been a while since I last blogged. I’ve been meaning to, but writing has become more challenging lately since my little one is now too big to fit into a sling and too wiggly besides! I actually had two drafts of this very post, but neither one had made it to the publishing stage.
Although I’m on maternity leave at the moment, my academic work hasn’t slowed down too much. I have first-authored papers to present at AERA and ICLS this year. I have various manuscripts to submit for publication based on my thesis work. I have no shortage of ideas that I want to work with! I just have less time nowadays to work with those ideas than when I was a childless doctoral student, but in some ways this has been a good thing. Becoming a mother has made me much more decisive about what ideas I want to focus on because I don’t have time to explore all of them. I’ve also had a chance to gain some perspective on the writing process since I took a break from it while caring for a newborn. For example, when I was a student, I would sometimes get lost in the literature and dilute the message I conveyed in my papers. I tell my own students not to do this, but have occasionally fallen prey to it myself! So it’s been a challenging but really rewarding time for me as a new mom and as a new PhD these last few months.
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