Living With the Guilt (Being a Part-Time Researcher)

My research career, beginning with the start of my doctoral studies in 2004, has been entirely on a part-time basis.  I studied part-time whilst I worked full-time, and have since then had several secondments to part-time research whilst spending the rest of my working week occupying my regular professional role.

During my doctoral studies, I grew accustomed to the niggling question, “am I doing enough research?”  (It was accompanied by, “am I doing this parenting lark adequately?!”)

I felt reasonably confident that my professional role wasn’t suffering – after all, when I was at that desk, I was working the work!  But, in my student capacity, I had the memory of what full-time research “felt like”, from a previous doctoral attempt, and it was hard persuading myself that no-one expected me to achieve as much, as fast, when I was doing it entirely in evenings, at weekends and on holiday.  (Reading early nineteenth-century commentaries whilst at Eurocamp? Oh yes, been there!)

Fast-forward to my present 70:30 existence (70% librarian, 30% postdoc).  Desperate to be taken seriously as a researcher, I struggle to achieve as much as the average academic, when I’m only a researcher for 10.5 hours a week.  Reading, writing, researching, editing, attending conferences … I drive myself to produce “output” at a rate that makes me look like a force to be reckoned with, but honesty forces me to concede that some of it has to be done at home, in my own time.

So, I reached this summer.  Since May, I’ve been a guest-speaker at a workshop in Paris, contributed a pecha kucha at a copyright literacy seminar closely followed by a paper at a week-long international history conference (both  in Edinburgh), been an after-dinner speaker at an engagement in the Highlands, and then – oh, blessed relief, came a fortnight’s vacation.

The first holiday week, I struggled with the guilt that I had a journal issue to edit, and ought to be doing the book-reviews I’d allocated myself.  I managed not to do any of it!  This was due to a combination of excessive domesticity, a self-imposed fitness regime, and end-of-term exhaustion.  By the second week, I had family obligations that took me away from home, and I read no more than the introduction to the first book-review book.  I’m driving home tomorrow.  It does feel as though I’ve had a mental break, but the guilt is now pressing on my shoulders like a heavy cloud, and I’m perplexed as to how I’ll catch up with my scholarly obligations.  It can’t be done in 10.5 hours a week, that’s for sure!

I’ve seen headlines in social media about how even full-time academics don’t get enough time in which to do research.  I can understand this, but I can’t make comparisons.  If an academic is not teaching, marking or administrating, then presumably some research can be done.  For me, by contrast, if it’s not a research day/morning, then I have the rest of my 9-to-5 taken up with a completely different role, and NO research can be done.  Likewise, I may have similar holiday allocation to my academic colleagues, but there’s a difference between that, and the length of the average undergraduate vacation.  During that time there are no undergraduate lecture or tutorial commitments.  I don’t have that difference at my disposal.

I’m sure I am not the only part-time researcher to feel this guilt.  I don’t think there’s an answer, either.  I’m moderately pleased with myself that I have deliberately, consciously taken a fortnight off, and only very occasionally opened my work email inbox to check that nothing crucial had popped into it.  I deleted a few irrelevant messages, and closed the inbox again.  My out-of-office message would have explained my silence, to anyone expecting to hear from me.  I haven’t come up with a strategy for catching up with my editing and writing obligations.  It may entail ignoring emails for a couple more days until I’ve reviewed those books!

I’d like to write a blogpost about the ISECS eighteenth-century history conference, but I fear it would be a bit of an indulgence, in the face of all that I personally absolutely have to do.

I wonder how other part-time researchers manage?  Any tips or tricks to share?