Forget Cleaning the House and Doing the Service, Keep Your Sanity: One Scientist’s and Mother’s Story of Not Just Surviving, but Thriving during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Here, I describe my personal journey as a STEM professor during the pandemic, and my struggles and successes with online teaching, research, and dealing with COVID-19, as a single mother of three children. I share my story and advice—dirty dishes, imperfections, and all. My message, based on the lived experiences of myself and many of my colleagues, evidence-based facts, and research is simple – we must learn to say no and focus our energy and strength on those things that will directly advance our promotion and that we are passionate about, not on the endless, discounted service roles we typically do. I recognize our ability to do so varies across differences of rank, race, gender, sexuality, and age. I also shed light on research on gendered institutional service and caregiving disparities, the physiology of stress and disease, systemic racism, and the disproportionate, amplified impacts the pandemic is having on women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) faculty. Gender and racial inequalities, stress, service, and caregiving demands have exponentially increased with the pandemic, which will result in long term health and economic impacts far beyond COVID-19, unless great institutional changes are made. I highlight what my institution has done well, has struggled with, and what still needs to be done. In addition to the typical extensions in the R&T (Rank and Tenure) process, which notably take women and BIPOC faculty farther away from their research and higher wages, I outline more important institutional strategies and adaptations that are needed for the viability and health of women, BIPOC, and caregiving faculty, and hence higher education as a whole. Importantly, those institutions that will fare the best will be those that take care of their faculty and students and provide truly meaningful assistance in more than just their mission statements and rhetoric.