Happy New Year! Since today is a Tuesday (just like Christmas) the Best of Both Worlds podcast is still being released on its regular schedule. We know listenership will be lower over the holiday break, but hopefully you can catch back up later!
(If you downloaded in the first hour the episode was up — our apologies — there was a slight technical glitch with the intro. That is now FIXED so it should sound fine.)
Today’s episode looks at Sarah and my plans for 2019. We both like the clean slate/fresh start idea of the new year, and we both set plenty of goals. Mine go by quarter, with a goal in each of the career/relationships/self categories. Sarah liked the quintile approach she took last year, even though this year should NOT feature a maternity leave (which is why she adopted the quintile approach last year).
Do you set New Year’s resolutions? If so, yes, and what are they? If not, why not? Bonus: in the Q&A we discuss the “right” length for maternity leave (hint: there is no right answer) and does SHU wish she’d taken more?
Please tune in! And I should be back to blogging in another day or two. I’ve missed it!
A few days late, but wanted to share that I took two maternity leaves of wildly different lengths. My first leave was 3.5 months (would have been four but he arrived fashionably late) and the second was eight months. Longer leaves have lots of advantages from a health and wellness perspective, for baby and parents, and I definitely experienced those. I was much more relaxed when I returned to work following my second leave, but I think that was partly because I was just a more experienced parent by then and I was more settled/confident in my career by the time I had my second child. At the time of my first leave, I had not yet been awarded tenure and promotion at the university where I work and I didn’t really want to “stop the clock” on that process. While on that first 3.5 month leave, I also traveled to a conference (infant and husband in tow) to give a presentation, so I did actually do some work during that time. I was exhausted when I returned and I wish I had planned on taking another couple of months, but I’m not sure that a longer leave would have alleviated the stress I felt when it was time to return to work and adapt to life as a parent working full-time outside the home. The thing I found most stressful then was the routine of getting out of the house every morning–I had a 12 point checklist and it was tough to manage! My second much longer leave happened to be right after my tenure and promotion. I didn’t view this leave as a “reward,” but the timing helped minimize my stress about a longer time away. Neither of my leaves were compensated after sick/vacation time were exhausted, and we were fortunate to be able to make that choice without any discomfort. Anyway, I totally agree that it depends on many factors that can be personal and work related.
@Robin – thanks for your helpful comment. I think returning to work as a first time parent is going to be stressful regardless of when you go back. And if you were going up for tenure soon, there were some real upsides to getting back to it. Namely, you got tenure, and so that afforded you the opportunity to take more time off for kid #2 (and presumably spend time with kid #1 too!)