It is evening again, and I finally find a moment to check in here. How are you doing?
I feel like my apartment has turned into a bit of a "sauna for beginners": higher room temperature than I would usually keep in wintertime, and more humid than usual in general (despite having open windows)...
I'm going to switch my plan around a bit. The exciting opportunities for future scientific and technological developments derived from #attoscience (and if I find the time, a project using nano-objects to modify the spatial dependence of my laser fields) will come later.
I already mentioned that I started my current position in February of this year. I moved from Dresden, Germany to London, UK at the end of January (yeah, I made it in right before the Brexit date). You can probably already guess where this is going...
I barely managed to find myself an apartment and scramble together a livable household by the time the first lockdown hit. On the afternoon of the first day when our group went into full-time home office, I finally got an internet connection installed.
(okay okay, you might argue about just how livable an apartment is that just got flooded 🤔🤭🤷♀️)
The plan of how the start of my new position would go did definitely not pan out that way. And having to settle down in a new country while in a lockdown created some unexpected additional challenges.
For example, my new GP practice sent me a form to be filled out and signed when I wanted to register with them. Only, I did not have a printer at home and I was not allowed on campus any more. Thankfully they accepted my digital scrawl 😆
Another effect was, that I barely got to know my new group (PI @CarlaFMFaria, my sort-of predecessor @DrAndyMaxwell, and colleagues @AbbieBrayPhys and @heloise_cho), let alone other colleagues in the institute before we were only able to see each other through screens.
So that definitely didn't help to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on my work productivity and how I was able to deal with all of it. Thankfully, we managed to strike up not only work meetings but also social meetings,
be that a regular socialising coffee/tea break with the entire group, or late-night online game sessions to just have a laugh from time to time (thank you @AbbieBrayPhys !).
As much as we're all trying our best to develop personal strategies to better cope with the increased pressure/mental health impact/loss of structure/health challenges/... and additional grievances of this year, it remains to be seen how this impact on our work
... will be taken into account down the road. I am mentioning this particularly from the point of view of a postdoc on a short fellowship (2 years), needing to be able to find a next position soon again in this nomad-academic stage.
I am very grateful that already in March @snsf_ch reached out to us fellowship holders and informed us that they are introducing an option to apply for an extension of the fellowship term, on account of reduced productivity due to covid19 impact.
Still, how will future hiring/grant decisions weigh such aspects? At this point, I don't have any good answers. But I expect that a standard phrasing on CV's explaining a certain publication/citation/output break or slump will probably develop for many of us.
This was quite a different kind of thread from what I have done here before. Unlike my brother, I'm not a health expert. So I am in no place to judge the recent news about a possible effective vaccine. But even while telling myself to remain patient, cautious, and careful,
having that metaphorical carrot dangling in front of me did feel like a happy relief as we are moving towards the end of this year (and currently working through renewed lockdowns in many places).
I hope and wish you are all doing as well as you can considering the circumstances. Take care 💜
(thread by @coenneli)
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