Why I left academia, Part 1, or: Why your career needs you to get good childcare

At first this was one long blog post full of nitty-gritty details about my life. But it was too long, even for me, so it’s broken up into a few parts now: this series of posts details my semi-recent journey navigating the path into the “pinnacle” of early-career academic achievement – a tenure track position – and then rather abruptly back out of it. My path was winding and bumpy, and I highly do not recommend anyone else follow it…but as with most of my blog posts, I hope that by over-sharing my failures, I can help other folks on a smoother path through life (or at least give you a chance to commiserate and/or make yourself feel better about your above-par choices).

This post is about my postdoc. I had almost given up on getting to do a postdoc, because while I had applied far and wide, no one seemed to want me. I was in Europe with my husband on a camping and “surf” trip (mostly failed on surfing because the airline lost our boards for weeks) to celebrate graduating with my PhD, and relax before starting to teach as an adjunct at MiraCosta college that fall, when I got an email from Australia that they wanted to offer me a postdoc. I had interviewed earlier in the summer by phone but hadn’t heard anything for some time. It was rather thrilling but also logistically challenging to set up a phone call from a payphone at a campground in Spain to a completely different continent and timezone. I recall little about the conversation itself other than it being difficult to hear, and the early-morning sun shining directly into my eyes, attenuated only slightly by the scratched plexiglass of the payphone booth.

Touristing on the ferry in Sydney harbor

I had an incredible time as a postdoc for more than three years in Australia at the Nuclear Science and Technology Organization. I learned a lot, worked with kind and interesting people, got to take two incredible field expeditions to the Gilbert and Line Islands, lived in an amazing location, met wonderful friends, and had a kid in the middle of it all. 

The kid thing really threw me off more than I was anticipating. Did you know that babies and children require essentially constant care? It is not physically possible to get any adulting done (i.e. take a shower, eat, much less actual productive work) while caring for a small child, unless you are a psychopath and don’t mind letting small people wail and paw at your pant leg while you do these things. 

My husband and I set ourselves up for misery because we (1) were unaware of this (I blame heavily people who told us they had worked w/babies in their offices, forgetting about the students and nannies they hired to actually care for said babies, ahem…), (2) lived an ocean away from any family members, (3) as frantic first-time parents, we were nervous about entrusting strangers with our precious offspring, and (4) we took at face value warnings about crappy local childcare options from others. Let me clarify #4: essentially everyone who had small kids told me that every childcare option that was within a reasonable distance of either my home or work and had space was horrible and should be avoided at all costs – apparently it was vital to put your unborn child on a waitlist for the non-horrible childcare places before you even considered getting pregnant, in order to secure a spot when that child turned one (the standard maternity leave in Australia is a year). 

I will only sleep as long as you are not doing anything useful, mom

Thus, we were nervous, thought we had no options, and also of course had waited too long because I wasn’t going to take a year off, I hadn’t known I was going to have a kid, and was therefore about 18 months too late for the waitlist option. This is all a pre-amble to explain that we had no consistent full-time childcare, and we both had full-time jobs. You may wonder why we didn’t hire a nanny: the answer is a combination of financial constraints and #3, above. I’ve always preferred my kids be cared for in a group setting; I’m sure most nannies are amazing, but I’ve had bad experiences and I worry too much. 

Let me be clear, though: working without good childcare is idiotic, impossible to survive, and will make you hate your life. We did eventually obtain a spot for our child on a day-by-day basis (after figuring out rather quickly that we could not get work done while caring for a child, and that there are not enough hours in a day to sleep, work for 8 hours, and then care for a kid for 8 hours while your partner works IF you also have a commute and/or any interest in life outside of these 3 activities, and/or don’t want to sleep in shifts). 

So, every morning at 8 am sharp I would start frantically dialing the drop-in care center near our home, in hopes I got through as one of the 1^st 10 people to sign up for a casual space 2 weeks from that day.  You know how you used to listen to the radio, sitting by the phone, and then dialing and redialing a hundred times to try to win concert tickets? Imagine doing this daily. It sucked, for sure, but was at least a step up from plan A – no care at all. By the time I had been back to work full time for a few months, I realized that I was so exhausted and stressed, #3 in my list above almost no longer mattered and I was practically willing to hire a random homeless dude to play with my kid for a few hours so I could get something done (I did not, of course, do this). 

With this backdrop in mind, you may understand why I couldn’t fathom the idea of staying in Australia as the end of my postdoc loomed. I was stressed and lonely (having a baby can be incredibly isolating), and convinced that if we returned to California, these feelings would abate. Thus, I generally didn’t even bother applying for jobs in Australia, and instead focused my efforts on San Diego, where my husband had kept his academic position throughout my time in Australia (yes, this meant a lot of time apart pre-kid, and extreme stress on his end post-kid trying to keep actively engaged in his job from afar). 

I love being a mom - when I can devote my attention

I had established a nascent collaboration with a professor at the University of San Diego, based on our shared love of corals and geochemistry, and she very kindly arranged to have me teach some classes there as an adjunct after we returned to town. She had planned a sabbatical the following year, and hoped that I would be prepared to teach her classes in her stead after my introductory year. I hoped that this would lead to a full-time position there, which would solve our 2-body problem. So when Ryder was 18 months old, we packed up things we couldn’t part with, sold and gave away everything else, and moved back across the ocean to San Diego.

Why Australia sucks (except not really)

After more than three years, we are leaving Australia. It is tragic and heartbreaking, even though we are going back to California, a place I also love deeply. To make myself feel better about this transition, I’ve decided to blog about the things that bother me about this far-flung continent. Why does Australia suck?

1. The driving

These people are insane. The roads are narrow, and what was once a lane often suddenly stops when someone decides to park. Everyone drives as fast as possible, as close to the car in front as possible, even in otherwise quiet neighborhood streets. Pedestrians do not have the right of way – no, they will run you and your baby stroller down if you step out in the street too soon.

Cars are expensive to buy and incredibly expensive to maintain and drive, but are worth almost nothing when you then decide to sell them. Also, they seem to attract large spiders.

Filling up the gas tank is also annoying. You can’t pay at the pump, and you can’t click the thingy on the nozzle, so you have to stand there and smell the fossil fuel fumes while the guilt piles up. Then you have to walk inside and pay an actual human being. Ugh!

The scenery: just so boring and ugly, you know?

2. The climate

What the hell is that water coming out of the sky all the time, people? And why is it so abrupt, and always sneaking up on me when the laundry is out?

Also, seriously why don’t you insulate your buildings, and have heating? I guess it’s slightly warmer than England here in Wollongong, but right now I’m wearing a long-sleeve shirt, jeans, fuzzy socks, a sweater, and a wool blanket and just barely surviving. Of course, the ocean is still almost warm enough to surf in a springsuit, but you’ll freeze before you get to the sand. Uncool.

3. The paper

Does it really have to be that long?

4. The creepy things

Ok, it’s true that the US has some large things that can kill you – bears and shit. But they don’t sneak into your linen cabinet to startle you to death while you are blithely going about your daily routine.

And, I really don’t care that the only things here that most terrify me are not the venomous ones…gigantic hairy spiders and leeches are creatures that I prefer not to have lurking in my general 5-mile radius.

The other animals: just so rude. That's my porch, cockatoo!

5. The language

Ostensibly English, but they make everything sound adorable. “Daggy tracky-dacks”? “Bikey gangs”? How are we supposed to take you seriously? You aren’t allowed to have that much fun with communication.

6. The lack of surfers

It’s really annoying when I want to go surfing but no one else it out. I’m too scared of being the only shark bait in the vicinity to go by myself, regardless of the fact that I haven’t seen or heard of any shark sightings here, while they are apparently invading California lineups. 

The people: Always crowding up the outdoors, and being friendly. What the hell?

7. The coffee

It’s so good, and so expensive. And super decadent cakes are usually also on offer. Totally unfair.

8. The waitservice

Since people like bartenders and waitresses actually get paid a living wage, they don’t depend on being nice to customers to get tips and pay rent. If they bring you the wrong food and don’t particularly feel like fixing things, they just blame the menu for being wrong and walk away. I guess you can’t blame them, though. I wouldn’t want to deal with me either, whining about wanting arugula instead of romaine lettuce.

9. The children

They are just so damn happy, running around and playing and not shooting each other. Geez.

Damn, that didn’t really help at all. Well, the only thing to do is embrace the Aussie attitude: “she’ll be right, mate.” Yeah, I guess it’ll be all right, in the end. As long as we get to come back soon.