Haley Harrison is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, US.
This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective, please contact us at pwld@ioppublishing.org.
I am a third-year doctoral candidate in nanoscience at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, US, and my research focuses primarily on nanoscale surface modification. On most of my workdays, I’m in a typical wet chemistry lab or doing spectroscopy, but I also spend one week every month at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Two weeks ago, when everything began shutting down and the US Center for Disease Control was increasingly urging people to travel home and stay there, I was doing work at Glenn Research Center and my five-year-old daughter was with my sister, who graciously watches her when I travel. When I got back, I briefly went to my university campus to finish up some last-minute experiments, although this was discouraged. Things happened fast, and my university has been diligent about shutting things down, but the labs are still open with some restrictions in place – for example, using gloves to open doors and only having one person in a lab at a time. They have also cancelled all instrument training, and technicians are operating most instruments for now.
Since then, my PhD adviser has pretty much ordered us not to work in the lab, so I won’t be back until May. I am currently working remotely and communicating with colleagues via e-mail and in shared Word documents. I know my project trajectory will be significantly altered if I can’t be in the lab this semester, which is hard to accept. I am sad that my research isn’t going to go as planned, but with the health of the world at stake it is a small price to pay.
Family concerns
On the personal side, my mom and I live together, and she just finished her cancer treatment. Normally, this is a momentous occasion, but due to the restrictions at hospitals she went to her last treatment alone and we didn’t get to see her ring the “I beat cancer” bell. She then drove directly to work. It is stressful knowing she is putting herself at risk, but her job isn’t guaranteed if she doesn’t go in. My daughter and I are taking extra precautions because Mom’s immune system is compromised from her cancer treatment, which means she is at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19. We send one family member to get groceries once a week and rely on various delivery services in the meantime.
My sister has been unofficially “furloughed”, which means she is on unpaid leave from her job. And she works for the state government! Don’t even get me started on how embarrassing it is that they would put her on unpaid leave. Although some employers are being proactive, others are clearly showing their complacency and leaving their employees to fend for themselves at this uncertain time.
As for me, I have a kindergartener at home and my priority will always be to make sure her needs are met. That means I’m at the mercy of the school system: as long as her school is closed, I’ll be at home, and caring for and educating a kindergartener doesn’t leave much time for doing anything that isn’t kindergarten.
Facing uncertainty
Apart from that, my biggest concern is the uncertainty. I am a graduate student, and our health insurance and pay is never guaranteed outside of our nine-month contracts. I am worried about paying for medical treatments if I do get sick, or if someone else in my family gets sick. I am worried about what will happen for us financially if social distancing goes into the late spring and early summer, as summer funding is always precarious even in a normal year and taking internships/childcare may not be an option.
Physics in the pandemic: ‘Welcome to my new role as university professor, housekeeper, cafeteria lady, school teacher…’
There are some silver linings for me, though, at least temporarily. Because I have a bad habit of filling my lab notebooks with ideas and collecting lots of data all at once, I have lots of writing and analysis to catch up on. I find this one of the hardest parts of being a PhD student, so I could really benefit from taking this time to go through my work slowly and dig out mistakes so I can meticulously strengthen the skills I feel are weakest. Also, at my university, we have an open office setting, so it is nice to be able to think without having a colleague walking past every few minutes asking what I’m up to.
A final benefit is that I love spending unstructured time at home with my daughter. I’ve been a graduate student for most of her life, so I haven’t had this kind of time at home with her since she was very little. I suffer from “mom guilt” as a result – putting her into daycare was hard. Now I love sitting and listening to her tell me about all the things that go on in her little mind. We have been making the most of this time by playing, drawing, watching movies and catching up on endless craft videos on YouTube.
