Prepared for Lockdown?!

If anyone can be labelled as ‘prepared for lockdown’, it should be me. I attended a workshop on creating memes this week, and I made this image to sort of express this…

My thesis write-up just did not go according to plan — I had all my data collected and most of the analyses completed before I had my first child; then I had second one 2 years later. This meant that while I should have had my PhD wrapped up by the end of 2017, I have only finished it in 2020! In fact, I think the lockdown actually helped me get through the final bits of my write up. Here’s how –

I grew up in India in the 1980s, and from my experience, grandparents played a major role in early years’ childcare. I too lived with my maternal grandparents for a few years and even started at the same school as my mum near them. But for my husband and me, living in the UK away from the rest of our families has meant having to explore and become familiar and comfortable with other options for childcare support available here.

We decided to send our kids to a childminder, as we thought that this would be the closest to what we would have had at home. My girls absolutely love their childminder, and she loves and cares for them like her own. We really couldn’t have asked for a better setting to send our kids to and I am indeed grateful for this. But this decision like any other has had implications for me, and how I have been able to manage my time. For example, I would get up early hoping to get some writing done, but I would be so distracted getting food and things ready for the girls for their day, I won’t really make much progress. While we waited until after her first birthday to start our first one with her childminder, we felt comfortable enough starting our second one much earlier at 4 months. But of course our second one had plans of her own, and simply refused to take a bottle! So for the initial months she would only go for a few hours between breastfeeds. She did eventually settle into regular full days once she was fully on solids, but that was only after she turned 1 in 2019.

The rest of 2019 was just confusing for me with not being granted a second extension to the submission deadline that I’d applied for — appealing against this decision and gathering the required evidence to support my appeal — having to submit an incomplete contingency thesis while my appeal was being considered, and going through with a viva based on this submission — receiving a positive outcome on my extension appeal after completing the viva — having to decide if I should go with the extension and be re-examined on a completed thesis or stick with my viva outcome instead, etc.!

As it turned out, I did well on the viva and decided to go with this outcome, which was resubmission of a completed thesis in 1 years’ time. However, many of the corrections suggested by my examiners did not match up to the write-up that I had worked to complete in the months leading up to the viva! So in September 2019, I was left with substantial bits of the thesis to revise and resubmit for evaluation by the end of August 2020. I made steady progress on it from September 2019 — March 2020. However, there were particular circumstances during lockdown 1.0 that I think helped me complete the write-up:

• My kids were at home — this meant that when I woke up early, this time was all mine to really focus and get a good amount of writing done. The kids were also not falling ill with other bugs during lockdown, which would have happened fairly regularly otherwise.
• We started the lockdown with my second one turning 2 — so both girls were at a stage where they would eat the same foods, not have any school work to do, and keep each other great company! This gave me some time to work during the day as well. Plus, when they needed me, I was just there, as opposed to being available for them when they were out. Then, I would either have to make a trip, or work out a plan with my husband — not that this happened often at all, but this frame of mind sometimes left me less available to focus on my work during the days the girls were at childcare. With them being home all day, I was also able to get them to bed sooner. So there were a few hours after that to get more writing done as well.
• Finally, the weekends did not involve any great plans or outings due to the lockdown. So I was even able to get bits of my write up completed then!

All in all, by the time we came out of lockdown 1.0, I had a completed thesis ready for submission! I read a piece on The Conversation yesterday on tips to stay resilient during the pandemic, and as suggested in one of the tips, here is my piece focusing on what has worked for me during these unsettling times!