Mother duckling March 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in older son, work.Tags: dissertation, working, working environment
4 comments
I have this problem where I don’t work well at home. Somehow the housework internet all the other things that need to be done (or not) just seem to suck me in and away from things like dissertations.
My solution, obviously, is to leave the house when I need to get work done. On the weekends, that usually means going up to my office. Sometimes I can do that during the week, although I also have to find a conference room or someplace to work lest someone finds me and starts talking about work when I want to be dissertating. (Yes, it’s a verb.)
Interestingly enough, I’m not the only one with this issue. My husband had the same problem, so when he was finishing his dissertation, he would go up to the office on evenings and weekends to work.
It seems that my older son also has the same problem. I did once bring him to work with me on a weekend so that he could get caught up on homework. However, I’m guessing that wouldn’t go over so well during the week, so we usually head out in the afternoons and hit Starbucks, where they will let us work for a couple hours while we suck down our chai frappuccinos™. If that seems too far away, we’ll go sit at the student union at the university, which has amazingly comfortable couches. Apparently, I’m not the only one with this idea because it seems like every other person in there is sitting there with a laptop of some sort. I guess there’s no free place to study: in one place, I have to pay for food, in the other, I have to pay for parking.
Going out is nice for both of us because then I know he won’t get distracted, and I’m available if he gets stuck on his math. But when we go out to study, I feel somewhat like a mother duckling, her (in this case, not so) little ones trailing along.
So what about you? What’s your favorite work space? Have you managed to keep a home office (if you need one) and stay productive?
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