During my undergraduate and master’s degrees, I fell into the somewhat expected routine of working every day of the week. My peers were doing it, my mentors were doing it, and it would have been highly difficult to keep up with my coursework and grades with any other approach. So, right up until the end of my master’s degree, I was used to working in my spare moments. This isn’t to say I did nothing else; I played team sports, participated in marching band, and maintained a fulfilling social life. But there were no official days off for me: if I had two hours free before a practice on a Saturday, I was fitting in some studying.
This changed for me out of necessity when I began my first full-time job at the Atlanta VA Hospital after my master’s degree. Working with highly sensitive VA data meant that I couldn’t work constantly since I needed to be on a VA computer to do any work at all. So suddenly, my weekends were completely work-free, whether I had other plans or not. My mental health was better than it had been in years, and I found myself not minding returning to work on Mondays as much as I had as a student because I’d had a full weekend off. Having strict rules on when work happened and when work didn’t happen took a huge load off of my mind trying to decide whether I could afford to take a break or not. The breaks happened after 5:00 pm during the week and every weekend, period. When I decided to return to school for my PhD at BU, I vowed to myself to do the best I could to maintain this no-work-on-the-weekends lifestyle.
I failed miserably at this goal my first two semesters. Dealing with a full plate of homework and exams left me scrambling to keep up with everything. My mental and physical health felt the damage, and I finished both semesters with that all-too-familiar feeling of complete exhaustion. I was especially drained at the end of my second semester, and looming just 4 months away was our notorious theory qualifying exam, which we were expected to spend all summer preparing for. As I laid out my study schedule, I decided to try again to meet my goal of not working on weekends. This turned out to be a crucial turning point for me. Not only did it help me maintain hobbies and a social life during one of the famously worst summers in our program, it massively helped me manage my anxiety as the test approached. By Friday each week I could feel the physical manifestation of my stress throughout my body, but after a full weekend break my anxiety had calmed by the time I jumped back into studying on Monday. I was reinvigorated, able to focus again, and learned material much more easily at the beginning of the week than I did at the end. I passed my theory qual at the end of the summer, and as I entered dissertation phase I had renewed energy to keep that weekend boundary.
Dissertation phase certainly has its own set of challenges, but I have found it much easier to manage my schedule than when I was taking classes. As a result, now in my fourth year of my PhD, I can’t remember the last time I worked over the weekend. I’ve maintained a sense of self outside of my PhD program, and I don’t feel like I’ve had to stop living my life just because I’m a PhD student. I’ve begun running half marathons, something I couldn’t have imagined myself doing just 5 years ago. I go to the movies, attend dinner parties and game nights, go out dancing, have reality TV nights with friends, and catch up on sleep. Weekend breaks have also substantially improved my productivity during the week. My brain is noticeably rejuvenated on Mondays, and I’ve solved some of the most difficult pieces of my dissertation right after a weekend of rest. I remind myself of this whenever I’m tempted to fit in a bit of work on the weekend, thinking it will make the week ahead easier: spending more time on work doesn’t always mean you’re making progress, and the more rested I am the more efficient my time will be.
As I begin interviewing for jobs, one of my first questions for prospective employers is what their company does to promote work/life balance. I know that both my future work self and my future outside of work self will appreciate it!
