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Old Posted Feb 6, 2022, 12:01 AM
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SIGSEGV SIGSEGV is offline
He/his/him. >~<, QED!
 
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Loop, Chicago
Posts: 5,991
I've always had a flexible work arrangement, with the ability to work from home or elsewhere as long as reasonable (obviously, when I need to be in the lab or in the field or go to a conference it's harder to work from home, but when I'm doing computer things I theoretically can). My first long-term bout of working from home was in 2014, my last year of grad school when I moved to Chicago so that my wife could attend social work school here. I went back to Boston monthly to do lab things and talk to people in person, but it was isolating and it sucked.


Since I started at UChicago I'd occasionally work from home, but not super often (mostly like, if I had a dentist's appointment in the middle of the day or my wife was sick or something). I don't need to be in the lab all of the time, but it's nice to be able to talk to students in person and such (explaining how to do things over Zoom or Slack is not as fun). But since all the experiments I work on are dispersed around the world, all my telecons forever have always been on Zoom (and before that... shudders... WebEx) .

Soon after COVID started and the university mostly shut down, I was given "essential lab access" so I could go into the lab as needed, but was not allowed use my office, so I only went in sporadically as required. Eventually, we were allowed to go to offices but with single-occupancy, which was kind of annoying to coordinate in my then shared office, and by that point I had moved and had a much better home office/lab in a walk in closet, so I still mostly just went in when I needed to do something in lab (though this was increasingly often, as we were getting ready to do a field deployment in Greenland).

After I got back from Greenland last summer, the rules were relaxed (there was even a week or so where we didn't have to wear masks in shared offices lol), but I was given my own office soon thereafter, making it a moot point. Since then, I'd been going in on average 4 times a week (one day a week has managed to become almost all telecons so I often just stay home for that). My commute is pretty pleasant (5 minute walk to train station, 15 minutes on the metra electric, 15 minute walk or a faster Divvy bike ride to the office), and I'm generally more productive at the office.

I'm on paternity leave now, so obviously not going in for a while. I may WFH more often at the beginning to make things easier on my wife (who will be staying home with the little one, while trying to continue to write on the side).

What I'm most excited about is that it looks like we'll have an in-person collaboration meeting at the end of the month where a bunch of my colleagues will be traveling to Chicago (originally, it was going to be at UH-Manoa, but we decided given the current travel circumstances and university policies, Chicago is easier for most people and I wouldn't have been able to go to Hawaii with a newborn anyway). This summer, there may even be in-person conferences! (though I probably won't go somewhere too exotic since I don't want to be away from the baby for too long).
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