Experience Report Sarah Müller-Sägebrecht
Sarah Müller-Sägebrecht, PhD student at the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
I started my doctorate in 2017 as the mother of a 1-year-old son, which would probably have caused many other universities to shake their heads. Since we didn't have a daycare place in the first few months and unfortunately don't have a grandma or grandpa on site, I was very happy that my boss, himself a father of three children, had understanding for the situation. I was able to appreciate the flexible working hours from the very beginning. At that time, I often used the parent-child room of our faculty. 2 years later, I had my second son and took one year of parental leave, during which I happily continued to work on the joint paper with my co-author - it was a good change for me. When I returned fully motivated, the day-to-day life in the daycare center quickly caught up with me: in the first six moths, one of my two children took turns getting sick - every two weeks. After the situation finally normalized to some extent, the pandamic broke out, so that I was now able to plan even less. The abrupt conversion of our courses to digital format while at the same time caring for my sons, who were one and three years old at the time, catapulted me and my doctorate backwards. I was unable to meet my set goals and deadlines and was frustrated for a long time that things just weren't moving forward. But necessity is known to be the mother of invention, and so I was at least able to use the pandemic to make our teaching more modern, digital and diversity-sensitive, for which I was awarded two teaching prizes. So at least the pandemic had something good for me.
In the meantime, COVID - thank goodness - no longer plays a role. Our work has become even more flexible, which makes my everyday life much easier. We research assistants are now in the office on two fixed days a week, the rest of the time everyone can work when and from where they want. On some days I'm in the office very early, on other days I'm at home late at night on my laptop. I use car trips or free hours during the children's training times to get my tasks done. While others might groan, I'm grateful to be able to open my laptop one more time in the evening, in exchange for spending the afternoon with the kids.
My children are now four and six years old and rarely get sick. I'm making good progress with my doctorate and this year I can finally present at my first international conference. I also owe my progress to my husband, who is doing his doctorate himself at our faculty. He takes great care to ensure that be both have equal time for children and work.
My conclusion: when doing a doctorate, there are many unpredictable things - even more so with children and even more so with a pandemic.