CORONAVIRUS DIARIES:
A NEW WORLD OF WORK
John Tregoning’s weekly COVID-19 diary entries reveal the highs
and lows of remote working while homeschooling two children.
ILLUSTRATIONS ADAPTED FROM GETTY
WEEK ONE
HELLO FROM HOMEI realize that, compared with many scientists
and many more members of the public world-
wide, I am in a privileged position. I’m a tenured
principal investigator, so most likely will havea job to return to, and I have a house — with a
garden — which holds more than three rolls of
toilet paper. But the uncertainty is unsettling
as we step into the unknown with all kinds of
issues: what happens to the economy and what
that might mean for science; the likelihood
of getting a nasty infection; uncertainty over
when I will be able to buy more bread flour.
In addition to being an academic, I am
a father to children aged 10 and 12, and a
husband to my wife, who is also a scientist. So,
for both of us, one of the biggest challenges is
going to be how to fit full-time work around
looking after the children. Under normal cir-
cumstances, parenting is mostly logistics. We
just about balance childcare through a combi-
nation of school, clubs and childminders. ThisT
wenty years after starting my PhD and
12 years into running my own research
group, focusing on respiratory infec-
tions, at Imperial College London, I
would describe myself as a mid-career
scientist. With the job title of reader (some-
where between an associate and full profes-
sor), I’m seen as impossibly old by my PhD
students, and as a relative newbie by the more
senior profs.
Of course, that was under normal circum-
stances.
To help navigate through the current
experience, I started a diary, which Nature
agreed to publish. I hope that my experience
will be similar to that of other scientists —
not those on the front line in the wards, ordeveloping diagnostics, vaccines and cures,
but the vast majority of us, at every level of
career, who are now adjusting to life away from
the laboratory. Hopefully it will make someone,
somewhere, smile and realize we are all going
through versions of the same experience.
You can read all of my diary entries at nature.
com/careersNature | Vol 581 | 14 May 2020 | 225Advice, technology and tools
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