Oh, how having a family can change your priorities...

As I was putting together my CV for this course (of which much of it was already written) I realized how empty my activities have been for the past couple of years. At one point I had driven myself to near insanity with the amount of campus organizations I was involved with, on top of classes and research. Although I have still been active in my lab, the majority of my other activities came to a grinding halt when I had my son almost two years ago. I am left to wonder how this will be looked at by future schools or employers. Although my reasons for slowing down are valid, they will only see the paper existence of me and any assumptions they choose to make will be out of my hands. While I may have the opportunity to discuss my life in greater detail in an interview, I still wonder how I will be viewed. Many mothers are capable of not missing a beat even when they are being awoken at all hours of the night and may have missed showering for a couple of days unbeknownst to them. But for me that was not the case. I chose to walk away, if for no other reason than to keep myself from driving off of the Willis Bridge. And, while I am getting back to that place of multi-tasking bliss, I will never be as ambitious (or maybe just as insane) as I was previously. I presume that I will end up just fine and that my perceptions of myself are much harsher than those of anyone else. And, maybe that paper existence of myself is no more important than my son's baby book which has also been put in the corner until I have time to get to it.