Over the weekend we celebrated a milestone in our family – my husband entered his 6th decade (it’s always nice to have someone close do this before you do!). It just happened to work out that four families of old grad school friends (that’s nine biology PhDs, several of whom helped me sing the big 3-0 to my husband 20 years ago -gasp!) were able to reunion for a birthday feast/weekend together. What better way to mark the occasion!
Dana Campbell
Dana Campbell finished her PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 1999. Since then she has enjoyed the benefits of exploring many topics in biology as an independent scholar and at-home mom in Maryland. She spends summers with her husband and two daughters, ages 5 and 9, at the University of Washington marine biology research labs in the beautiful San Juan Islands.
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Most Recent Articles
July 27, 2011
A couple weeks ago our family got gussied up to go to an evening ball – an annual summer extravaganza our kids have never missed.
July 13, 2011
Every year the fourth grade math teacher at my daughter’s school teaches all the fourth grade students to play chess. Not part of the curriculum or required by the school, it’s just his thing that he somehow fits into lessons. Sometimes the class divides up into partners to play during class “chess time”, sometimes the teacher effectively uses this activity to occupy kids while he teaches math to small groups. And the students love it.
June 22, 2011
I’m visiting my father right now, and was lucky to have enjoyed a wonderful Father’s day with him and my husband, and my brother (for a little while, at least, via Skype): my all-time personal favorite fathers.
June 8, 2011
When the anthology Mama, PhD, was published in 2008, another anthology came at almost exactly the same time, called Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory, edited by Emily Monosson. Like Mama, PhD, it contains wonderfully written personal narratives of academic mothers, albeit with a science bent. Both books examine motherhood through the lens of academics, and academia through the lens of mothers – and their simultaneous publishing reflected the huge need for discussion of this topic (still just as true now, three years after publication of these volumes).
May 10, 2011
I was taken with the “What do professors do all day?” blog that Libby pointed to in her blog a while ago – so I thought I’d try to document a day similarly. This is actually a day from several weeks ago. It’s not necessarily typical of what I do every day, but lately it’s typical of a day’s general busy-ness and scattered-ness.
April 27, 2011
I had another blog planned, but I just got back from a presentation of the film “Race to Nowhere,” (see www.racetonowhere.com and www.endtherace.org) and I feel I really must put in a plug for parents – especially academic parents - to see it. The film, directed by Vicki Abeles, opened my eyes, especially as my older daughter is just leaving elementary school, and we’re poised on the brink of the middle and high school years.
April 12, 2011
“I want to go to aftercare!” This comes up in our house periodically. The aftercare program at my kids’ school is good, I hear parents say. Many parents from our immediate neighborhood choose to send their kids there, so many of the kids are friends my kids have known since they were very young. The program includes outside playground time every day, snack, a choice of games, crafts, activities. The kids do their homework together, order pizza, have movie afternoons. There’s a talent show at some point in the year.
March 23, 2011
I wonder if you, savvy readers of this blog, would “recognize” me if we met outside of cyberspace. By this, I don’t mean recognize me physically, of course – you probably have not seen my picture – I just mean that a personality can be quite different when channeled through a different format, and I might seem quite different than you imagine me. My daughter’s teacher said to me just a couple weeks ago that my daughter “becomes bold” in her writing.
March 8, 2011
Like Libby, I also was interested in Rosemarie’s Monday post about Role Models. I agree with both of these Mama, PhDs that our generation is in the unique position of being at the exciting beginning of the era redefining amazing opportunities that women (and their families) have in the workforce and in academia.
