Week Four: Absence
Hannah Hiles | 12 February 2016 | Durham NC
This is, regrettably, a pretty vacant blog post. But it's one that I think actually puts a heavy contribution towards a few things that matter very much to me:
- Childcare, and
- Paid medical leave
I had a head cold for a small portion of last week and didn't come into AUX out of not wanting to get people sick. One of the wonderful things about my practicum and the department where I am, though, is the ability to work remotely – one day a week, I hole up at a local coffee shop and do all of my work from my laptop.
But even with only being sick one day, my toddler was sick for a much larger chunk of that time. My toddler, who is normally in school. The school that has an understandably strict attendance rule about when toddlers can and can't show up. Spoiler alert: sick toddlers can't go to school.
While I had a literal pause in my work week, it also gave me a mental pause. When I actually enter the workforce and find the 9-5 that speaks to me, this will be a trickier river to maneuver. And yet, it's one that thousands of people – mostly women – handle 1) on a daily basis. Parents regularly have to make the choice between their families and their jobs, and their jobs are often not very gracious as to which one of those two gets picked.
I am lucky to be able to go through a practicum and find things like this out – things like, “You really need a Plan B for when the toddler is sick and you can't go to work because he can't go to school.”
Because I have a feeling that out in the real world, people aren't as accepting of you just not showing up for an entire week of work.
HRHILES 