Dr Aidan Arnold

Reader, Experimental Quantum Optics and Photonics Group

From the very start life took a pretty exciting and dramatic change for both myself and my wife Sonja with the births of our three children 2001-5. Sonja and I are both physicists, with independent careers and it was important to both of us that childcare and work were evenly shared (with the exception of pregnancy of course…).

For 13 years we both worked part-time, at increasing hours as the kids grew up, benefitting from the Strathclyde nursery. Childcare is hard, much harder than physics, but also truly rewarding. Most people in the department were very understanding, and I will never forget our secretary Jean parading our babies around the department, singing nursery songs at full volume!

There was flexible timetabling, e.g., my lectures are still in two-hour slots, which turned out to be what the students preferred anyway. My office occasionally doubled as a changing room, and I’m really pleased to see the recent addition of dedicated facilities in the building. I think having to juggle family and career made me more efficient with my time and I’d thoroughly recommend it. However, working hours in academia aren’t limited and you need to be constantly wary of being judged - by others, but also yourself - against full-time colleagues.