I applied for research leave 2 weeks after COVID-19 sent my entire university home.
Hi, I’m Emma. I work as the publishing services librarian at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I was awarded research leave from 20 July to 9 October. This is a record of how it went.
A Very Retrospective
22 April 2022 Taking research leave during the first summer of the pandemic (2020) was the single worst decision of my professional career. Every day was a an identity crisis in which I doubted the time and money I’ve invested in trying to “make it” as an academic librarian. I should have ended my leave…
Moving along
11 September 2020 I am behind where I wanted to be…according to my original pre-pandemic schedule. I can confidently say that research leave during a pandemic is not easy. Part of this is because I lost almost all of my more mindless “to-do list” type items associated with my job when I went on research…
3 weeks in
7 August 2020 The research progress continues! I am now officially 1.5 weeks off of my original research calendar, but part of this included wrapping up a few minor projects that followed me into my research leave. Since COVID-19 disrupted every scheduled conference, I have also had the chance to tune into a few virtual…
Preparing
14 July 2020 I am not from a family of academics. Being awarded a professional development/research leave from my library was going to create confusion among the people in my life who regularly ask me about work without at all understanding what it is I do on a daily basis. But then COVID-19 sent the…
Emma Molls 