Jana Asher:
A Statistician at Home
Previously a ‘Statistician by Chance,’ ‘Statistician in Iraq,’ and
‘Statistician in the Field’
W
hen my daughter was born during the summer of 2005,
my career and life were exactly where I wanted them to
be. Not only had I landed my dream job, I also had a
boss who was flexible about me working at home when necessary
and working part-time while my daughter was young. I even had an
office with a window. So all was idyllic until the fall of 2006, when
my life path took a turn. My son was struggling in his special educa-
tion program and asked to be home-schooled.
“No problem,” thought I. I could both work and home-school
him, after all I had landed in graduate school pretty much by acci-
dent, traversed war zones in Baghdad, gotten stuck on the top of
a mountain in East Timor, and survived malaria in Sierra Leone.
How difficult could educating a socially and cognitively delayed
middle-schooler with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder be?
Ha!
(above) Asher, during an average
working day with her children,
Rosie and Duncan
null
Life at home with the kids doesn’t mean
life as a statistician ends
null
.
Duncan, Jana’s son,
gives his little sister,
Rosie, a squeeze.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that either my children
or my job had to go. And so I became a stay-at-home mom, a
situation that was necessary and fulfilling, but led me into a
deep, blue funk. I felt somehow that an important part of my
identity was being shut down, even if only temporarily. It took
the better part of a year for me to cheer up and realize my career
was not quite dead and there were many steps I could take to
prevent it from expiring.
So, to all those statistician moms and dads out there contem-
Don’t cancel your professional memberships. I was going
plating a short-term or several-year ‘vacation’ from gainful employ-
to, and then I thought better of it, and I’m glad I changed my
ment: fear not. Here are some ideas for how to keep a foot in your
mind. I keep up on what’s happening in the statistics com-
field while you hands are busy changing diapers and pushing your
munity via Amstat News and the online publications available
kiddos on swing sets. Some of these ideas may seem obvious to you
through the ASA to all members. If you continue to support
now, but after you’ve been woken up four times in the same night
your professional societies and keep tabs on developments in
due to bad dreams and bad reactions to dinner, your ability to
your field, there will be less of a learning curve when you do
think clearly will diminish greatly. Save this article to read then.
return to gainful employment.
JUNE 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 7
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