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Stephana Cherak is a PhD student in the Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Canada. Her PhD research focuses on patient and family-centred critical care.
One weekend last October, I received an out-of-office reply from an academic faculty member: “I do not respond to e-mails on weekends. If this is an emergency, please call my mobile. If you do not have my mobile number, then you do not have a weekend emergency.” The tone, I felt, was telling — researchers are often under pressure to keep up with immense workloads and to stay on top of the changing world of science, while trying to protect their life outside work from being invaded by faux emergencies or apparently urgent e-mails.
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Nature578, 179-180 (2020)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00275-2
This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged.